ALL THAT MATTERS

Some years ago I read an article by Dallin H. Oaks in the Ensign where he said something like 'it doesn't matter if you are single or married or what your circumstances are, as hard as they may be, all that matters is that you are on the path to eternal life'.  I was outraged by this comment.  At the time I was a single mother struggling terribly and it mattered to me very much whether I had a husband or not to lighten the burdens I was carrying.  I thought Elder Oaks was not in sync with reality and the people who were living with hardship on daily basis.  However, the more spiritually refined I became over the years, the more I realised the truth of this statement.  

Sometimes we become very blinded by this telestial world and find it difficult to focus on the overall picture.  I think this is where Elder Oaks' statement came from.  He had risen above the telestial and had the celestial kingdom in his horizon.  I also think that he had made peace with the hardships of this life and had submitted his will fully to God.  Acceptance is the ultimate panacea for coping in this fallen world.  It eliminates unrealistic expectations and the frustration which comes from expecting a perfect life. 

God's main concern is our spiritual welfare.  When our mortal experience is providing spiritual growth, we are on the path He would have us be on.  When the choices we make complicate our lives and place us in bondage to sin, we are obviously not living according to His will.  When our worldly pursuits take us away from Him and endanger the spiritual welfare of our families, we can be assured we are not on the same page. Anything that takes us away from God would not include His will.

Submitting our will to God is crucial if we want to accomplish His plan for us, the individualised plan for us to become as He is.  We do not remember this plan which we were so familiar with before we came here, but He does.  He knows what we wanted to become and how we wanted our earthly experience to contribute to that goal.  To stay on the path that we had chosen so long ago, we need to have trust that His will for us will get us there.  And what did we want back then?  Eternal life and godhood. Eternal life meaning life with God.  We cannot have either without the experience of this mortal life.  It is a perfect schooling ground where we can develop God like characteristics.  Without those traits we cannot live as gods.  The Saviour can forgive us our sins and rescue us from the sting of death but it is up to us to develop god like natures through yielding our hearts to God. 

Neal A. Maxwell said "it is only by yielding to God that we can begin to realise His will for us".  He went on to say:  "we need to break free of our old selves - the provincial, constraining, and complaining selves - and become susceptible to the shaping of the Lord.  But the old self goes neither gladly nor quickly.  Even so, this subjection to God is really emancipation". (Neal A. Maxwell, "Willing to Submit", Ensign May 1985)

Consider King Benjamin's advice:

"For the natural man is an enemy to God, and has been from the fall of Adam, and will be, for ever 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)

Even if we stood at the judgment bar, ready for our eternal reward, and had the Lord forgive us totally of all our sins, we would not qualify for Celestial Kingdom if we had not developed the God like nature spoken of in this scripture.  Can you image to yourself an impatient god, or an intolerant god, or a complaining god, or a god lacking in love?  Only yielding our hearts to God and making His Atonement active in our lives can create a god within us.

When Christ visited the Americas he spoke a lot about the Father and that He was sent to do His will.  In fact, he made 147 references to the Father during His visit with them. I counted them all a few years ago when I suddenly noticed how frequent the references were even though I had read the Book of Mormon countless times before.   The Saviour perfectly exemplified total obedience to the Father's will, no matter how hard the task that was asked of Him, and He had the hardest task to accomplish out of all of us.  The whole act of Atonement pivots on Christ's submission to the Father's will. "...Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me: nevertheless not my will, but thine be done". (Luke 22:42) There is something very important about this.  If the Atonement was performed out of submission, it goes to say that the Atonement can empower us, his disciples, to submit our will to the Father too.  This means using the Atonement in our daily efforts to overcome the natural man and to accept the hardships and adversity we are required to go through which will in the end refine and polish us.  Once again, verbal invocation of the Atonement comes into play.  As already suggested in my post on How to Use The Power of the Atonement, the wording should reflect our faith in Jesus Christ and should invoke the power we need to overcome the natural man or to endure the trials we are experiencing. If you are having a difficult time being submissive to God's will in general, your supplication should be: "Through my faith in Jesus Christ and the power of the Atonement, I ask for the ability to submit my will to thine, to know thy will and to be empowered to live it" or even better, "Through my faith in Jesus Christ who so perfectly submitted His will to thine, I ask to be empowered through His Atonement to submit my will to thine in all things".  The wording can be more specific relative to the situation you are in. 

If you are blinded by the gloss of this telestial world and care too much about what you have in this life and find it difficult to let go, you are not on the path to eternal life.  The Father has so so much more to give you than this dismal telestial glory. This is not your true home.  You are here for a one off experience.  When that experience is ended and the earth is 'rolled together as a scroll' (Mormon 9:2) you will want to be walked through the pearly gates to receive the splendour of eternal life. So let go and do it now.