On Making Choices
September 18, 2016
Patterson Ward
In a recent fireside, Elder Hamula, of the quorum of the seventy shared his experience in working in Church Headquarters. He talked about how the standards of the world are departing so dramatically from the standards that the Lord has set and that we should not fear...if we follow the living prophet.
President Monson’s message in the past conference was about making choices. His talk wasn’t very long and I will be quoting most of it in my talk today. He said, “It has been said that the door of history turns on small hinges, and so do people’s lives. The choices we make determine our destiny.
When we left our premortal existence and entered mortality, we brought with us the gift of agency. Our goal is to obtain celestial glory, and the choices we make will, in large part, determine whether or not we reach our goal.
May we choose to build up within ourselves a great and powerful faith which will be our most effective defense against the designs of the adversary—a real faith, the kind of faith which will sustain us and will bolster our desire to choose the right. Without such faith, we go nowhere. With it, we can accomplish our goals.
Although it is imperative that we choose wisely, there are times when we will make foolish choices. The gift of repentance, provided by our Savior, enables us to correct our course settings, that we might return to the path which will lead us to that celestial glory we seek.”
Have you ever made a bad choice?
I’d like to share a personal experience about making choices that perhaps we can learn from. This is actually a bit embarrassing, but I share to make a point so that we can learn from it.
I worked for 17 years in the mining industry. Mining can be a dangerous business and the company is continually stressing safety. Every meeting, even for the accounting staff includes a discussion about safety. I try and remember those safety discussions when I a working around the house. I do some of the work on my own cars. A couple of months ago my wife and I took a trip to Utah. As we were leaving our driveway, I heard a grinding sound from our van. I was pretty sure that I needed to replace the brake pads. Since the sound just started, I decided to drive to Utah and then check the brakes the next day. We stayed at my brother and sister-in-law’s house that night in Utah. The next morning, I checked the brakes, and the van did need new pads. I went to the auto supply store and bought the pads and returned to the house to do the work. My brother-in-law, Gary had cleared out his garage for me and I pulled into the garage. Normally, when I do this job at home, I use an hydraulic jack to raise the front end. I asked Gary if he had one that I could borrow. He said he doesn’t do much work on his own vehicles and did not have a jack. So I used the scissor jack that comes with the vehicle and raised the front end. Normally, when I do this job at home, I place jack stands under the car to hold it up. I asked Gary if he had any jack stands. He did not. I looked around for something big and strong that I could use as a support and couldn’t find anything. I knew that that night we were going to be staying at my brother-in-law Paul’s house. And I knew that he had all the tools necessary to do the job. I reasoned in my mind that I would just do the one side at Gary’s house, the minimum to stop the grinding and then I would finish the job at Paul’s. So, I proceeded to change the brakes while the car was being supported only by the scissor jack. The job went pretty quickly and smoothly, until… as I was sitting next to the car with my legs under it, tightening the last bolt, the car slipped off the jack and the front end landed on my leg. For those of you who haven’t had the experience, having a car fall on your leg is very painful. My Brother-in-law Gary quickly retrieved the jack and was able to jack the van up within a few minutes. I received a free trip to the hospital in an ambulance. Words can’t describe the pain I felt when the car landed on my leg. I also can’t describe the feeling of regret for doing something that I knew I shouldn’t do. I knew better than to put my legs under a car that wasn’t supported properly. Fortunately, although I did get a nice sized slice in my calf, somehow, there were no broken bones, no severing of the muscles, and I walked out of the hospital with a few stitches.
What can we learn from this experience? I knew better than to choose to work on that car without the proper safety precautions. Doing that was out of my character. Do we ever say to ourselves “Just this once”, “Just a little bit”, or “Just for a little while?”.
Those questions remind me of President Monson’s talk in the last October General conference. He said “I plead with you to avoid anything that will deprive you of your happiness here in mortality and eternal life in the world to come. With his deceptions and lies, the adversary will lead you down a slippery slope to your destruction if you allow him to do so. You will likely be on that slippery slope before you even realize that there is no way to stop. You have heard the messages of the adversary. He cunningly calls: Just this once won’t matter; everyone is doing it; don’t be old-fashioned; times have changed; it can’t hurt anyone; your life is yours to live. The adversary knows us, and he knows the temptations which will be difficult for us to ignore. How vital it is that we exercise constant vigilance in order to avoid giving in to such lies and temptations.”
