For as many as heeded them, had fallen away.

Sometimes the great and spacious building (GSB for short...) is far away on a hill and you look on it longingly, with the looming and foreboding sense of being left behind. What you really want is to feel accepted, and to feel important. And the more you think about how unhappy you are, the more you drift away from that blessed hill which giveth the fruit of eternal life. The siren's song takes you... warning cries and voices fade with the static and buzz of background and you move almost imperceptibly at first, but move you do and soon you're far from what's most important. You leave to seek what you already had, happiness and joy, in means and methods that cannot and will not produce such.

Sometimes the GSB is in your face, mocking your happiness and insulting your peace. It tries to make you ashamed of your blessings by telling you that you deserve more. The tricky part here is that if you are convinced that you're above you're blessings, then you really do have cause for shame, but not the way you've been convinced to feel it, and definitely not for those reasons.

Both these approaches appeal to your selfish pride, and try to undermine your spirituality by telling you that you are not happy with what you have and that you deserve more. Such suggestions insult the Lord's providence and good will in blessing you with what you need -- sometimes very different from what you want.

But what do you do when you know the adversary's game plan, and you don't move from your spot, but you still feel the emptiness of your position and the desire to be loved and accepted in the way that only the evil one can provide? I don't have the command of my emotional faculties to move those feelings out of the way on a whim. Even Nephi lamented that he too often gave the enemy such power over him and his heart. I suppose you press on, and you ignore the galling calls of the denizens of the great and spacious building.