Agency is Love

 Recently at church someone spoke about the love God has for each individual. She mentioned these lines from the For King and Country song God Only Knows, "There's a kind of love that God only knows."

She had been praying to make some really hard choices that affected not only herself but also her children. She begged God to give her the answer, tell her what to do. God didn't tell her what to do. God let her make the decision and then afterwards confirmed it was the correct decision. God's love for her in the moment was to let her choose. It's a love that only God fully knows- agency.

As a parent, we wish we could make our children's lives easy and perfect, so good that they will be outstanding adults. The reality is that our children, everyone really, needs to learn to make good choices which will inevitably lead to them making some bad choices, sometimes continually bad choices. Some things you can learn very well from other people's mistakes. Other things are best learned by making your own mistakes.

Many people call it 'free' agency but that term is misleading. We are free to use our agency, but agency isn't free, it has consequences attached, natural and human-made. 

When I worked at a junior high, one girl made the often hear comment, "It's a free country, I can do whatever I want." She wanted free agency, agency without consequences. She wanted to be able to hit people without consequences because she has free agency. I tried to explain that while she was free to choose to hit people, she wasn't free from the consequences- just plain agency. 

We live together with people and that naturally comes with compromises. We promise to use our agency wisely and for the benefit of the community in exchange for safety, trade, and socialization. When we use our agency to hurt others, we get the natural and community-made consequences. If you want agency with no human-made consequences, that requires being alone. 

God wants us to return to a perfect heaven so much that a plan was made in which Jesus volunteered to become our Savior, to allow us to choose to come back home or not. God allowed perfect heartbreak in the atonement because of a love God only knows (John 3:16). God gives us our agency to return to our heavenly home and heavenly family because of a special love. God won't force us to return despite the pain of children's rejection and allows us to choose a special love to return to our heavenly home. Our agency is a kind of love that God only knows.

Hear Him

 I love Prophet Russell Nelson's emphasis on Hear Him and how he said it will be more and more important in the coming years. We need to hear God and Jesus through the Holy Ghost to know how to prepare. Then again we especially need to hear Him when bad things happen (sickness, death, famine, war, etc) because He will guide us if we let Him prevail in our lives. 

He never promised only good times but He also said He would be there for us. A good example is Corrie Ten Boom (her book is The Hiding Place)- she went through some pretty horrific things trying to survive and help others during WWII. Reading her book, you see the hand of God guiding and helping her through the hard times, helping her help others as well. 

I have been guided in my life in big and small ways. Several times lately I've had the thought to send a particular message to some people, and they've usually responded that it was what they needed that day. God works through us to help others if we let Him.

We really need to learn how to hear Him and let Him prevail like Russell Nelson pleads.

Hear Him- ChurchofJesusChrist.org

What I Believe

I believe in God, that we have a Heavenly Father and Mother of our spirits. I believe Jesus Christ is our spiritual older brother, and that he lived, suffered, died, and lived again so that we could live, suffer, die, and live again also. I believe in the Holy Ghost, that he directs and protects, inspires and instructs us.

I believe in life before and after death. I believe we can live with our families forever if we are righteous to our best abilities. I believe my son is up there, my father-in-law, my grandparents, and they are watching over us.

I believe in current and personal revelation, the Heavens are open to us if we will receive. I believe we can use the Atonement of Jesus Christ to bridge the gap of our sins, to heal our wounds, to receive mercy and comfort, to receive forgiveness and a fresh start.

I believe we have agency to make decisions. We choose to have faith or not. We choose good or bad, progress, stagnation, or regress. We do not choose the consequences of our actions, but we choose our actions. I believe in a God who knows all thing and can see the past, present, and future. 

I have hope of eternal life. I strive to have faith in Jesus Christ. I strive to have charity, the pure love of Christ in my life for myself and others. I strive to follow the straight and narrow path towards salvation. 

I believe in a God of mercy, love, compassion, direction, goodness, perfection, revelation, forgiveness, miracles, covenants, and promises. 

I believe.