Message from the Directors
February 2009
Obedience: A Reciprocation of Love
By erooM relyT
As young parents, my wife and I have found obedience a very difficult concept to teach. It seems like a fairly simple lesson: our daughter should do what her parents tell her to do. We can see the consequences of when she jumps from the coffee table to the couch, yes, even before the fall happens. We appreciate how delicious pink marshmallows are, but know if eaten alone, they do not provide all the nutrients needed to grow. We ask her to trust us, and to know we truly have her best interest at heart. Yet, our three year old daughter continually teaches her mother and me, it is not so simple. After all of my own disobedience, I ought to better recognize this. If it is so simple, why am I still so resistant to being obedient? I know my Heavenly Father can see what will happen when I am putting myself in harm's way. He knows what I need to be feeding my mind and spirit that it may develop properly, and it is not pink marshmallows. Just as my wife and I have her best interest at heart, I know He has my best interest at heart.
One of my favorite statements from Ezra Taft Benson reads, "When obedience ceases to become an irritant and becomes our quest, in that moment God will endow us with power." That is worth repeating: "God will endow us with power...[w]hen obedience ceases to become an irritant and becomes our quest." Yet I still so often choose to follow Satan—he who was weeping, wailing, and gnashing his teeth when Moses cast him out (Moses 1:22).
In First Nephi, the Lord commands Lehi, "in a dream, that he should take his family and depart into the wilderness" (1 Nephi 2:2). And of course, Lehi "was obedient unto the word of the Lord, wherefore he did as the Lord commanded him" (1 Nephi 2:3). There's Lehi, having just been commanded to leave the comforts of home, leave what is familiar, leave what is safe, and go into the wilderness. Now, there is no record on this, but I would imagine Lehi had some concerns. What am I going to feed my family? What about shelter? As Bill Cosby so wisely had Noah reply to the Lord's request to build the ark, "What's going on? How come you want me to do all these weird things?"
In any case, Lehi is obedient; he departs "into the wilderness. And he left his house, and the land of his inheritance, and his gold, and his silver, and his precious things, and took nothing with him, save it were his family, and provisions, and tents...." (1 Nephi 2:4). So he had some provisions, he had shelter, and he had faith the Lord would provide the rest of he and his families needs. He left all the comforts, and "...dwelt in a tent." (1 Nephi 2:15). Lehi was obedient to the commandment of the Lord.
"Obedience is the first law of heaven. All progression, all perfection, all salvation, all godliness, all that is just and true, all good things come to those who live the laws of Him who is Eternal. There is nothing in all eternity more important than to keep the commandments of God." (Bruce R. McKonkie, The Promised Messiah, p. 126.)
As I read about Lehi I realized: perhaps having questions is okay, so long as I can move past the questions, and do what has been commanded. Lehi was asked to leave the comforts of his home, the comforts of what was familiar, and natural. Am I really so different? There was a time when I thought of nothing of the future lives of my sweet wife and our children, nothing beyond my own comfort. How on earth could anyone ask me to stay in this Gospel, which ran so counter to what felt so natural and so fitting? How would my wife endure such a life? Stay married? Or perhaps to broaden the audience, stay single... and celibate? "What's going on? How come you want me to do all these weird things?" From that perspective, it seemed Lehi got off easy being sent to the wilderness.
Well, that particular command actually is not that weird. In fact, we know that all of God's children are commanded to remain chaste, and only employ the powers of procreation within marriage. So whether a person considers him- or herself straight, gay, lesbian, same sex/gender attracted, bisexual, transgender, or whatever other challenge one may experience, the command is the same.
Often when reading the scriptures, I commit the sin of comparing myself to these amazing men and women. "I'll never be as _______ as _______." We know Lehi was not perfect (see 1 Nephi 16:20). I would wager none of us have been as rebellious as Alma the younger, and yet look at all he accomplished once obedience was no longer the irritant, but the quest. Abraham saw "the intelligences that were organized before the world was; and among all these there were many of the noble and great ones" (Abraham 2:22). "And God saw these souls that they were good, and he stood in the midst of them, and he said: These I will make my rulers; for he stood among those that were spirits, and he saw that they were good; and he said unto me: Abraham, thou art one of them; thou wast chosen before thou wast born" (v. 23).
"For nearly 6,000 years, God has held you in reserve to make your appearance in the final days before the Second Coming. Every previous gospel dispensation has drifted into apostasy, but ours will not . . . God has saved for the final inning some of his strongest children, who will help bear off the kingdom triumphantly. And that is where you come in, for you are the generation that must be prepared to meet your God... Make no mistake about it—you are a marked generation. There has never been more expected of the faithful in such a short period of time as there is of us... Each day we personally make many decisions that show where our support will go. The final outcome is certain—the forces of righteousness will finally win. What remains to be seen is where each of us personally, now and in the future, will stand in this fight—and how tall we will stand. Will we be true to our last-days, foreordained missions?" (Ezra Taft Benson, CR, Oct 1989).
We were also numbered among those noble and great ones, as obedient as Lehi, and as capable as Alma the Younger.
We are here to be proved, to see if we will do all things whatsoever the Lord God shall command us (see Abraham 2:25). Fortunately, we are not sent to learn these lessons alone. Some are blessed with supportive families, others with amazing friends, yet all receive the blessing of the Christ's love.
"Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us. For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come. Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Romans 8:35-39).
It is ultimately his love that buoys us up, whether in the desert, or as we set to a task we feel well beyond our capability. We are obedient, because we have come to feel his love for us, and perhaps, to reciprocate that love, through our choices. This type of obedience is no irritant; it is rather a soothing balm to the afflictions of living in this fallen state. It is our assigned quest, and ultimate destination.