The Importance of Following God's Instructions

(Here is the talk that I gave today in church.)

Image by ChatGPT, a person using instructions to build a model airplane.

I love to make things. I like to sew, knit, crochet, bake bread, put together puzzles and LEGO sets. Some of you may like to do similar things. Maybe you like to do carpentry or make fly fishing lures, or build models or whatever. Something that I have learned over the years is that when I make something new and complicated for the very first time, it is a good idea to follow the instructions.

Some instructions, patterns, recipes, blueprints, and tutorials are better and easier to follow than others.… but the best instructions are made by an expert: someone who has experience. They’ve done it before, they’ve done the measuring, they know what materials and tools are needed, they’ve experimented with different ingredients to get the best flavors and textures. They’ve figured out the best way to get the best result. And then these experts kindly made the instructions to help others to be able to recreate that without having to do all the background work. They break the process down into smaller and easier steps that build on each other. They help others avoid some of the mistakes and challenges that they might otherwise encounter.

Often the expert provides a picture along with the instructions so others can see what the end result will look like. It’s the picture that tells us what the end goal is. That’s how I know that this is something I want to make. The picture provides the motivation and is also the guide. It helps me check my progress and see if I am on the right track.

The instructions aren’t as effective if I don’t refer to them often. I’ve learned that the best way to do something new is to read and reread the instructions and return to them every step of the way. 

Sometimes it can be helpful if, along with the instructions, I also have a guide or teacher who can walk me through the steps, show me how it should be done. Even better is a guide who, unlike a YouTube video, is there in person (like my mom who taught me to sew and walked me through my first patterns) This guide can see what I’m doing, warn me when I’m starting to do things wrong, and when I do mess up, can help me fix my mistakes and make sure that the end result is something that I’m going to love.

Sometimes I get cocky. I look at the instructions and I think I know better than the person who wrote them and I decide to do things my own way. This usually means more work for me as I figure things out on my own and sometimes things still turn out okay…. But they don’t turn out quite like the picture I started with.

Other times I think, “I know what I’m doing… I don’t need the instructions for this bit; I can do it on my own,” and more frequently than I’d like to admit, when I come back to the instructions I’ll discover that I messed something up, which frequently means backing up, unraveling, picking out seams, taking things apart, undoing what I had done in error. Sometimes I don’t have the skill or the know-how to fix what I’ve done and I have to start all over again.

And, there are some projects that never get finished. Maybe I get discouraged or I’m afraid of messing things up. Sometimes it just ceases to be a priority, and sits on a shelf unfinished. But, if I press forward, if I can follow the instructions exactly, then in the end I will have this wonderful thing, just like I had wanted in the beginning when I started the project.

So… Keep all this in mind as I tell you a story - a true story!

Once upon a time, our Heavenly Father gathered together all of his beloved spirit children - which included each one of us here, and presented a plan that would enable us to “live happily ever after”. (Or as he described it to Moses, “gain immortality and eternal life.) We would have the opportunity to get bodies, and grow in wisdom and experience. As we followed the plan, we would grow in power. We would be able to marry our handsome prince, or beautiful princess, become kings and queens, and one day gain perfect bodies and live in peace and happiness forever. Sounds good, right? We shouted for joy because this was a project we wanted to do! We know we chose to follow the Plan because we are here today; we are part of it!

Then Heavenly Father asked for a volunteer to fill an important role that would make it all work. We know that there were two volunteers.

One volunteer was our oldest spirit brother, Jehovah. He knew there were risks, and that parts of his role would be difficult and unpleasant, but he was willing to do what our Father needed to make the plan work. He was willing to align himself with the Father, to do exactly what the Father asked of him, with the same purpose and the same goal.

The other volunteer wanted to tweak the plan a little bit. Our Father’s plan required us to have agency, so there was a degree of risk - we might not all make it. Lucifer wanted to take away our agency so we would all be assured of making it in the end and he would get all the credit for saving us. Our Heavenly Father knew that we wouldn’t appreciate being forced to follow the plan. He also knew that if things went as Lucifer suggested, we wouldn’t receive the same result as we would if we did things the Father’s way. 

