Talk on Obedience

Emily Titus

February 21, 2010

Good Morning! It is wonderful to be with all of you today. Im going to speak to you about a subject that I have a great testimony of. I hope my sons will be listening well, because it is a message I would like them to take to heart also: it is Obedience. Obedience has meant different things to me throughout my life and I hope youll indulge me as I reminisce over a few of my obedience experiences. Some of the earliest memories I have on the subject of obedience are stories I heard in my childhood. My Dads family has a couple of very instructive obedience stories that I heard on more than one occasion as a girl. I may have shared these with some of you, so please forgive me if you have already heard them. I had a great, great grandfather who had a glass eye because of an errant splinter that shot into his eye as he was splitting wood one day. He also had a crooked finger because of an accident with a sugar cane press when he was just a boy. My grandmother told us that when she and her sometimes wild siblings and cousins would get together playing in the yard at his farm, he used to pop out his glass eye with his crooked finger and set it up on a fence post. He told them that they had better be good, because he was watching them. They took it to heart. True Story. Ive never had a glass eye watching me, but another lesson is inherent here - that Heavenly Father can always see us, even if no one else is around and that if we do something wrong in secret, we will still know and Heavenly Father will still know. Then there was the true story about my Uncle Gary who (as a boy) was playing across the street from his house in Lewiston, UT one day climbing in a tree at the park. His mother called out their door for him to come home. He says he wasnt always promptly obedient, but on this occasion, he immediately hopped down and headed home. Right as he reached the doorway, a bolt of lightening struck the very tree that he had been playing

on and split it. Thats fairly instructive when youre a kid obey promptly, or you could be struck by lightning! Then there was the story about my Dad, who wasnt so obedient in this instance. His Mom and Dad were leaving the house and told him to stop hitting the icicles down with the broom handle. As soon as they left, he picked up the broom again and commenced knocking icicles off the edge of the roof. He didnt enjoy the activity for long, because one of them came straight down and split his upper lip wide open. He still has the scar. Also instructive as a child when you dont obey, you can really get hurt. I was fortunate enough to live in a home with obedient parents who took us to church, read the scriptures with us each night and held family home evening so I heard many other stories about obedience. What do Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Mary & Martha, Lehi, Nephi, the 2,000 Stripling Warriors, Abinadi, Moroni, Joseph Smith and all the other heroes of the scriptures all have in common? OBEDIENCE. When Adam was asked why he offered sacrifices, he responded, I know not, save the Lord commanded me. Nephi said, I will go and do what the Lord hath commanded, for I know that God giveth no commandment unto the children of men save he shall prepare a way for them to accomplish the thing which he hath commanded them. You want to talk about Obedience Think about the Savior Not my will, but thine be done. As you can see by these examples, a key factor in achieving obedience is FAITH. We dont always understand why we are commanded to do some things, but as we obey in faith, we will be blessed. D&C 130:21 says that when we obtain any blessing from God, it is by obedience to that law upon which it is predicated. Now in our home, we didnt just learn about obedience through stories. Sometimes practical applications were necessary. My Dad traveled a lot for work and my Mom found herself often alone with 6 strong-willed children. One Family Home Evening, my parents introduced us to a new member of the family OBEY ANDERSON. (Anderson is my maiden name.) Obey was a large a wooden spoon, with the letters O-B-

E-Y- A-N-D-E-R-S-O-N written in sharpie on the handle. The idea was that if my Mom had to ask us to do something more than once, she could employ Obeys help in reminding us to respond. She would have to spell all the letters in his name out in order to help remind her to maintain her temper. We had a chance to re-think just how stubborn we wanted to be on the issue. If she made it to the N at the end of Anderson and we still had not complied, Obey would whack us on the backside. Very helpful, huh? He wasnt so popular with us kids. In fact, I remember one particular incident where I had been asked to go to my room as a consequence for my behavior. When I declined the invitation, Obey was invited to intervene. My Mom spelled her way through his whole name and I was still standing at the bottom of the stairs. So she had to follow through with the whack. I moved up one step. She spelled again and whacked. I again, only moved one step. I believe we took the whole stairway one at a time, but I eventually made it to my room. Lesson: If you obey, you dont get whacked. If you choose to be stubborn, you have to face the consequences. Now, Im not advocating spanking here. That is a choice for individual families. We dont have an Obey Titus spoon yet. We do have time outs, restrictions, and other consequences for bad behavior as well as incentives for good behavior. But some discipline and consequences must be taught in the home. Otherwise, how will we learn to be obedient to the Lord?

