The Blessings of Obedience (a Sacrament Meeting talk)

[I gave this talk back in January. Although it didn't go quite as smoothly as I'd hoped, I was fortunate to have a kind and supportive congregation who were willing to overlook various mistakes, nervous verbal tics, etc. Yay for kind audiences!]

Y mother, Karin Buck, is probably the best budgeter alive. She's had to be. As a widowed schoolteacher with six kids to feed -- four of whom were teenagers at once, and we did NOT eat lightly, either -- she always made sure every incoming penny did full duty for our family. So one day in the early 1990s when an unexpected envelope from the IRS arrived in the mail, Mom felt a little rush of apprehension. That apprehension turned to dread when she opened the letter. See, in the previous year Mom had unwittingly made an error on her tax return -- and that had triggered an audit. As a result of this error, the IRS had determined that Mom would have to pay a sizable chunk of back taxes. As in "we'll let you pay in monthly installments."

As mentioned, Mom budgeted everything down to the last penny. She knew there was no extra money left over to pay for taxes, no one to whom she could go for a temporary loan, and no easy way to bring in extra income. But she did have some money put away for tithing, which she intended to pay that coming Sunday. It happened to be about the same dollar amount as the first payment the IRS required.

So think about this for a second. Imagine you're my mom. You have consistently taught your children by example to pay tithing first, and learn to live on the 90% left over. But you have also taught them to obey the laws of the land. You are the sole breadwinner for your family, and if you don't pay the government right away, BAD THINGS are going to happen. What would you do?

Well, I'll tell you what my mom did. She didn't hesitate -- she paid her tithing first. She contacted the IRS and asked them for an extra grace period to come up with the money. And then she sat down and wondered how she was going to make those payments.

We'll get back to what happened to Mom after that, but maybe you're wondering why it was so easy for Mom to decide to pay her tithing first. That's because she'd already been through a similar experience. When she and my dad were young parents, they'd had to learn to live on the unsteady income Dad made as a freelance graphic designer. After the birth of their third child, they'd received a hospital bill that was much higher than what they had anticipated. At the same time, they had set aside tithing money from several of Dad's recent graphic design projects, and again, the tithing money and the hospital bill amounts were roughly the same. Should they pay the hospital, as they were legally obligated to do, or should they pay their tithing, not knowing when or whether the next paying job would come in?

Mom and Dad didn't know what to do. So they knelt and prayed together, asking for guidance. And they both received a strong spiritual prompting that if they obeyed the Lord and paid their tithing, the Lord would prepare a way for them to meet their other obligations. So they set their teeth and paid their tithing. And within weeks, Dad was offered a full-time job at what was then one of the largest advertising agencies in San Francisco. Not only were they able to pay their hospital bill, but with the steady income Dad was making they were able to put together a down payment, move out of their tiny apartment and buy a house of their own.

Mom remembered that previous experience of being obedient to the law of the tithe, and how Heavenly Father had blessed our family before. So she was certain that if she paid her tithing first, the Lord would help her take care of that unexpected tax burden -- even though at the time, she had no idea how He would do it.

And you know, it's funny. Over multiple months, and through a series of unrelated events that you might be tempted to call sheer coincidence if you weren't paying attention, Mom was able to save, find and make all the extra money the IRS wanted from her. But it didn't surprise Mom at all. Her previous experiment in obedience had given her an unshakable faith that if she obeyed the Lord, she could rely on His help. Or as Mom sometimes says, "I can't afford not to pay my tithing. I can't do without the blessings."

In an April 2015 General Conference talk entitled "Stay By the Tree," Elder Kevin W. Pearson of the Seventy said, "Obedience builds faith in Christ. Faith is a principle of action and power. Consistently following the Savior's example produces spiritual power and capacity." Certainly in my mom's case, her obedience over the years has produced a strong and abiding faith in Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ, an understanding that not only do they expect her to obey the commandments, but that as she proves herself obedient in small things, they will bless her with the means to obey in larger capacities.

When we obey the commandments we are given, we receive numerous kinds of blessings as an encouragement to continue to do right and as a sign of our Heavenly Father's love for us. In his farewell speech to his people, King Benjamin recognizes this correlation between obedience and blessings: "[H]e doth require that ye should do as he hath commanded you; for which if ye do, he doth immediately bless you; and therefore he hath paid you." (Mosiah 2:24) Blessings can sometimes be subtle, as when my mom somehow managed to gather enough money to render unto Caesar, but sometimes they come as a clear and unmistakable Godly response to our obedience. Seeing these blessings in our lives helps strengthen our faith in God and Jesus Christ, knowing that they love us, care about us as individuals, and delight in blessing us.

What kinds of blessings do we receive from being obedient? Well, how much time have we got? I imagine that if I went around this room and asked everyone here, we would hear numerous stories about how someone made a choice to be obedient, and how many kinds of blessings followed that choice.

