Continuing from yesterday (‘Who is Righteous’) from the book ‘Protecting Against Eternal Identity Theft:’
Educate Our Desires
Desire is the obvious first step. Elder Neal A. Maxwell taught that our desires are the root of our actions. He emphasized how we are not at the mercy of uncontrollable urges, but that we have the power to “educate” and train our desires: “Desire denotes a real longing or craving. Hence righteous desires are much more than passive preferences or fleeting feelings. Of course our circumstances and environments matter very much and they shape us significantly. Yet there remains an inner zone in which we are sovereign, unless we abdicate. In this zone lies the essence of our individuality and our personal accountability.
Therefore, what we insistently desire, over time, is what we will eventually become and what we will receive in eternity. “For I [said the Lord] will judge all men according to their works, and according to the desires of their hearts” (Doctrine and Covenants 137:9; see also Jeremiah 17:10). Alma said, “I know that [God] granteth unto men according to their desire, . . .I know that he allotteth unto men . . . according to their wills” (Alma 29:4).Even a spark of desire can begin change. (“According to the Desire of Our Hearts,” Ensign, November 1996, 21)
If our righteous desires are weak or we struggle with unrighteous desires that wear down our resolve to do better we can, at the very least, pray to God and express a desire to do better. We can continually acknowledge our own helplessness without Him and plead with the Lord to change our hearts. This is the beginning of faith, the planting of the seed. After we express our desires, faith comes to us as a gift from God. Notice how God grants us the power to have and exercise faith:
Therefore may God grant unto you, my brethren, that ye may begin to exercise your faith unto repentance, that ye may begin to call upon his holy name, that he would have mercy upon you; . . .Yea, and it came to pass that the Lord our God did visit us with assurances that he would deliver us; yea, insomuch that he would speak peace to our minds, and did grant unto us great faith, and did cause us that we should hope for our deliverance in him. (Alma 34:17; Alma 53:11. emphasis added)
As our faith and prayers increase, we can begin to add outward actions, one at a time if necessary. Elder Maxwell further encouraged us: “Each assertion of a righteous desire, each act of service and each act of worship, however small and incremental, adds to our spiritual momentum. Like Newton’s Second Law, there is a transmitting of acceleration as well as a contagiousness associated with even the small acts of goodness.” ~Barbara D. Lockhart, Wendy C.Top, Brent L. Top, Protecting Against Eternal Identity Theft (American Fork, Utah: Covenant Communications, 2013) p. 82-83
