My Servants Must be Free
Bishop Nathan D. Pace
The Lord has a plan for you to be free from bondage. Trust in His plan. You must know that the Lord wants you to be free. "My Servants Must be Free." We must be free from financial bondage for us to grow spiritually. He does not want us to live in the terror and scary life without peace that is financial bondage. Have faith in this principle; let it sink into your heart so that you may KNOW that the Lord loves you so much that his deepest desire is for you to be free from financial and temporal bondage, free from addictions or negative behavior, and of course, free from sin. The path is free. The burden is light. Although the road is narrow, His spirit will attend you and you will be able to walk the path to freedom. Live by the following:
Step One: Make and Keep all the Sacred Covenants you can make with the Lord.
Fully live by your baptismal covenants. Renew your baptismal covenants by partaking of the sacrament worthily every week. Frequently attend the temple, as often as you can, so as to be able to make all the covenants you can make with the Lord. Faithfully live by every word of every covenant you have made with the Lord. When you fall short, immediately repent and change your ways. At all times worthily carry a temple recommend in your pocket.
By faithfully making and keeping sacred covenants and by immediately and sincerely repenting when we fall short of the Glory of God, we can humbly, but confidently, stand in the presence of God and seek His blessings in our temporal life.
Step Two: Know that the Lord will open a way unto you to be free from bondage.
This will come directly to your heart and mind from God by inspiration if you seek it. Others, including the Bishop, bay be able to help you study through your options, but the Lord will communicate the answer directly to you through the Spirit. This is so you will be able to know that there is righteous goal that God wants you to achieve, that God will help you achieve, that will free you from bondage.
To help the Lord communicate with you, study the scriptures. Read from them daily, especially the Book of Mormon. Reading the scriptures opens pathways of communication that are not accessible otherwise. Liken the scriptures unto yourself as you read. The Spirit will attend you; words spoken in ages past will be felt by you as if they were just newly declared by God.
Step Three: Pray humbly to your Father in Heaven, daily, without ceasing, on your knees, in your heart, while you work, while you drive, while you do all things.
These prayers should be filled with faith in God wherein you promise to live by faith in him, promising our willingness to obey His word and exercise your faith in His promises - (especially those commandments that specifically deal with the needed blessings of temporal security) and asking humbly for Him to "Open up the windows of heaven, such that you do no have room enough to receive" His blessings.
Step Four: Work diligently to do everything you can do to obtain the righteous goal.
This step is significant and perhaps equal to or at least as or more important than all the others. It is the step that you have the most physical control over, so your diligent efforts in this step indicate to the Lord the level of your faith. It may be job searching. It may be seeking legal help for public assistance. It amy be getting healthy by obeying the Word of Wisdom and starting an exercise program. It may be getting new job skills training. It may be attending some classes. It may be developing a home garden. It may be starting a baked goods business in your home. It may be selling your handy man services. It may be working fast food, or as a cashier. It will be doing diligently any act of work or service the Bishop assigns you to do.
The Lord is able to use your loving service and hard work to bless others less fortunate than yourselves. Thus you serve the Lord, and are able to retain your dignity and self respect as you work towards true self sufficiency. There is no end to the physical efforts you can do in diligently working toward the goal the Lord has for you to be a provident provider and to be self sufficient.
Step Five: Fully and completely follow the Law of the Sabbath as contained in Doctrine and Covenants 59, Isaiah 58, and elsewhere in the scriptures.
Read fully and ponder these scriptures. Commit to honor and then actually honor and fully keep holy with all your heart, might, mind and strength the Sabbath Day. Attend faithfully and worship reverently in ALL your Sunday meetings. Spend the rest of the Sabbath day in service of God. Visit or home teach; study the scriptures; meditate and pray; visit the sick, the poor, the widows of the ward; visit in love family members. Prepare church lessons in your callings. Study the Sunday School or Gospel Doctrine lessons. Do not work on Sunday if you can at all avoid it, and then constantly pray for a door to open for you to avoid working on Sunday. Do not buy anything on Sunday or go to any sporting event or similar activity. Prepare on Saturday to honor Sunday. Live and love the Sabbath day.
