7 Insights from the Bid Thou Come Unto Me Piece

August 20, 2026

1. When the Season Ends

Read: 2 Nephi 4:16–35. Then Alma 5:26 and Alma 32:34–35.

Insight

Nephi had seen visions. Angels had ministered to him. He had heard the voice of the Lord. And then he wrote this:

"Nevertheless, notwithstanding the great goodness of the Lord, in showing me his great and marvelous works, my heart exclaimeth: O wretched man that I am!" (2 Nephi 4:17)

He is grieving the distance between what he had felt and where he now stands. Read the whole chapter. He does not get the season back. Not in that chapter at least. What he gets instead is a decision: "Awake, my soul! No longer droop in sin. Rejoice, O my heart... let me shake at the appearance of sin" (2 Nephi 4:28, 30, 31). We should follow His example to focus on being faithful even when faith doesn't come easy.

Alma asks the question straight out: "If ye have experienced a change of heart, and if ye have felt to sing the song of redeeming love, I would ask, can ye feel so now?" (Alma 5:26)

He does not answer it for you. He just asks. Which means it was a live question for people who had already been converted, already been changed, and were sitting in his congregation wondering the same thing you are.

And Alma offers a companion idea worth sitting with. Once you have tasted and known something, "your knowledge is perfect in that thing, and your faith is dormant" (Alma 32:34–35). Dormant is not dead. A dormant seed is a seed that is waiting.

Go deeper: Sister Sharon Eubank, "Christ: The Light That Shines in Darkness," April 2019. Written for people whose testimony feels like it is sputtering.

2. The Longing

Read: Psalm 42:1–2 and Psalm 63:1. Then 1 Nephi 8:10–12 and 1 Nephi 11:21–23.

Insight

"As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God" (Psalm 42:1).

Someone wrote that in a drought. You do not write a poem about thirst while you are drinking. The Psalms are full of people saying out loud that they miss God, which means saying it out loud is allowed.

Two things worth noticing.

First, the longing is itself evidence. You cannot miss what you never had. The ache is not proof that God left. It is proof that something real happened.

Second, look at what Lehi did the second he tasted the fruit. It "filled my soul with exceedingly great joy," and his very next thought was "I began to be desirous that my family should partake of it also" (1 Nephi 8:12). Not "how do I get more." His instinct, immediately, was to hand it to someone else.

Nephi later asks what the tree means and is shown the Savior. The angel's words: "the most desirable above all things... yea, and the most joyous to the soul" (1 Nephi 11:22–23).

Most desirable above all things. If you are longing, you are longing for the right thing.

Consider

Do I recognize that my longing is pulling me toward Him?

3. The Season of Abundance

Read: Doctrine and Covenants 46:11–12. Then Moroni 10:8–19, Alma 36:20–21, and Enos 1:4–8.

Insight

Some people are given a stretch of life where the Spirit is close, prayers are answered quickly, and spiritual gifts show up in ordinary weeks. If that has happened to you, you know it is not something you produced.

The scriptures do not treat those seasons as the normal baseline. They treat them as a given gift: "to every man is given a gift by the Spirit of God... that all may be profited thereby" (Doctrine and Covenants 46:11–12).

Read that last phrase again. The gift is given so that all may be profited. Not just the one holding it.

Look at what happens to people right after their brightest moments. Lehi is overcome by the Spirit, and the next thing he does is go preach to a city that tries to kill him (1 Nephi 1:8–20). Alma's joy is so sharp he can barely describe it, and he spends the rest of his life preaching. Enos wrestles all night, receives forgiveness, and immediately starts praying for other people (Enos 1:9).

The abundance was not the destination. It was preparation.

Go deeper: Elder David A. Bednar, "The Tender Mercies of the Lord," April 2005. His point is that these blessings are personal and individualized, and that they are not random.

Consider

What was that season preparing me for, and have I done it yet?

4. Cast Not Away Your Confidence

Read: Hebrews 10:32–39. Then Doctrine and Covenants 6:22–23 and Moses 1:9–22.

Insight

Paul wrote to people who had received light and were now under pressure: "call to remembrance the former days, in which, after ye were illuminated, ye endured a great fight of afflictions" (Hebrews 10:32). Then: "Cast not away therefore your confidence, which hath great recompence of reward" (Hebrews 10:35).

