Week 21 - Looking Back

“. . . what we insistently desire over time is what we will eventually become and what we will receive in eternity . . . it is our own desires which determine the sizing and the attractiveness of various temptations. We set our thermostats as to temptation” (Elder Neal A. Maxwell, Ensign, Nov. 96).

“Korihor was arguing, as men and women have falsely argued from the beginning of time, that to take counsel from the servants of God is to surrender God-given rights of independence. But the argument is false because it misrepresents reality. When we reject the counsel which comes from God, we do not choose to be independent of outside influence. We choose another influence. We reject the protection of a perfectly loving, all-powerful, all-knowing Father in Heaven, whose whole purpose, as that of His Beloved Son, is to give us eternal life, to give us all that He has, and to bring us home again in families to the arms of His love. In rejecting His counsel, we choose the influence of another power, whose purpose is to make us miserable and whose motive is hatred. We have moral agency as a gift of God. Rather than the right to choose to be free of influence, it is the inalienable right to submit ourselves to whichever of those powers we choose (Pres. Henry B. Eyring, Ensign, May 1997, 25).