You see, my Mom loved me. I knew it then, and I know it now. She was trying to help me learn the importance of obedience. The Lord Loves Us. That is why he gave us these laws, commandments, and rules to help us know what we need to do to be truly free and happy and return to him someday. Elder. R. Conrad Schultz gave an incredible talk once entitled Faith Obedience. He said, Faith obedience is a matter of trust. The question is simple: Do we trust our Heavenly Father? Do we trust our prophets? We need to learn to trust Heavenly Father and our prophets. If we can help our children understand how much they are loved by us and the Lord, if we can help them love the

Lord, trust him, and realize the blessings of obedience then obedience wont be a burden. By the time I moved on into my teenage years, I had already been instructed well and guided by example to gain a testimony for myself of what I was taught about the gospel and the reasons I should be obedient. These teachings were reinforced as I started seeing the consequences of improper behavior in the lives of some of my friends. Lying to their parents brought greater restrictions and lost trust. Drinking and drugs caused them to squander their intelligence and potential. Immorality caused loss of self-esteem, teen pregnancies, disease, and in some cases lead to abortions. I started recognizing the ways in which I was being blessed for my obedience. I still remember distinctly the day that I had a real Aha experience. I was at my friend Tiffanys house. I must have been a sophomore, and she would have been a Senior headed off soon to BYU. We were in her front room she was lounging on the couch and I was on the floor. We were talking about some of the consequences some mutual friends were suffering and it hit us. You know, they think we are the restricted ones because we have to follow all these rules when the truth is we are the ones who are free. Obedience has made us free. We are free from addiction, regret, and hurt. Our futures are wide open, while some of theirs have already been terribly restricted. Wow! What a realization. John 8:32: And you shall know the truth and the Truth shall make you free! Again from Elder Schultzs talk, One of the sneaky ploys of the adversary is to have us believe that unquestioning obedience to the principles and commandments of God is blind obedience. Our unquestioning obedience to the Lords commandments is not blind obedience. President Boyd K. Packer in the April conference of 1983 taught us about this: Latter-day Saints are not obedient because they are compelled to be obedient. They are obedient because they know certain spiritual truths and have decided, as an expression of their own individual agency, to obey the commandments of God. We are not obedient because we are blind, we are obedient because we can see

Now I wasnt perfect as a teenager, just like I am not perfect now, but somehow I managed to avoid any truly tragic consequences by being obedient most of the time. I am so grateful. And the more you exercise your agency to be obedient, the more youll reap the blessings, which then leads to an increased testimony, and strength and desire to be obedient. As I moved into adulthood I realized that there is more to obedience than just following all the rules. When we love the Lord, we truly need to strive to be like him. We need to learn to be anxiously engaged in good causes, of our own free will. As Joseph Smith said, I teach them correct principles and they govern themselves. I have seen so many valiant people in our ward who are incredible at this. Your examples are something I will carry with me always. Another challenge often occurs for adults in the realm of obedience. First of all, you have to work on being a little more unselfish. This can especially be a challenge in a marriage relationship or as you learn to serve others and put your desires second. The other challenge for adults is that in addition to trying to keep yourself on track, you are often blessed with the responsibility of helping others learn the importance of obedience. It may be as a primary leader, an Aunt or Uncle, it may be as a parent. What an incredible responsibility it is. What a FRUSTRATING experience it can be. Why dont my children immediately obey and respond to everything that I ask them to do??? AGGGHHHH. So the challenge becomes helping them learn to use their agency to choose obedience, so they may experience the blessings, so they can gain an increased testimony of obedience and the desire and strength to be obedient, so they can remain free from negative consequences and BE HAPPY!!! It is hard. I hope I dont mess it up too badly with my children by losing my temper and yelling and threatening instead of instructing, loving, being a good example, and enforcing consequences, good and bad. I so want them to understand the tragic consequences to them and those they love if they disregard commandments the harm that could occur if they become addicted to pornography, alcohol, drugs, selfishness, materialism, negativity, deception. And I so want them to understand the incredible blessings of happiness and freedom that come as a result of

obedience to Gods commandments. They can feel JOY and LOVE beyond compare. That is what I want so badly for them that it hurts!!! That is why I want them to obey Gods commandments. I know my journey with obedience is far from over. I still have so much to learn, but I hope you all know (especially my three boys down there) that I have a strong, unshakeable testimony of obedience and the blessings that will come to us from our loving Heavenly father as we choose to obey. I want to be like Joshua who said, As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. I say these things in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.