OBEDIENCE AND REPENTANCE
Bishop Zakimi suggested that I speak on Obedience and the Blessings in my life of being obedient. That is what I set out to do, however, the impressions of the Spirit also led me to Repentance and the Atonement and so I will also touch on all those subjects in this talk on Obedience.
“In speaking of these wondrous things I shall use my own words, though you may think they are the words of scripture, words spoken by other Apostles and prophets.
“True it is they were first proclaimed by others, but they are now mine, for the Holy Spirit of God has borne witness to me that they are true, and it is now as though the Lord had revealed them to me in the first instance. I have thereby heard his voice and know his word.”
(Bruce R. McConkie, “The Purifying Power of Gethsemane,” Ensign, May 1985, p. 9.)
Alma and the Sons of Mosiah
Let’s go to the Book of Mormon to the story of Alma the Younger and the Sons of Mosiah for a few minutes.
You all know the story—Alma the Younger and the Sons of Mosiah were numbered among the unbelievers, and they went about seeking to destroy the Church and lead the people astray. They became a great hinderment to the prosperity of the church.
While they were going about to destroy the church of God, an angel of the Lord appeared unto them; and he spake as it were with a voice of thunder, which caused the earth to shake;
So great was their astonishment, that they fell to the earth, and didn’t understand the words which he spoke unto them. He cried again, and told Alma: “And now I say unto thee, Alma, go thy way, and seek to destroy the church no more, that their prayers may be answered, and this even if thou wilt of thyself be cast off.” Mosiah 27:16
Later in life Alma recalled the story in Alma 36 when he was speaking to his son, Helaman:
10 And it came to pass that I fell to the earth; and it was for the space of three days and three nights that I could not open my mouth, neither had I the use of my limbs.
11 And the angel spake more things unto me, which were heard by my brethren, but I did not hear them; for when I heard the words—If thou wilt be destroyed of thyself, seek no more to destroy the church of God—I was struck with such great fear and amazement lest perhaps I should be destroyed, that I fell to the earth and I did hear no more.
12 But I was racked with eternal torment, for my soul was harrowed up to the greatest degree and racked with all my sins.
13 Yea, I did remember all my sins and iniquities, for which I was tormented with the pains of hell; yea, I saw that I had rebelled against my God, and that I had not kept his holy commandments.
14 Yea, and I had murdered many of his children, or rather led them away unto destruction; yea, and in fine so great had been my iniquities, that the very thought of coming into the presence of my God did rack my soul with inexpressible horror.
15 Oh, thought I, that I could be banished and become extinct both soul and body, that I might not be brought to stand in the presence of my God, to be judged of my deeds.
16 And now, for three days and for three nights was I racked, even with the pains of a damned soul.
17 And it came to pass that as I was thus racked with torment, while I was harrowed up by the memory of my many sins, behold, I remembered also to have heard my father prophesy unto the people concerning the coming of one Jesus Christ, a Son of God, to atone for the sins of the world.
18 Now, as my mind caught hold upon this thought, I cried within my heart: O Jesus, thou Son of God, have mercy on me, who am in the gall of bitterness, and am encircled about by the everlasting chains of death.
19 And now, behold, when I thought this, I could remember my pains no more; yea, I was harrowed up by the memory of my sins no more.
20 And oh, what joy, and what marvelous light I did behold; yea, my soul was filled with joy as exceeding as was my pain!
Alma 36:10-20
We will talk more about this suffering and this joy and relief a little bit later.
From that time forward, Alma and the Sons of Mosiah changed, and spent the rest of their lives in the service of the Lord. They worked diligently to repair the damage they had done, and they were instruments in the hands of God in bringing many to the knowledge of the truth, and to the knowledge of their Redeemer.
3 Now they were desirous that salvation should be declared to every creature, for they could not bear that any human soul should perish; yea, even the very thoughts that any soul should endure endless torment did cause them to quake and tremble.
4 And thus did the Spirit of the Lord work upon them, for they were the very vilest of sinners. And the Lord saw fit in his infinite mercy to spare them; nevertheless they suffered much anguish of soul because of their iniquities, suffering much and fearing that they should be cast off forever.
