Agency - Choice & Accountablility #3

I was recently given the opportunity to teach Sunday School to the 12-13 year olds at church. The lessons for the month of November were about Spiritual and Temporal self-reliance.  I got to teach lessons about finding answers to questions, making choices, and setting goals. As the teacher, I had to prepare to teach by reading the suggested scriptures and read or listen to the conference talks. It is true that the teacher always learns the most.  It has been great to review the topic of agency with my class and see how they get to apply it in their young lives.

I have also been struggling to teach Molly to be accountable and to choose to obey. She is only 4 but she can learn that their are consequences to her choices.  She loves to throw tantrums at the store when she wants something and doesn't want to hear me say "no" or "wait".  She is learning, hopefully, that when she acts calmly and accepts my answers to her requests she will be better off than when she demands something and then throws a tantrum when it doesn't go her way.  We end up walking out of stores to go sit in the car, quite often, until she can be calm and we can return to our errand. This is quite an uphill battle with Molly.

It is true that we have agency. We can behave in what ever way we wish. We just don't get to choose the consequences.  It is a blessing to be able to make choices. It was Satan's plan to force us to obey. We wouldn't have been able to make decisions on our own and therefore would never have learned what is right because we were never allowed to choose and see what came of those desisions. Agency is what allows us to grow and progress.  By having the freedom to make our own choices we control our own destiny or our own outcome.  Sure life isn't smooth sailing even for those that seem to do everything right. By having agency, even when there are struggles and difficulties in our lives, we get to make choices, we get to pick how we will react and proceed. It is all part of why we are here. We are being taught and tested to see if we can follow God even when there are many choices before us.

I love the scripture in Doctrine and Covenants 82:10. I the Lord am bound when ye do what I say; but when ye do not what I say you have no promise. When I am obiedient and follow the laws given to us from the Lord then I get the promised blessings. I will have the spirit in my life to guide me, comfort me, and teach me. I will be happier when I choose good because I will be surrounded by virtuous, lovely and honorable people and things.  I will be able to avoid a lot of hardships by making good choices

I look at the faces of my Sunday school class. They look so young and yet they have so many important decisions ahead of them. So many choices they make everyday, even at so young an age, will affect the direction their life goes in future. I am really enjoying my new calling as Sunday School teacher. I love the new Come Follow Me program. I am only acquainted with the Sunday School portion and have only this one month of experience with it but I can already see that it is very inspired and needed. The young people today are faced with so many more temptations than I remember dealing with at their age. Maybe I lived a sheltered life in a small town but it just seems more important to teach and guide them to make good choices than ever before. We live in a world where everyone whats the good life and to what ever they want but don't want to accept the repsonsibility of those choices.  It is important to understand the concept of Agency and to realize that we are accountable for our choices.