Being aware of how the adversary tempts us will help us avoid those pitfalls...by making the right choices.
Elder Ballard gave some additional council in his last conference talk. He spoke of Family Councils. He spoke of several type of Family Councils and said that “The third type of family council is a limited family council. Here, both parents spend time with an individual child in a formal or an informal setting. This is an opportunity for a discussion on making decisions in advance about such things as what he or she will and will not do in the future. When such decisions are made, he or she may want to record them for future reference if needed.”
Did you catch what he said about making choices. If we can decide what we are going to do before the situation comes, then it will help us. We are all going to have to make choices on whether we are going to obey the word of wisdom, the law of tithing, the law of chastity, and so forth. Let us decide beforehand what we will do when those situations arise.
The prophet Nephi shows us how to make correct choices in the way he reacted to his father’s prophecies and commandments. His prophet father Lehi had received the vision of the Tree of Life and Lehi had shared that vision with his family. This is what Nephi did “For it came to pass after I had desired to know the things that my father had seen, and believing that the Lord was able to make them known unto me, as I sat pondering in mine heart I was caught away in the Spirit of the Lord…” (1 Nephi 11:1)
Now let’s consider how Laman & Lemuel chose to react. “And it came to pass that after I, Nephi, had been carried away in the Spirit, and seen all these things, I returned to the tent of my father. And it came to pass that I beheld my brethren, and they were disputing one with another concerning the things which my father had spoken unto them. For he truly spake many great things unto them, which were hard to be understood, save a man should inquire of the Lord; and they being hard in their hearts, therefore they did not look unto the Lord as they ought...And it came to pass that after I had received strength I spake unto my brethren, desiring to know of them the cause of their disputations. And they said: Behold, we cannot understand the words which our father hath spoken concerning the natural branches of the olive tree, and also concerning the Gentiles. And I said unto them: Have ye inquired of the Lord? And they said unto me: We have not; for the Lord maketh no such thing known unto us. (1 Nephi 15:1-3,6-9) Did Laman & Lemuel know that God lives? Did they know that the Lord answers prayers? I suggest they did. They had just witnessed the miracle of obtaining the plates of brass. They had seen angels. However, despite the things they knew and saw, they didn’t have faith to ask of the Lord.
That leads me to the second part of what President Monson said… I’ll repeat it.. “Although it is imperative that we choose wisely, there are times when we will make foolish choices. The gift of repentance, provided by our Savior, enables us to correct our course settings, that we might return to the path which will lead us to that celestial glory we seek.”
Isn’t it comforting to know that when we do make wrong choices, all is not lost?
I liked the encouragement that Elder Holland gave us in his talk. “When there was a controversy in the early Church regarding who was entitled to heaven’s blessings and who wasn’t, the Lord declared to the Prophet Joseph Smith, “Verily I say unto you, [the gifts of God] are given for the benefit of those who love me and keep … my commandments, and [for them] that seeketh so to do.”6 Boy, aren’t we all thankful for that added provision “and … seeketh so to do”! That has been a lifesaver because sometimes that is all we can offer! We take some solace in the fact that if God were to reward only the perfectly faithful, He wouldn’t have much of a distribution list.
Please remember tomorrow, and all the days after that, that the Lord blesses those who want to improve, who accept the need for commandments and try to keep them, who cherish Christlike virtues and strive to the best of their ability to acquire them. If you stumble in that pursuit, so does everyone; the Savior is there to help you keep going. If you fall, summon His strength. Call out like Alma, “O Jesus, … have mercy on me.”7 He will help you get back up. He will help you repent, repair, fix whatever you have to fix, and keep going. Soon enough you will have the success you seek.”
I’ll close with another quote from President Monson. “May we maintain the courage to defy the consensus. May we ever choose the harder right instead of the easier wrong.
As we contemplate the decisions we make in our lives each day—whether to make this choice or that choice—if we choose Christ, we will have made the correct choice.”
May we always try to make the proper choices.
I testify that these principles are true. In the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.
