Elder L. Tom Perry, “Obedience to Law is Liberty”, April 2013
"As our understanding of obedience deepens, we recognize the essential role of agency. When Jesus was in the Garden of Gethsemane, He prayed three times to His Father in Heaven, “O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt.”8 God would not override the Savior’s agency, yet He mercifully sent an angel to strengthen His Beloved Son. The Savior met another test on Golgotha, where He could have called upon legions of angels to take Him down from the cross, but He made His own choice to obediently endure to the end and complete His atoning sacrifice, even though it meant great suffering, even death.”
Elder Hales, “If Ye Love Me Keep My Commandments" April 2014
"But God intends that His children should act according to the moral agency He has given them, “that every man may be accountable for his own sins in the day of judgment.”2 It is His plan and His will that we have the principal decision-making role in our own life’s drama. God will not live our lives for us nor control us as if we were His puppets, as Lucifer once proposed to do. Nor will His prophets accept the role of “puppet master” in God’s place.
Elder Christofferson, "Free Forever, to act For Themselves," October 2014
“[God] knows what each will do under given conditions, and sees the end from the beginning. His foreknowledge is based on intelligence and reason. He foresees the future as a state which naturally and surely will be; not as one which must be because He has arbitrarily willed that it shall be.”
James E. Talmage
“We have been given agency, we have been given the blessings of the priesthood, and we have been given the Light of Christ and the Holy Ghost for a reason. That reason is our growth and happiness in this world and eternal life in the world to come.”
Robert D. Hales, To Act for Ourselves: The Gift and Blessings of Agency
“Agency used righteously allows light to dispel the darkness and enables us to live with joy and happiness.”
Robert D. Hales, To Act for Ourselves: The Gift and Blessings of Agency
“The battle over man’s God-given agency continues today. Satan and his minions have their lures all around us, hoping that we will falter and take his flies so he can reel us in with counterfeit means. He uses addiction to steal away agency. According to the dictionary, addiction of any kind means to surrender to something, thus relinquishing agency and becoming dependent on some life-destroying substance or behavior.”
Elder M. Russell Ballard “O That Cunning Plan of the Evil One”
“God has given unto all of His children … individual agency. … [We] possessed it in the heaven of heavens before the world was, and the Lord maintained and defended it there against the aggression of Lucifer. … By virtue of this agency you and I and all mankind are made responsible beings, responsible for the course we pursue, the lives we live, the deeds we do.”
President Wilford Woodruff
“All must use [this agency] in order to gain exaltation in [God’s] kingdom; inasmuch as [we] have the power of choice [we] must exercise that power.”
President Brigham Young
“The choices we make determine our destiny.”
President Thomas S. Monson
Position Statement
Agency is one of the greatest gifts that God has given to man. It is the one thing that God cannot take from us but we can give to him freely. Satan tried to take away our agency and continues to try to take that away from us by tempting us to make wrong choices. With every choice comes a consequence. When we make good choices we receive more freedom, but when we make bad choices, our agency is slowly taken away due to our own will. With our agency we can choose God which is what he wants.
No comments:
Post a Comment