Mosiah 28:3-4
Have you ever wondered why Paul and Alma and the Sons of Mosiah were given special attention by an angel, when so many of the rest of us are left alone, as it were, to try and find our way without that special guidance and the nudging with a club—some of us may even miss the opportunity because we do not receive it more forcefully.
I have. I have come to know that we are loved just as much and are guided just as much as were Paul and Alma and the Sons of Mosiah. They got what was required to get their attention. That is how the Lord works—just enough to get our attention.
My own life is illustrative. I spent the first couple of years after high school pretending to be one of the Sons of Mosiah. I was never really very malignant, and I did not actually fight against the Church, but I did rebel and attempted to be bad—I just wasn’t very good at it. After a time, I had a very interesting experience.
It occurred one evening during a party where the music was load and inappropriate and most of the refreshments and everything else was equally inappropriate. Suddenly, everything around me seemed to slow down and I became very aware of feelings I had not felt for some time and thoughts that I had no control over. As hard as it is to imagine considering the situation, I suddenly was under the influence of the Spirit and from that moment, I knew some things I had known my whole life were true and I also knew some new things that I had never before supposed.
Some of the realizations I had, were:
1. I was being protected. That was the main message. I was astonished!
2. The Church is true. I had never doubted it, but I suddenly knew it!
3. I needed to change.
That is the first step for any of us who desire to be Obedient and reap the blessings of Obedience. Unless we come to truly understand the position we are in, our true relationship to God, and what it will take to be reconciled to God, we simply will not be motivated to make the changes necessary.
The parallels in this experience of mine with the Sons of Mosiah were not clear to me then, in fact, I never even considered it, and it was many years later before I came to see that while my experience was not as spectacular, it was nevertheless, just as noteworthy. Just as they were rescued by their experience with the Spirit, so I too was rescued by mine.
Sometime after that experience, when I was living more in tune, I received my Patriarchal Blessing. In that blessing, it states that it will be my privilege to know many of the leaders of the Church and that I will be taught many things about the Gospel by them.
I have often wondered over the years, how that was going to happen. I have, on occasion, been taught directly by some of these leaders, but far more often, the teaching I have received is through opportunities I have sought out to listen to them as they speak—to sit at their feet as it were, while they instructed me, even if it was through an internet connection on an isle of the sea during a worldwide broadcast.
It has become apparent to me that the fulfillment of that prophecy in my Blessing was available to me all along—it only required effort on my part.
So, in that spirit, I will teach today some concepts and principles that I learned several years ago as I was taught by President Henry B. Eyring. They were not original to him, as he was taught them by Elder Theodore M. Tuttle in a devotional at Ricks college, now known as BYU Idaho.
President Eyring said:
"In my memory, the room that afternoon was almost as light as the sunshine, and just as warm. But the brightness was in more than what I saw. It was inside me that day. And for me that day it was irresistible; I was in the right place with the right preparation.
"I had been trying hard, and yet I wanted to know, "Isn't there something more I can do?" And Elder Tuttle told me there was and that I would need the atonement of Jesus Christ working in my life to go where I wanted to go. And so that afternoon lives on the pages of my scriptures, and in my life.
"Elder Tuttle began by talking about how someone had passed this understanding on to him. He said he had taken a trip to South America on assignment with Elder Joseph Fielding Smith, then a member of the Council of the Twelve. That was in the days when you went to South America by ship. Elder Smith could have used the time to rest, and he could have let Elder Tuttle rest. But he didn't. He organized daily scripture study, sitting on the deck in wooden slat chairs. They read their scriptures together, and they discussed them, and they marked them."
And so what President Eyring wrote in his scriptures, in the margins, and what I wrote in mine when I was taught this, was written by Elder Tuttle in his Doctrine and Covenants on the ship's deck as Elder Smith taught it to him. We can only imagine who passed it to Elder Smith. President Eyring did not know. And now I'm passing it on to you.
We all have moments when we want to be better than we have ever been. That is what Obedience really is—being better than we have ever been
That pull upward is far beyond what you would call a desire for self-improvement. We feel an urging to rise above our natural selves. What we have felt is an urging from our Heavenly Father to accept this invitation:
32 Yea, come unto Christ, and be perfected in him, and deny yourselves of all ungodliness; and if ye shall deny yourselves of all ungodliness, and love God with all your might, mind and strength, then is his grace sufficient for you, that by his grace ye may be perfect in Christ; and if by the grace of God ye are perfect in Christ, ye can in nowise deny the power of God.
