What things do you "perform unto the Lord"? 2 Nephi 32:9

What things do you "perform unto the Lord"? 2 Nephi 32:9

Nephi is talking to his children. He exhorts them to pray always, and tells them that they "must not perform any thing unto the Lord save in the first place ye shall pray unto the Father in the name of Christ, that he will consecrate thy performance unto thee, that thy performance may be for the welfare of thy soul."

I'm guessing he's not referring to "things" like, say, "breathing." :-P

So what is he referring to?

We can find out by looking for other instances of the word "perform unto the Lord" in the scriptures. I used the WordCruncher tool found here.

OT : 16
NT : 1
BoM : 5
D&C : 2

I think that a more thorough study will include looking for just "perform".

See, this is a clear example of why a corpus of religious texts is needed, with subcorpora for the Bible etc. It would be a few clicks to discover all objects of "perform unto the Lord" or even just "perform" in the scriptures. Without the tags, you have to do it manually. Grumble grumble grumble. I am really close to deciding to find a way to create such a corpus. Even better if it included all kinds of religious texts (and their various translations) from across a wide spectrum of faiths. That would be...

...a subject for another post. Sigh. Also, massive, massive scope creep in my life. Double sigh.

So back to the tedious manual way of solving this problem.

an offering
2 - burnt offering
2 - sacrifice
5 - vow
a freewill offering
solemn feasts
peace offering
burn incense to the queen of heaven
pour out drink offerings unto [the queen of heaven] <-- huh?!
2 - (the) word
that which is gone out of your lips
the part of a kinsman [marriage, or at least sex. Ah the Old Testament. You're so weird.]
2 - my commandments
the request of his handmaid
his [the Lord's] saying
4 - oath(s)
that good thing which I have promised
any thing
performance
the work
mission
promises

This is not at all what I expected to find, by the way.

Here is how I would categorize these collocates:

physical worship rituals/rites:
offering, burnt offering, sacrifice, freewill offering, solemn feasts, peace offering, incense, drink offering <-- more often in OT

words/speech:
vow, word, "that which has gone out of your lips" - i.e. words, commandments, request, oath(s), that good thing which I have promised - i.e. a promise(s) <-- more often in OT and BoM

other:
any thing, performance, work, mission <-- more often in latter-day scriptures

When I read it this way, it reminds me distinctly of temple worship. I guess that means that before I go to perform temple work for my ancestors, I should first ask God to make it worth my while, that it will be beneficial to me - and them, too.