Then read Doctrine and Covenants 6:22–23, where the Lord tells Oliver Cowdery to cast his mind back to a specific night when he cried out and received peace, and then asks: "What greater witness can you have than from God?"

Sit with what that means. God pointed a man back to a feeling he had once had, and treated that feeling as sufficient evidence. Your memory of a spiritual experience is not a consolation prize for not having the experience now. Scripture treats it as testimony.

Elder Jeffrey R. Holland built a BYU devotional on that verse in 1999. His counsel was direct: do not lose your confidence, do not forget how you once felt, do not distrust the experience you had.

Elder Neil L. Andersen has taught something similar about what he calls spiritually defining memories: that God at times assures us personally and openly that He knows and loves us, and then brings those experiences back to mind in our moments of difficulty. He has also taught the line many people hold onto: you do not know everything, but you know enough.

Go deeper, three ways:

Elder Jeffrey R. Holland, "Cast Not Away Therefore Your Confidence," BYU devotional, 2 March 1999. Also published in the Ensign, March 2000. Do not forget how you once felt, and do not distrust the experience you had.
Elder Neil L. Andersen, "Spiritually Defining Memories," April 2020. Sacred memories as luminous stones brightening a dark road.
President Henry B. Eyring, "O Remember, Remember," October 2007. His practice was to ask each night whether he had seen God's hand that day, and then write it down.

Consider

What are my spiritually defining memories? What about them is significant and meaningful to me?

5. Striving in the Dark

Read: Doctrine and Covenants 88:63 and 2 Nephi 32:8–9.

Insight

"Draw near unto me, and I will draw near unto you; seek me diligently and ye shall find me" (Doctrine and Covenants 88:63).

When in the dark, we should remember Nephi's counsel, "the evil spirit teacheth not a man to pray, but teacheth him that he must not pray" (2 Nephi 32:8). When prayer feels flat, we can't let it go. God still hears even the faintest of our prayers.

Whatever circumstances we face, we should seek to follow God with the faith Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego had when they said, "If it be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of thine hand, O king. But if not, be it known unto thee, O king, that we will not serve thy gods, nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up" (Daniel 3:17–18). Like them, we should have faith that the Lord can deliver us, but if not, we will still serve Him.

Go deeper: President Russell M. Nelson, "Drawing the Power of Jesus Christ into Our Lives," April 2017. Practical mechanics rather than encouragement.

Consider

Who can I relate to, that inspires me to seek Christ during dark times?

6. He Has All Power

Read: Job 9:8 and Psalm 77:19. Then Alma 26:35 and 1 Nephi 7:12.

Insight

Look again at what you are painting. He is standing on the thing that terrifies everyone in the boat.

That is the point of the miracle. Not a display of skill. A demonstration of jurisdiction. The water the disciples were fighting for their lives against is, to Him, ground.

And the Old Testament said so first. Job describes God as the one who "treadeth upon the waves of the sea" (Job 9:8). The psalmist writes, "Thy way is in the sea, and thy path in the great waters" (Psalm 77:19). Centuries before Galilee, someone had already put God's feet on the water.

Ammon says it flatly: "he has all power, all wisdom, and all understanding" (Alma 26:35). Nephi, mid-crisis, says it as an argument: "the Lord is able to do all things according to his will" (1 Nephi 7:12).

Here is the piece that matters for a dry season. He has not lost any power since the last time you felt Him. Whatever changed, it was not that. Trust in His goodness, majesty, and plan.

Consider

Do I believe He still can? Am I at peace with His plan and trust in the season He has placed me in?

7. What Peter Actually Asked For

Read: Matthew 14:22–33. Then Mark 6:45–52 and John 6:15–21 for the same night told two different ways.

Insight

Notice what Peter did not say. He did not say "Lord, let me walk on water." He said, "Lord, if it be thou, bid me come unto thee on the water" (Matthew 14:28).

The miracle was not the point. Being with Christ was the point. The water was just what happened to be in the way.

Mark adds a detail Matthew leaves out: the disciples had watched Him feed five thousand people only hours before, "for they considered not the miracle of the loaves: for their heart was hardened" (Mark 6:52). They had just seen God work, and it had not yet changed how they saw the storm.

Consider

What is between Him and me right now? Am I willing to walk through it to get to Him?