Obedience Paves the Way

President Nelson said this in the recent general conference, “Here is the great news of God’s plan: the very things that will make your mortal life the best it can be are exactly the same things that will make your life throughout all eternity the best it can be!” And what is it that that bring us the best life here and in the life to come? It is obedience to the commandments of the Savior. President Nelson also said, “When you make choices, I invite you to take the long view—an eternal view. Put Jesus Christ first because your eternal life is dependent upon your faith in Him and in His Atonement. It is also dependent upon your obedience to His laws. Obedience paves the way for a joyful life for you today and a grand, eternal reward tomorrow.” The Savior taught this principle simply when He said, “Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven” (Matthew 7:21). To enter into God’s kingdom, we must do the will of the Father; in other words, we must be obedient and keep His commandments.

                After they arrived in the promised land, Nephi taught his brothers from the plates of brass the words of Isaiah. He read two chapters to them and then discussed their meaning, speaking of things both symbolic and literal and telling them about what would happen in the last days and in the Millennium. Understanding all of what Isaiah and Nephi were teaching can be challenging, and Laman and Lemuel struggled to understand what was temporal and what was spiritual in the words. But I love how Nephi summed up the message to his brothers and to us: “Wherefore, my brethren, I would that ye should consider that the things which have been written upon the plates of brass are true; and they testify that a man must be obedient to the commandments of God. Wherefore, ye need not suppose that I and my father are the only ones that have testified, and also taught them. Wherefore, if ye shall be obedient to the commandments, and endure to the end, ye shall be saved at the last day. And thus it is” (1 Nephi 22:30-31). And the end of the day, what matters is that we must be obedient to the commandments of God. The overarching message of the scriptures both ancient and modern is that we must keep the commandments of God. Alma similarly taught his son Corianton many things about God’s plan, and some of them may have been difficult for Corianton to understand. But, like Nephi, Alma summed up his message in these words: “And now, my son, I desire that ye should let these things trouble you no more, and only let your sins trouble you, with that trouble which shall bring you down unto repentance” (Alma 42:29). What matters most is that we repent—which means choosing to put away our sins and keeping His commandments. I love how the last words of another book of scripture put it: “Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man. For God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil” (Ecclesiastes 12:13-14). At the end of the day, our choices in relation to the commandments of the Lord are eternally consequential to us; truly, “what we do in this life really matters,” We are indeed thinking celestial when we choose to obey God’s commands.