We are free to choose.

2 Nephi 10

I love this chapter as it talks about America being the land of liberty.  No king shall rule.  America can’t be free if it’s people are not.  What makes the people not free?  Sin!  When we sin, we become burdened and lose our freedom to choose. 

Toward the end of the chapter – the last three verses, in fact, we are told to “cheer up [our] hearts”.  We are free to act for ourselves – to choose the way of everlasting death or the way of eternal life.  In order to do this, we must reconcile ourselves to the will of God.  What does that mean?  What is God’s will?  One could probably start with keeping the commandments.  If we would diligently just keep these basic commandments, our world would be much improved.  But then we are reminded that even if we do the basics, it is only through the grace of God that we are saved - in other words, the Atonement. 

Nephi tells us not to yield to the will of the devil and the flesh.  Interesting that the flesh is used synonymously with the devil.  The devil doesn’t have a body, yet he knows so expertly how to get mankind to succumb to his temptations.  How does he do this?  By appealing to the weaknesses of the flesh.  Think about the array of sins?  Aren’t they all a weakness of the flesh?  As I examine my own life and the lives of those close to me, it is the flesh that is the weak link.  How does one overcome the flesh?  Although hard, for me it was one checkpoint at a time.  I would see something in myself that needed correcting and I would work on it.  It was a conscious thing and I’m still in the process, although not to the extent I was in the beginning of my “coming to myself” (Luke 15:17).  Russell M. Ballard’s conference talk “That the Lost May Be Found” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbrEMY7nCl4, made reference to that chapter, so I read it this morning. 

So where am I going with these thoughts this morning?  What is the nugget I will chew on this day?  I suppose it would be that we are free to choose.  Choosing wisely will preserve that freedom.  It is in making a wrong choice that we limit our choices.  The need to repent and the option is always there.  I guess this is why the brethren counsel us to repent quickly.  The longer we take, the more we feed the flesh and it becomes strong and harder to let go of guilty pleasures – those pleasures that would take our freedoms away from us.