A Successful Life

I listened to a podcast today in which the speaker referred to a powerful talk by Elder Packer from 1980.  In this conference address Elder Packer said his purpose was to speak to his posterity about the “one truth we most want to teach our children” after having taught the reality of Christ as the Son of God and the truthfulness of the Restoration.  He said, “I want you, our children, to know this truth: You need not be either rich or hold high position to be completely successful and truly happy….  We want our children and their children to know that the choice of life is not between fame and obscurity, nor is the choice between wealth and poverty. The choice is between good and evil, and that is a very different matter indeed.  When we finally understand this lesson, thereafter our happiness will not be determined by material things. We may be happy without them or successful in spite of them.”  These are principles that I think most of us would readily agree with in theory, but living according to this belief is a whole different matter. The question for us is whether we really believe in the Lord’s definition of success.   

               So what is “success” in the Lord’s eyes if it is not fame and wealth?  One of the few verses in the scriptures that uses the word success contains this charge given to Joshua: “This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth; but thou shalt meditate therein day and night, that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein: for then thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good success” (Joshua 1:8).  From this we might say that to “observe to do according to all that is written” in the commandments of God is one way that we live a successful life.  Another passage of scripture which I believe helps to define how to live a spiritually successful life is found in King Benjamin’s teachings in Mosiah 4:11-12.  He taught us, “Humble yourselves even in the depths of humility, calling on the name of the Lord daily, and standing steadfastly in the faith of that which is to come” and then we will “always rejoice, and be filled with the love of God, and always retain a remission of your sins; and ye shall grow in the knowledge of the glory of him that created you.”  In other words, if we humbly seek the Lord each day and are steadfast in our faith, we will have the kind of success that the Lord wants us to have.  Perhaps the simplest definition of a successful life is what the Savior told the disciples among the Nephites: “Therefore, what manner of men ought ye to be? Verily I say unto you, even as I am” (3 Nephi 27:27).  To become like the Savior, to do the things He would do, to love as He would love, to serve as He would serve, that is surely the highest sign of success we can hope for. 

               Elder Packer finished his talk with these words for his posterity: “We now move into an uncertain future. But we are not uncertain. Children, bear testimony, build Zion. Then you will find true success, complete happiness.”  Seeking to build up Zion—in making our own heart pure, in dwelling in righteousness, in in being of one heart and one mind with the Lord’s people—surely encompasses all of these ideas about what true success is (Moses 7:18, D&C 97:21).  The Savior told us multiple times in this dispensation we are to “seek to bring forth and establish the cause of Zion” (D&C 6:6).  If at the end of our lives we can sum up our time on earth with this one phrase, then surely it will have been a successful life in the eyes of the Lord.