Step Six: Fully and completely live the Law of the Tithe.
Read prayerfully Malachi 3: 8-12 and Doctrine and Covenants 64: 23-25, and other scriptures about tithing. Commit to and actually be a full tithe payer, paying 10% of all your increase. If you are poor be even more diligent in paying tithing. The poorer you feel, the more diligent and immediate you should pay our tithing of any money that comes in to you. If you have no income, or if you have no money - seek for ways to pay tithing. Pray with all your heart to be able to sell anything, even for only $1.00, so you can pay ten cents in tithing. Sell a loaf of bread for $.50 to pay a nickel in tithing, baby sit a child to pay twenty cents. Prayerfully seek for ways to have any income at all so that you ca "pay the widow's mite." The Lord loved and honored the widow's mite above all others during His earthly ministry. How much more will be hove and honor your widow's mite, paid by you in this difficult world, in humble faith. He will. He loves you and He will bless you. He will "open up the windows of heaven and pour you out a blessing, such that there will not be room enough to receive it."
Step Seven: Fully and faithfully live the Law of the Fast as found in Isaiah 58, Doctrine and Covenants 59, and elsewhere in the scriptures.
Fast and pray with the specific purpose for the Lord to bless you with the righteous goal you set in Step 2. Fast and pray with faith, knowing that God will deliver you as He did the armies of Israel, and Elijah's widow of Zarephath in 1 Kings 17:8-16. As you fast, pay a fast offering to the Lord, equal in value to food you did not eat. Even if it is only $.23, the cost of one egg - pay it to the Lord, so He can help someone less fortunate than you. If the Spirit tells you to pay ten times that amount, pay ten times that amount. See for ways to pay fast offerings. Even if you are so poor and destitute that you fasted from two slices of bread, pay their value of ten cents to the Lord in fast offering. This again is the Widow's mite. The Lord loves the Widow. He will love you and bless you beyond compare. Encourage all in your household to fast and pray for release from bondage, and to pay an honest fast offering All of you stand in need of His blessings Do not be afraid. God's deliverance from the beginning of time has never made sense to man. But the walls of Jericho fell down for Joshua, the waters of the Red Sea did part for Moses, and God will open up His windows of heaven and unmistakably bless you.
Step Eight: To the Head of Household - male or female - Serve Faithfully as a Servant of God.
To receive the promise that "His Servants Must be Free," you must qualify as a servant. Honor your priesthood, magnify your calling, volunteer and accept assignments, home teach, visit teach, and do all that a servant of God would do. Then, remember that as a head of household, God has entrusted you with a spiritual obligation to provide for His children, which means you and all that look to you for their daily bread. Know that God will honor your righteous efforts to honor that responsibility to provide for your family. Serve faithfully, and pray for God to open up His windows to bless you in your efforts
Step Nine: Live through the trial of your faith.
The scriptures tell us, we receive no blessing "until after the trial of your faith" (Ether 12:6). They also promise us in Doctrine and Covenants 82:10 that "I the Lord am bound when you do what I say, but when you do not what I say, you have no promise." No man knows how long the trial of your faith will be. It may be one week until deliverance, it may be four years, it may be that you will not be delivered from temporal bondage until the day of your death. I do know that you will be delivered at some point of temporal bondage, in God's time. Our responsibility during that time is to live in such a way so that we are living worthily during the trial of our faith.
Step Ten: As you obey, pray, work, and live in faith, watch for the deliverance.
It will come, unmistakably, from God. You will know it, for the Spirit will testify joyously to you that you have been delivered. When that day comes, testify to others of the lessons you have learned and the love and gratitude you have towards God and others for opening the windows of heaven. The Lord is faithful and will bless as promised in Luke 6:38, "Give, and it shall be given unto you; good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running over." This blessing at the end of the trial of your faith can and will be a testimony that will buoy you up throughout your life. Your God lives. He loves you. His gospel is real, and tangible, and physical. It may be accessed by spiritual means, but it brings peace to us in this physical world. Never cease to testify about the hand of the Lord made manifest in your life. Others need to learn from your faith. Your physical trial will realize eternal rewards.
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