33 And again, if ye by the grace of God are perfect in Christ, and deny not his power, then are ye sanctified in Christ by the grace of God, through the shedding of the blood of Christ, which is in the covenant of the Father unto the remission of your sins, that ye become holy, without spot."
Moroni 10:32-33
"The greatest tragedy of life is that having paid that awful price of suffering 'according to the flesh that his bowels might be filled with compassion' and now prepared to reach down and help us, he is forbidden because we won't let him. We look down instead of up." (Truman Madsen, quoted in Ardeth Greene Kapp, "Drifting, Dreaming, Directing," in Woman to Woman, [Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Company, 1986], p. 60.)
That urge to rise above ourselves is a recognition of our need for the Atonement to work in our lives, and our need to be sure that it is working. After all you can do, after all your effort, you need confidence that the Atonement is working for you and on you.
Getting back to what President Eyring taught me, on the second page in section 19 of the Doctrine and Covenants, on the bottom of the page, in capital letters, I wrote the word REPENTANCE. And then an arrow leads to a notation that reads: "Greek word. To have a new mind."
Around the margins of that second page of section 19, I wrote nine scriptural references I got with his brief description of why they matter.
The first is not in the margin but is from the section itself. I heard it that day with new meaning. It begins with the fifteenth verse: "Therefore I command you to repent—repent, lest I smite you by the rod of my mouth, and by my wrath, and by my anger, and your sufferings be sore—how sore you know not, how exquisite you know not, yea, how hard to bear you know not. For behold, I, God, have suffered these things for all, that they might not suffer if they would repent; but if they would not repent they must suffer even as I." (D&C 19:15-17.) #1
As I read those words that day, I felt the overwhelming suffering of the Savior. And then two things dawned on me. First, if I could not repent to qualify for his atonement for my sins, I must suffer to the limit of my power to suffer. Remember what Alma said earlier about the pains he experienced before he repented. And, second, with all the requisite suffering of my own, with all I could bear, it would still not be enough. I would still be forever shut out of the only place where there will be the warmth of family, the family of my Heavenly Father, and that of my family here. Somehow I had gotten the idea that the choice was between repenting or not.
"Let us grasp the proffered gift of eternal life! We will end up either choosing Christ's manner of living or His manner of suffering! It is either 'suffer even as I' (D&C 19:16-17), or overcome 'even as [He] . . . overcame' (Revelation 3:21)." (Neal A. Maxwell, "'Overcome . . . Even As I Also Overcame'," Ensign, May 1987, p. 72.)
The choice is not about whether to repent or not, it is about whether to suffer or not!
That caused a determination in me, both to stay as far as I could from sin and to gain a confidence that my sins were being remitted. I wanted to know what I could do to gain assurance that I was on the path home.
Specific steps to assure that the Atonement is at work in our lives will not always be the same. Every circumstance is different. But for everyone, at every stage of purification, there are constants. One is this: reception of the Holy Ghost is the cleansing agent as the Atonement purifies you.
President Marion G. Romney taught: "Receiving the Holy Ghost is the therapy which effects forgiveness and heals the sin-sick soul." ("The Holy Ghost," Ensign, May 1974, p. 92.) And the Savior said, "Now this is the commandment: Repent, all ye ends of the earth, and come unto me and be baptized in my name, that ye may be sanctified by the reception of the Holy Ghost, that ye may stand spotless before me at the last day." (3 Nephi 27:20.) #2 Moroni also spoke of being wrought upon and cleansed by the power of the Holy Ghost after baptism.
That is a fact we can act on with confidence. We can invite the Holy Ghost's companionship into our lives. And we can know when he is there, and when he withdraws. And when he is our companion, we can have confidence that the Atonement is working in our lives.
We know that the mission of the Holy Ghost is to bear testimony of the Savior. When in faith and under assignment we go forth to do that, the Holy Ghost is our ally. The Savior said, "When the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father, he shall testify of me." (John 15:26.) #3
If we do something today and make some attempt to help some person come unto Christ, we will feel the influence of the Holy Ghost helping us, and we will feel approval. We will know that, for at least those moments, the power of the Holy Ghost was with us. And we will know that some healing came into our soul, for the Spirit will not dwell in an unclean tabernacle. His influence cleanses.
