Sustained Discipleship

We all struggle with living the gospel as we should in mortality. It’s not called “an opportunity to prove ourselves” for nothing. You would think that after we have some understanding of the truthfulness of the gospel, and after we have acquired basic gospel knowledge, that we would see a clear path to follow back to the Father’s presence and we would just walk the straight and narrow to eternal glory. 

Why doesn’t it happen that way? Why do we hurt those we love? Why do we embrace the things of the earth and reject the great truths of the gospel? Why do we indulge ourselves in things of which our heavenly and earthly parents disapprove?

We have been instructed that if we can fulfill our earthly destiny and enter the highest degree of the Celestial kingdom, that we can progress through the timeless ages to become like our Father-in Heaven and for women, certainly like his eternal companion, our heavenly mother. In his book, Answers to Gospel Question, (vol2, pg 128), President Joseph Fielding Smith was asked to explain this expression:

As man is, God once was; as God is, man may become.

President Smith said, among other things:

Now the Father has promised us, if we are obedient to his commandments, that we also shall advance line on line and precept on precept until we also may receive the fulness and become sons and daughters of God! If we become sons of God through obedience to the gospel, then we will be like him. Then he was as we are, we may become as he is, and this is good scripture.

But now may I ask you a simple question: Could there have been a Father in heaven without a Mother? With a similar question in her mind the poetess [Eliza R. Snow] penned this verse of a well-known hymn:

In the heavens are parents single?

No; the thought makes reason stare!

Truth is reason, truth eternal,

Tells me I've a mother there.

The last verse is instructive and inspirational:

When I lay this mortal by,

Father, Mother, may I meet you

In your royal courts on high?

Then at length, when I've completed

All you sent me forth to do,

With your mutual approbation

Let me come and dwell with you."

James E. Talmage, in The Vitality of Mormonism, states unequivocally that Eliza R. Snow was inspired to pen these lines we accept as doctrine:

The actuality of the spiritual procreation, with which mortal birth is analogous, is expressed in the inspired hymn by a latter-day poetess, Eliza R. Snow.

Note the words “mutual approbation.” (italics added) I present this to support the thought that our Mother-in-Heaven knows each of her offspring just as the Father does. She is just as sorrowful when we wobble as are the Father and our elder brother, Jesus Christ. I believe that she too will welcome us with joy and open arms when we return.

So to return to the questions of the first two paragraphs, why do we stray? I love these quotes from Neal A. Maxwell:

     Sustained discipleship includes resisting, and chopping back again and again, the encroaching crabgrass cares of the world. ("Not My Will, But Thine", p. 123.)

Taking up the cross daily is an affirmation of the meaning of life, even if we log only a few miles a day in the journey of discipleship. Each increment not only moves us along but also, what is very important, maintains the desired direction. The lack of daily affirmation, on the other hand, such as through service, prayer, and forgiveness, can be a perilous pause. Resuming the journey after any pause is not automatic. Every delay risks the difficulty of resumption. (Lord, Increase Our Faith, p. 104.)

We can tell much by what we have already willingly discarded along the pathway of discipleship. It is the only pathway where littering is permissible, even encouraged. In the early stages, the debris left behind includes the grosser sins of commission. Later debris differs; things begin to be discarded which have caused the misuse or underuse of our time and talent. (Ensign, November 1995, p. 24.)

Sustained discipleship is our goal. Metaphorically speaking, chopping the crabgrass and continuing to carry the cross through service, prayer, and forgiveness are the keys to sustained progress. Discarding the cares of the world and our sins of commission and omission are the means by which we can make real eternal progress.

The Lord gave us agency from the foundation of the universe. He cannot revoke that first gift of the universe. But he gave us the requirement of obedience as the first law of the universe. Sometimes – often – we stray because we are mortal, because we allow the adversary to influence us. He comes to us most easily when we react in anger or thoughtlessness to another or to circumstances. We often let these two doctrines conflict. Satan waits patiently for those times, times when it takes only a gentle nudge to push us into disobedience, into anger, into indulgence. President Howard W. Hunter said:

The principle of obedience allows for agency. Obedience is often referred to as the first law of heaven. It is a requirement and therefore a principle of the gospel for which all persons will be held accountable. Like other principles of the gospel, we will not be compelled, however, to be obedient against our will. The basic principle of free agency gives us the election to obey or disobey. (78-02)

We know that we are accountable, yet we will fail. We will not always please ourselves, those around us, or the Lord. But there is hope. Elder Boyd K. Packer says in his book, Let Not Your Heart Be Troubled:

When you come to the temple and receive your endowment, and kneel at the altar and be sealed, you can live an ordinary life and be an ordinary soul -- struggling against temptation, failing and repenting, and failing again and repenting, but always determined to keep your covenants. ... Then the day will come when you will receive the benediction: "Well done thou good and faithful servant: thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things, Enter thou into the Joy of thy Lord." (Matthew 25:21)

It seems to me that the idea of offending our heavenly mother with our disobedience in mortality almost stings more than offending the Father, and is perhaps one reason why he cannot “look upon sin with the least degree of allowance.” (D&C 1:31) He is so protective of her tender feelings that He has only given us Eliza R. Snow’s inspired lines in description of her.

Repentance is the key to assuage our inevitable offenses to both our heavenly parents and to those with whom we share mortality. The great sacrifice designed by the Father and carried out by his perfect and only begotten son allows us to cleanse ourselves in the blood he shed for us. But if we have wronged another in some way (and this is often our most frequent sin) two people are needed to effect forgiveness. A repentant sinner must come humbly to seek forgiveness, and the wronged person must act as the forgiver.  How often? “I say not unto thee, Until seven times: but, Until seventy times seven.” (Matthew 18:22)

It is my sincere prayer that we can humble ourselves to be both the seeker of forgiveness, and the gracious forgiver, because we will need both and be both many times in our lives. Only through this celestial process of repentance and forgiveness can we sustain discipleship.