Elder Norman Seibold received a remarkable blessing. He had been serving the Lord as a missionary in the West German Mission until the summer of 1939, when war broke out in Europe. Some 31 missionaries were trapped behind closed national borders, with no easy way to find or evacuate them. Elder Seibold was instructed by his mission president to head west by train and to find these lost missionaries, relying on the promptings of the Spirit. So he followed the example of Nephi in being "led by the Spirit, not knowing beforehand the things which [he] should do." (1 Nephi 4:6) Elder Seibold was prompted to know when he should get off the train, where he should go in crowded train stations, and how he should gain the missionaries' attention without also attracting the interest of Nazi officers. (He did this, by the way, by whistling the mission hymn -- "Do What Is Right, Let The Consequence Follow" -- in public places, and the missionaries heard it and approached him.) All 31 missing missionaries were eventually accounted for and evacuated from Europe.

Obviously, not all the blessings that come from obedience are going to be as spectacular as Elder Seibold's. But our daily decisions to follow the commandments will, if we are paying attention, draw down numerous small, sweet examples of heavenly aid, blessings sometimes described as "the tender mercies of the Lord."

Jesus Christ himself was a blessing -- not only in the sense of his life and teachings, but in the sense of his great atoning sacrifice for all our sins, and his subsequent resurrection that promises immortality to all who have ever lived. The gift of Christ to the world is the greatest blessing God could bestow on us in mortality, giving us the ability to repent of our sins and mistakes. Without this precious gift, no sin could be expiated and thus no one could be saved.

Each time we take the sacrament, we re-commit to the promises we made at baptism: to always remember Jesus Christ, to take his name upon us and keep his commandments. In return, God promises us that He will send the Holy Ghost to always be with us. As Elder Seibold discovered, the constant companionship of the Spirit is a special blessing that builds our faith in Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ, as the Holy Ghost prompts us to make choices beyond our own wisdom, and testifies of truth directly to our minds and hearts. His friendship and influence make it possible for us to draw near to every member of the Godhead, even while we are physically separated from Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ here on earth.

As we obey God's laws, we also receive the blessing of becoming spiritually mature. We come to resist the rebellious urges to nit-pick at spiritual things or to treat the commandments as though they were a salad bar -- obey the ones you like, and leave the rest. Instead, years of practice in keeping the commandments and in drawing closer to God bring us to a point where we trust our Heavenly Father enough to do His will even when we do not completely understand it. Our experiences in obedience over time lead us to believe, as it once led Adam and Abraham to believe, that we should first act in faith -- and that as we experiment upon the word, God will eventually provide us with the insight and understanding we seek.

I am not suggesting that obedience guarantees a trouble-free life -- remember what happened to Job -- but as we obey, we will find ourselves meeting adversity with grace, knowing this too shall pass, and our lives will be filled with greater joy as the Spirit confirms to us that we are making choices that please our Father in Heaven. Adherence to God's commandments will not always be popular, either, but in a world filled with confusing distractions and constantly shifting beliefs, we can experience the inner serenity and peace, like the eye in the hurricane, that comes when we keep our sacred covenants. As President Thomas S. Monson taught, "when God speaks and we obey, we will always be right."

Finally, obedience fits us for eternal life -- the same kind of life our Father in Heaven and Jesus Christ enjoy. We are taught in the scriptures that our level of adherence to God's laws creates in us the proportional mental and spiritual strength to receive His power and glory in eternity. This is borne out in Doctrine & Covenants 88:22: "For he who is not able to abide the law of a celestial kingdom cannot abide a celestial glory." Becoming as God is requires adherence to the celestial law, which requires a tremendous amount of personal discipline. For example, think about how the world on which we stand was created in part through divine verbal commands that organized the elements. Think about Christ when he told his apostles that all his words would be fulfilled. Then think about why Heavenly Father might command us to choose our words carefully; if every word that came out of your mouth had Godly power to create or to destroy, would you perhaps think carefully before you spoke? Every commandment Heavenly Father gives us, whether spiritual or temporal, is designed to direct us on the path to Godhood, to give us the level of self-discipline we need to become as He is.

Giving a talk about obedience is pretty much guaranteed to make one feel like a hypocrite. If you know me well, you know I'm not always obedient, and that when I do obey I sometimes drag my feet getting it done. (Do not ask me or my husband, for instance, at what hour I finally put the finishing touches on this talk.) But while I am not and probably never will be a perfect example of obedience in mortality, I do have a testimony that our Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ love us -- that they offer us commandments to provide us with a clear and effective method to navigate life's tests and return home to them. And I know that as we practice our obedience, not only are we blessed, but we draw even closer to God and Christ -- so that our increased desire to be with them strengthens us to do all things they ask us to do.