Content preview - You need a premium account to view this content.

"Choose the Right"

The restored gospel of Jesus Christ powerfully teaches that a loving Father in Heaven has placed us here upon this earth to learn from our experiences, both good and bad. The Lord spoke with tender reassurance to a tortured, disheartened Joseph Smith suffering in the cold, dark dungeon of Liberty jail to remind him: "All these things shall give thee experience, and shall be for thy good." (D&C 122:7.)

In order to make the most of our education, our Father has given us the gift of agency to learn to use wisely during our sojourn on earth. The power to choose, to control our own destiny, was so important that a war in heaven was fought to preserve it. Our Father bore the grief of seeing one-third of his spirit children lost to Satan as casualties of the evil one's determination to destroy the plan of life and exaltation. Our choice to follow the Savior saved us from being cast out and brought us to this mortal probation.

Let us reflect for a moment upon how we have used the tremendous power of agency in our lives thus far. Let us consider the choices we have made. Many of us have chosen to pursue an education or a vocation, a choice that has eternal worth, for the Lord has revealed that "whatever principle of intelligence we attain in this life, it will rise with us in the resurrection." (D&C 130:18.)

President Brigham Young taught that education should "improve our minds and fit us for increased usefulness," and "make us of greater service to the human family." "Education," he explained, "is the power to think clearly, to act well in the world's work, and the power to appreciate life."

To help us graduate successfully from the "college of life," to help us earn some honors in the rigorous curriculum of adult mortality, to help us choose the right when a choice is place before us, may I suggest three simple guidelines. Though simple and familiar, these three principles are eternal and will serve us as well as they have served our ancestors and as they will yet serve our descendants: first, follow Christ; second, follow the Prophet; and third, follow the Spirit.

1. Follow Christ.

The Savior lovingly beckons to everyone, to all of our Father's children everywhere throughout all time. His invitation, "Come, follow me," is universally extended to all people across all eras of human history.

He marked the path and led the way,
And every point defines
To light and life and endless day
Where God's full presence shines.

What he declared in the meridian of time stands as unassailably true today as it was nearly two thousand years ago when he proclaimed, "I am the way, the truth, and the life." (John 14:6.) In the Book of Mormon, Jacob powerfully exhorts us to come unto Christ and to follow the Lord's straight course: "O then, my beloved brethren, come unto the Lord, the Holy One, Remember that his paths are righteous. Behold, the way for man is narrow, but it lieth in a straight course before him, and the keeper of the gate is the Holy One of Israel; and he employeth no servant there; and there is none other way save it be by the gate; for he cannot be deceived, for the Lord God is his name." (2 Nephi 9:41.)