The effects of the Atonement—the lack of pride, of envy, of malice—are also a shield against temptation. The Savior taught this in D&C 95:1 "Verily, thus saith the Lord unto you whom I love, and whom I love I also chasten that their sins may be forgiven, for with the chastisement I prepare a way for their deliverance in all things out of temptation, and I have loved you." (D&C 95:1.) #4
The broken heart and contrite spirit that are the requirements for forgiveness are also its fruits. The very humility that is the sign of having been forgiven is protection against future sin. And it is by avoiding future sin that we retain a remission of the sins of the past.
We may not know when we have been fully baptized with fire and with the Holy Ghost, but we can know we are inviting his presence. And we know when we are making his presence impossible. You may be determined right now to serve the Savior, and thus invite the Spirit, or you might be tempted by some thought like this: "Look, as long as you don't commit great sin, repentance isn't that hard. You just confess, take a little embarrassment, and you are clean again."
That is a lie in at least two ways. 1st great lie, 2 Ne 28:8. First, consider this description of suffering for sin from section 19 of the Doctrine and Covenants: "Which suffering caused myself, even God, the greatest of all, to tremble because of pain, and to bleed at every pore, and to suffer both body and spirit—and would that I might not drink the bitter cup, and shrink." (D&C 19:18.) #5
I also wrote these words: "Teach the people repentance hurts." We must never believe the lie that there is no pain from sin. We can be forgiven; the Atonement is real. But President Kimball taught that "if a person hasn't suffered, he hasn't repented." (The Teachings of Spencer W. Kimball, ed. Edward L. Kimball [Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1982], p. 99.)
So true faith in the atonement of Jesus Christ, rather than leading us to try a little sin, will lead us to stay as far away from it as we can.
That brings me to the second great falsehood. 2nd great lie, It is this: as the world grows more wicked, it is only reasonable to expect to be overcome by temptation. That is not true either. We do not face so bleak a prospect. President George Albert Smith taught (he said it many years ago, but it is still true in our time and will be in the future, however dark the world becomes):
"There are two influences ever present in the world. One is constructive and elevating and comes from our Heavenly Father; the other is destructive and debasing and comes from Lucifer. We have our agency and make our own choice in life subject to these unseen powers. There is a division line well defined that separates the Lord's territory from Lucifer's. If we live on the Lord's side of the line Lucifer cannot come there to influence us, but if we cross the line into his territory we are in his power. By keeping the commandments of the Lord we are safe on His side of the line, but if we disobey His teachings we voluntarily cross into the zone of temptation and invite the destruction that is ever present there. Knowing this, how anxious we should always be to live on the Lord's side of the line." ("Our M.I.A.," Improvement Era, May 1935, p. 278.)
The increasing wickedness in the world should not make us more inclined to take chances but less. By our choice of what we will do and what we won't do, we can place ourselves in that territory where the Holy Ghost can be our companion.
Now, you may feel that I have given you only modest hope. You want to know, to be sure—if possible, by some clear sign—that your sins are remitted. So do I. But you and I know that President Ezra Taft Benson was telling the truth when he said: "For every Paul, for every Enos, and for every King Lamoni, there are hundreds and thousands of people who find the process of repentance much more subtle, much more imperceptible. Day by day they move closer to the Lord, little realizing they are building a godlike life. They live quiet lives of goodness, service, and commitment. They are like the Lamanites, who the Lord said 'were baptized with fire and with the Holy Ghost, and they knew it not' (3 Nephi 9:20)." ("A Mighty Change of Heart," Ensign, October 1989, p. 5.)
"Alma 5:14, 15, 26-31. #6 " And then these words, written very small: "Born again and retaining remission. How do you know?"
"How do you know?" Alma the high priest raised that very question, and he answered it as he taught the people in Zarahemla: "And now behold, I ask of you, my brethren of the church, have ye spiritually been born of God? Have ye received his image in your countenances? Have ye experienced this mighty change in your hearts? Do ye exercise faith in the redemption of him who created you? Do you look forward with an eye of faith, and view this mortal body raised in immortality, and this corruption raised in incorruption, to stand before God to be judged according to the deeds which have been done in the mortal body?" (Alma 5:14-15.)
