I Believe-23

On to the next Article of Faith:

AOF #2!

image courtesy of www.itsalwaysautumn.com

How wonderful is this?

To me, this means that we get to make our own choices and we will have to answer for those choices- good and bad.

In Doctrine & Covenants 101:78 it reads,

"That every man may act in doctrine and principle pertaining to futurity, according to the moral agency which I have given unto him, that every man may be accountable for his own sins in the day of judgment."

Two things in this verse stuck out to me:

"...may act in doctrine and principle..." 

and

"...according to the moral agency..."

It is very important when we are making our choices to follow promptings of the Holy Ghost.  When we follow those promptings, we will be "acting in doctrine and principle", following the Savior. The Holy Ghost testifies of truth and light, so if we allow him to penetrate our hearts and our minds, we can't help but make good choices.

Each one of us has been blessed with the gift of agency, and I really like the term "moral agency".  The world we live in today struggles with this word- moral.

What seems moral to one person, does not seem moral to someone else.

I wanted to be clear for this blog post on what moral means, so I decided to look up some synonyms.  Here's what I found:

virtuous

good

righteous

up-right

upstanding

principled

honest

respectable

decent

Yep.  All words that I would have picked myself.  Those describe what the word "moral" means in my life.  When we talk about moral agency, I feel this means that we use our agency to make choices that reflect these adjectives.

I am so grateful for my agency.  I get to choose what I believe, what I think, and how I will act.  I am also very thankful that I will be held accountable for my own thoughts, feelings, and actions.  Nothing that we do (or don't do for that matter) escapes the Lord.  He knows all and He sees all.  I hope that what He sees me do, say, and think are pleasing to Him.   As for those times when my decisions do not please Him, I am so grateful that He provided a way for me to fix those mistakes through His great atoning sacrifice.