Heavenly Father chose Jehovah to be our Hero.  Because Lucifer rebelled and tried to enslave his fellow spirits, he was cast out and became the villain of our story, trying to disrupt the plan and keep us from living happily ever after.

And so the Father’s plan was put in action. The world was created, Adam and Eve were placed in a garden with a tree, the fruit of which the Father knew, even though he told them not to, they were eventually going to eat, and they were going to be separated from him and the ball would get rolling. 

So here we are, living the story: we’re separated from God, we have bodies, we have a conscience, we have plenty of opportunity to gain wisdom by our own experience. Because we have agency, we make mistakes, and one day we will die. But all is not lost. At the appropriate time, our older brother took his turn on the earth and did what was required of him to ensure that we would have a way back. This is all according to the Plan that our Heavenly Father presented to us in the beginning.

Part of the Plan involved a veil of forgetfulness. We can’t remember everything that happened before this life. We are born without knowing anything about the goal or the Plan, let alone what we need to do. And so, from the very beginning, our Heavenly Father has instructed us through revelation to his prophets here on the earth. He has given us all the instructions that we need to follow in order to achieve that “Happily Ever After” that we wanted so much in the beginning.

Which brings me back to the idea of following instructions.

Of all the instructions that we could be following in this life, Our Heavenly Father’s are the best. To begin with, He is the ultimate expert! As Lehi’s son Jacob said, “O how great the holiness of our God! For he knoweth all things, and there is not anything save he knows it.” (2 Nephi 9:20) He knows exactly what we need, plus he’s already arranged all the background work to help us be successful. We can trust the Father. We can trust in his plan. If we follow his instructions exactly, if we align ourselves with him, we will one day live happily ever after.

Like so many other sets of instructions, our Father’s includes steps, what we often refer to as “the covenant path”. These steps include being baptized, receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost, and receiving ordinances in the temple, including being sealed to our eternal companion. Each step requires us to do certain things, which build on each other as we progress. Each of these steps needs to be done at the right time, in the right order, in the right way, by the right authority.

Our Father also knew about the dangers and pitfalls that we would encounter, and so gave us commandments as part of our instructions, to help us avoid them: Don’t get sidetracked following other plans. Remember me. Obey my instructions. Obey your parents! Love each other. Serve one another. As we strive to follow his instructions exactly, we will be spared from many of the challenges that we might otherwise have to face.

We are blessed to live in a day when we have easy access to the Lord’s instructions! The instructions are found in the scriptures and in the words of our latter day prophets. These instructions teach us about the plan and our role in it. This is why we have been taught repeatedly to read the Book of Mormon every day. I know of a stake where the members were invited to read a conference talk every day. We should read, reread, and really study the instructions so we are familiar with them, so we have a good understanding of what we need to do, and what our role is in the Plan. 

Besides our written instructions, we have also been given a guide to help us along the way. The prophet Nephi taught, “For behold, again I say unto you that if ye will enter in by the way, and receive the Holy Ghost, it will show unto you all things what ye should do.” (2 Nephi 32:5) If we heed the promptings we receive, the Holy Ghost can guide us, show us what to do, warn us when we make mistakes, and give us personalized instructions according to our own needs and understanding. 

We have access to the instructions and the guide so we have all the information we need to follow the plan and eventually “live happily ever after.”

Now, when we follow a recipe or make a craft, we have our agency and we can choose how we follow the instructions. If you are making a banana bread and the recipe calls for nuts and you don’t like nuts, you can use your agency to leave them out. Your result will be a banana bread without nuts - which will be different from what the author of the recipe had intended. But you may be happy with that. 

