2 Nephi 25-30

28: 8, 21, 30

8 And there shall also be many which say: Eat, drink, and be merry; nevertheless, fear God- he will justify in a little sin; yea lie a little, take the advantage of one because of his words, dig a pit for thy neighbor; there is no harm in this; and do all things for tomorrow we die; and if it so be that we are guilty, God will beat us with a few stripes, and at last we shall be saved in the kingdom of God.

21 And others will he pacify, and lull them away into carnal security, that they will say: All is well in Zion; yea, Zion prospereth, all is well- and thus the devil cheateth their souls, and leadeth them away carefully down to hell.

30 For behold, thus saith the Lord God: I will give unto the children of men line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little; and blessed are those who hearken unto my precepts, and lend an ear to my counsel, for they shall learn wisdom; for unto him that receiveth I will give more; and from them that shall say, We have enough, from them shall be taken away even that which they have.

We are fighting a constant battle with Satan. We are kind of caught between a battle of good and evil. Satan is trying to hard to pull us to evil while Jesus is on our other side fighting for us to do good and live a life of joy.

Satan has a lot of tricks, as discussed in these versus, that he will use on us. I think it is important to be aware of the ways he works so we can be ready to defend ourselves. But I also believe it is important to not give Satan too much credit for the power he has, because we will always have the upper hand with Christ on our side. I feel that sometimes we spend too much time thinking about and being scared of the influence Satan can have on us in our lives. I prefer to focus on the incredible power we gain from the atonement and the gift of grace we have for those time we do slip up.

The theory of eat, drink, and be merry doesn't seem like too much of a temptation to me because I have always been taught that that is not the correct way to live. Verse 21 is a little scarier to me because it is a subtle thing to fall into. It isn't necessarily going out and committing big sins but it is Satan subtly turning our attention away from the gospel and toward other things. I think of the the conference talk from a few years back about good, better, and best. We may not necessarily be sinning per-say yet at the same time we aren't exactly being as righteous as we could be.