Your Heavenly Father has given you agency, the ability to choose right from wrong and to act for yourself. You have been given the Holy Ghost to help you know good from evil. While you are here on earth, you are being proven to see if you will use your agency to show your love for God by keeping His commandments.
While you are free to choose for yourself, you are not free to choose the consequences of your actions (see 2 Nephi 2:27). When you make a choice, you will receive the consequences of that choice. The consequences may not be immediate, but they will always follow, for good or bad. Wrong choices delay your progression and lead to heartache and misery. Right choices lead to happiness and eternal life. That is why it is so important for you to choose what is right throughout your life.
You are responsible for the choices you make. You should not blame your circumstances, your family, or your friends if you choose to disobey God’s commandments. You are a child of God with great strength. You have the ability to choose righteousness and happiness, no matter what your circumstances.
You are also responsible for developing the abilities and talents Heavenly Father has given you (See Matthew 25:14-29). You are accountable to Him for what you do with your abilities and how you spend your time. Do not idle away your time. Be willing to work hard. Choose to do many good things of your own free will (For the Strength of Youth, 4-5).
The older I get the more I realize just how precious each and every day of life is. We are priviledged with the opportunity to choose for ourselves what we will do with the time we’ve been given. My friend came across a beautiful quote that has changed the way I live everyday. The quote is from Dr. Hartsell Wilson:
This is the beginning of a new day. God has given me this day to use as I will. I can waste it, or use it for good, but what I do today is important, because I am exchanging a day of my life for it. When tomorrow comes, this day will be gone forever, leaving in its place something that I have traded for it. I want it to be gain and not loss; good and not evil; success and not failure, in order that I shall not regret the price that I have paid for it.
Today, and everyday, I will choose to serve God because I have felt for myself the joy, goodness, and success that doing so brings (see Joshua 24:15).
Living out a great season of my life, thanks to Jesus Christ, and two wonderful daughters, a great life's work. Loving this opportunity to share faith online...
I'm a single Mom, convert to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, second-gen Italian, from the East coast originally. Love the fine arts, dance, frozen yogurt, temples, scriptures, writing, jazz, helping others reach their potential, king salmon, ....and not in that order. God is good. I feel it deeply when people have a misconception of Heavenly Father or Jesus Christ, His Son, that lessens or cheapens Them and blinds one's ability to feel His presence or to trust in an ultimately good eternal end to life's circumstances.
