This talk awakened my soul as I listened on my mission and I determined to hone my desires to more perfectly match those of my Savior. This set me on the path of listening more closely to future conferences and to pay special attention to the words of Elder Maxwell. I was so touched by this that I wrote to thank him for the talk – something I have done only rarely since then.
Brothers and sisters, the scriptures offer us so many doctrinal diamonds. And when the light of the Spirit plays upon their several facets, they sparkle with celestial sense and illuminate the path we are to follow.
I was hooked from this very first paragraph and recognized the diamonds he spoke of. I hope always to capture the celestial sense that I encounter.
Exemplifying this happy reality are the doctrinal teachings concerning desire, which relates so directly to our moral agency and our individuality. Whether in their conception or expression, our desires profoundly affect the use of our moral agency. Desires thus become real determinants, even when, with pitiful naivete, we do not really want the consequences of our desires.
Desire denotes a real longing or craving. Hence righteous desires are much more than passive preferences or fleeting feelings. Of course our genes, 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.
I determined never to abdicate that inner zone – especially with the promise that followed.
Therefore, what we insistently desire, over time, is what we will eventually become and what we will receive in eternity.
God thus takes into merciful account not only our desires and our performance, but also the degrees of difficulty which our varied circumstances impose upon us.
Mostly, brothers and sisters, we become the victims of our own wrong desires. Moreover, we live in an age when many simply refuse to feel responsible for themselves. Thus, a crystal-clear understanding of the doctrines pertaining to desire is so vital because of the spreading effluent oozing out of so many unjustified excuses by so many. . . .
Some seek to brush aside conscience, refusing to hear its voice. But that deflection is, in itself, an act of choice, because we so desired. Even when the light of Christ flickers only faintly in the darkness, it flickers nevertheless. If one averts his gaze therefrom, it is because he so desires.
Like it or not, therefore, reality requires that we acknowledge our responsibility for our desires. Brothers and sisters, which do we really desire, God’s plans for us or Satan’s?
Whenever spiritually significant things are under way, righteous desires are present.
The Nephite multitude, enraptured by the presence of the resurrected Jesus, knelt in humble and intensive prayer, yet “they did not multiply many words, for it was given unto them what they should pray, and they were filled with desire.“
This insight led me to seek to understand the true order of prayer.
Righteous desires need to be relentless, therefore, because, said President Brigham Young, “the men and women, who desire to obtain seats in the celestial kingdom, will find that they must battle every day” (in Journal of Discourses, 11:14). Therefore, true Christian soldiers are more than weekend warriors.
The absence of any keen desire – merely being lukewarm – causes a terrible flattening (see Rev. 3:15). William R. May explained such sloth: “The soul in this state is beyond mere sadness and melancholy. It has removed itself from the rise and fall of feelings; the very root of its feelings in desire is dead. . . . To be a man is to desire. The good man desires God and other things in God. The sinful man desires things in the place of God, but he is still recognizably human, inasmuch as he has known desire. The slothful man, however, is a dead man, an arid waste. . . . His desire itself has dried up” (“A Catalogue of Sins,” as quoted in Christian Century, 24 Apr. 1996, 457).
This sad condition is yet another variation of the “sorrowing of the damned” (Morm. 2:13).
I have experienced that arid waste of desirelessness on occasion. It truly is both dead and flat. It is the very state of despair that Satan wants for each of us even as he seeks to burn away our ability to desire through licentious gluttony. It is undoubtedly the feeling experienced by drug addicts when they come off their high which causes them to seek for ever higher highs.
What we are speaking about is so much more than merely deflecting temptations for which we somehow do not feel responsible. Remember, brothers and sisters, it is our own desires which determine the sizing and the attractiveness of various temptations. We set our thermostats as to temptations.
Thus educating and training our desires clearly requires understanding the truths of the gospel, yet even more is involved.
Upon hearing that I determined to alter my desires such that those sins which had easily beset me would no longer tempt me. Of course that is not something we can simply decide and be done with.
“Do you,” President Young asked, “think that people will obey the truth because it is true, unless they love it? No, they will not” (in Journal of Discourses, 7:55). Thus knowing gospel truths and doctrines is profoundly important, but we must also come to love them. When we love them, they will move us and help our desires and outward works to become more holy.
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.
Fortunately for us, our loving Lord will work with us, “even if [we] can [do] no more than desire to believe,” providing we will “let this desire work in [us]” (Alma 32:27). Therefore, declared President Joseph F. Smith, “the education then of our desires is one of far-reaching importance to our happiness in life” (Gospel Doctrine, 5th ed. [1939], 297). Such education can lead to sanctification until, said President Brigham Young, “holy desires produce corresponding outward works” (in Journal of Discourses, 6:170). Only by educating and training our desires can they become our allies instead of our enemies!
Some of our present desires, therefore, need to be diminished and then finally dissolved. . . .
But dissolution of wrong desires is only part of it. For instance, what is now only a weak desire to be a better spouse, father, or mother needs to become a stronger desire, just as Abraham experienced divine discontent and desired greater happiness and knowledge (see Abr. 1:2).
It is up to us. Therein lies life’s greatest and most persistent challenge. Thus when people are described as “having lost their desire for sin,” it is they, and they only, who deliberately decided to lose those wrong desires by being willing to “give away all [their] sins” in order to know God (Alma 22:18).
Unquestionably, parents have such a profound role in assisting in the educating of our desires, especially when parents combine explanation and exemplification! Even so, given our responsibilities for our own desires, we should not be surprised that Adam and Eve, such superb parents who conscientiously taught all things to their children, still lost some of them! . . .
Nevertheless, conscientious and able parents will do all they can do to exemplify and explain. Besides, righteous parents are teaching more than they now realize. The later applications of and the grateful expressions for earlier parental influence are often delayed, and often for a long time.
With true desire, we can then really plead:
More holiness give me, . . .
More patience in suff’ring,
More sorrow for sin,
More faith in my Savior, . . .
More tears for his sorrows,
More pain at his grief,
More meekness in trial,
More praise for relief.
Brothers and sisters, a loving God will work with us, but the initiating particle of desire which ignites the spark of resolve must be our own!
It all takes time. Said the Prophet Joseph: “The nearer man approaches perfection, the clearer are his views, and the greater his enjoyments, till he has overcome the evils of his life and lost every desire for sin; and like the ancients, arrives at that point of faith where he is wrapped in the power and glory of his Maker and is caught up to dwell with Him. But we consider that this is a station to which no man ever arrived in a moment” (Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, 51).
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