1 Nephi 22 - 2 Nephi 1

Quote "If Satan could but capture our minds, he would have won the battle and the war. He can only do this if we let him. If we refuse to walk with him, he will have no power over us, for God gave us our free agency and Satan cannot take it away. So what I am suggesting is that we refuse to even walk on the same street with Satan. In other words, not only should we avoid evil, we should avoid the very appearance of evil."

~Bishop Victor L. Brown

Question "How can Satan be bound in his efforts to influence you?"

I would love to say that living righteously is the way to bind Satan in his influence over me....but from my experience, the more I try to do what's right, and keep the commandments, Satan tries even harder to influence me. If I were righteous enough I suppose, maybe it wouldn't even be an issue, but unfortunately, I've never reached that point. I will say, however, that keeping the commandments offer us more protection from Satan, so even though he may be trying to influence us, we are better prepared to defeat him. So, keeping the commandments is really the only way to keep Satan from influencing our every action.

Today's reading made me sad. For the state of our great Nation is in peril. In 2 Nephi 1:10 Lehi says "But behold, when the time cometh that they shall dwindle in unbelief, after they have received so great blessings from the hand of the Lord - having a knowledge of the creation of the earth, and all men, knowing the great and marvelous works of the Lord from the creation of the world; having power given them to do all things by faith; having all the commandments from the beginning, and having been brought by his infinite goodness into this precious land of promise - behold, I say, if the day shall come that they will reject the Holy One of Israel, the true Messiah, their Redeemer and their God, behold, the judgements of him that is just shall rest upon them. " I know that there are a lot of really good Christian people in our country, but not all of them are speaking up. And the few that are not Christians are seemingly getting their way on way too many issues....and it's going to keep getting worse if all of us don't stand together and say "Enough!" I am so saddened that my children have to grow up in a world where "evil is called good, and good is called evil". I hope and pray that those of us that are out there, will use our influence upon our children to teach them to walk uprightly before the Lord, and that they will be able to bind Satan from influencing them through their utter righteousness!