And then comes the answer of how we would know that the Atonement was working in our life and how to retain a remission of our sins. Alma continues:
26 And now behold, I say unto you, my brethren, 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?
27 Have ye walked, keeping yourselves blameless before God? Could ye say, if ye were called to die at this time, within yourselves, that ye have been sufficiently humble? That your garments have been cleansed and made white through the blood of Christ, who will come to redeem his people from their sins?
28 Behold, are ye stripped of pride?
29 Behold, I say, is there one among you who is not stripped of envy?
30 And again I say unto you, is there one among you that doth make a mock of his brother, or that heapeth upon him persecutions? (Alma 5:26-31.)
Think of those words: humble, stripped of pride, stripped of envy, not making a mock of my brother, garments cleansed. Have we experienced the change of heart?
I learned a long time ago that it is hard to know how we are doing in being born again, and why it is not easy. Here are some questions to ask yourselves:
"Do you come to priesthood meetings/Relief Society?"
"Do you come early?"
"Do you sit toward the front?"
"Do you home teach/visit teach?"
"Do you go early in the month?"
"Do you go more than once?"
There are many other questions. But they are all like that—little things, simple acts of obedience, of submission. And for each question if we can answer “yes”, then we have the answer we want.
Yes, we are at all meetings: we are early; we are smiling; we are there not only with our whole heart, but with the broken heart of a little child, as we should be every time the Lord asks anything of us.
Sufficiently humble. Stripped of pride. Stripped of envy. Never making a mock of our brother.
When that change of heart comes to me and to you, when we are cleansed and blameless before God, it will be because we have been made pure by the blood of Christ. And I know what I can and must do. I must be baptized by a servant of God holding the true priesthood, I must have received the gift of the Holy Ghost by that same power, and then I must have exercised faith in the Savior long enough and carefully enough that his grace will be sufficient for me.
And I know at least one way to know that is happening in my life—or in yours. You will have put yourself so often in the Master's service, bringing the cleansing companionship of the Holy Ghost, that you will be on the front row, early, whenever and wherever the Master calls. It will be gradual enough that you may not notice. You will be humble enough that you may be reluctant to believe it is happening. But those with spiritual discernment who love you will know. And the Savior and our Heavenly Father will know. And that is enough.
Here is another of those scriptures marked in the margin: "For the natural man is an enemy to God, and has been from the fall of Adam, and will be, forever and ever, unless he yields to the enticings of the Holy Spirit, and putteth off the natural man and becometh a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord, and becometh as a child, submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon him, even as a child doth submit to his father." (Mosiah 3:19.) #7
Don't ignore the impulses that come to you to rise above yourself into a higher and more beautiful world. Growing up, getting educated, seeing the world, and almost everything that happens to you will push you toward saying to yourself: "Oh, that was just a dream. That's not possible. I could never change that much."
You can. The Savior promised, "Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." (Matthew 11:28.) #8
He can and he will.
“Perhaps the greatest discovery of my life, without question the greatest commitment, came when finally I had the confidence in God that I would loan or yield my agency to him—without compulsion or pressure, without any duress, as a single individual alone, by myself, no counterfeiting, nothing expected other than the privilege. In a sense, speaking figuratively, to take one’s agency, that precious gift which scriptures make plain is essential to life itself, and say, ‘I will do as you direct,’ is afterward to learn that in so doing you possess it all the more.
“We should put ourselves in a position before our Father in heaven and say, individually, ‘I do not want to do what I want to do. I want to do what thou wouldst have me do.’” Boyd K. Packer, Obedience, Brigham Young University Speeches of the Year, 7 December 1971, p. 4.
I bear you my testimony that you can invite the Holy Ghost into your life, and because you have been promised that gift by authorized servants of God, he will come. I bear testimony that you can be cleansed by the power of the Atonement. The yearning you've felt for something better is a yearning to come unto Christ. This promise in section 19 of the Doctrine and Covenants is true: "Learn of me, and listen to my words; walk in the meekness of my Spirit, and you shall have peace in me." (D&C 19:23.) #9
Of these things I testify—