When it comes to our Heavenly Father’s plan, we may feel tempted to leave bits out, to change the recipe according to our own taste. We have agency and we can do that, but there is a risk. We may not always understand why we are asked to do something or what purpose it will serve in the end. Our Father knows all things. He knows how one thing can lead to another. He sees the hidden dangers and the distant consequences which I can’t. Trying to do things our own way leads to trials and challenges we might not otherwise have to face, and the farther we stray from our Heavenly Father’s recipe, the less likely we are going to be happy with the end result. Remember - when we saw what God wanted for us, when we saw the picture of what following his instructions would lead to, we wanted it! We can’t remember that now, but we can trust in it. We can trust that doing things our Father’s way, aligning ourselves with him, will be worth it in the end.

In this life, we are going to make mistakes. Maybe we get cocky and think we know what we are doing and then suddenly find ourselves lost and unsure. Maybe we aren’t paying close enough attention and discover that we aren’t in the place we ought to be. When I make mistakes when I’m crocheting, (usually because I wasn’t paying close enough attention to my instructions) undoing them is pretty easy. I just take out my hook, pull on the yarn and the stitches, which are like slip knots, come out. We call it frogging as we “rippit”. I rip out the stitches back to the point where I made the mistake, fix it and then continue forward from there. Fixing mistakes in knitting is more complicated because the stitches are more interconnected. If the mistake was just a few stitches back, then I can work back to where I made the mistake and fix it and move on again. But if the mistake was several rows back, then it takes a lot more time and effort to get down to where the mistake was made, fix it, and then get back to a point where I can resume progress. 

When we make mistakes in following the instructions God has given us, it is so much easier if we discover the mistake and fix it (or repent) as soon as possible. Some mistakes are independent and relatively easy to fix, while others are more interconnected and can take more time and effort. But, again, they are easier to repair, the sooner they are discovered and addressed. A good time to look back and think about what mistakes we might need to fix is each week when we take the sacrament. This is a time when we can recommit to following the instructions more exactly.  

There are some mistakes, like adding a cup of salt rather than a teaspoon of salt in a cookie recipe, that I don’t know how to fix. That’s when I can only toss the dough out and start all over again. Our incredibly wise Father in Heaven knew that mistakes would happen, big and small. That is why repentance was part of the plan from the beginning.

In a little less than a month, we will celebrate Easter, the most important holiday for Christians around the world. This is when we celebrate our Savior, our Hero, Jesus Christ. He came to earth and set a perfect example of following our Father’s instructions. And then he suffered in Gethsemane and died on the cross and was resurrected on the third day. I don’t understand all that was involved in his atonement, but it is my understanding that he experienced all of our feelings of guilt and heartache, pain and suffering, so he would be able to heal us, comfort us, and make us whole. Through the infinite atonement of Jesus Christ, “though our sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; Though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.” (Isaiah 1:18) We cannot mess up so badly that we cannot be redeemed! He paid the price so what is broken can be mended, what is messed up can be fixed, and what is dead will live again… Because of him, we can be forgiven, clean again, worthy to return to our Father’s presence and live “Happily Ever After”.

There may be times when we may be tempted to give up. We may have doubts or fears and think, “There is no way that I’m going to be able to get through this.” There may be times when following God’s instructions doesn’t feel like a priority. Brothers and Sisters, God is wise and his Plan is good. If we focus on him and do things his way, following his instructions, then we can overcome our doubts and our fears. The Lord says, “Look unto me in every thought. Doubt not, fear not.” (D&C 6:36) 

The plan is in place, the way is prepared. Now we must do our part. We need to put our trust in our Heavenly Father, align ourselves with him and as President Nelson taught us, “Let God prevail in our lives” by following His instructions with exactness. If we do this we will be able to live “Happily Ever After”.

King Benjamin told his people: Believe in God; believe that he is, and that he created all things, both in heaven and in earth; believe that he has all wisdom, and all power, both in heaven and in earth; believe that man doth not comprehend all the things which the Lord can comprehend. And again, believe that ye must repent of your sins and forsake them, and humble yourselves before God; and ask in sincerity of heart that he would forgive you; and now, if you believe all these things see that ye do them. (Mosiah 4:9-10)

I know these things are true and I say this in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.