The Offering of Our Will

One statement I have heard within the church, which you've probably heard as well, is that the only thing we have to offer up to God is our will since everything else already belongs to him. I agree with this statement. Everything in this world belongs to Heavenly Father, including our bodies and our spirits, since he created all of it; however, he has given us these things along with our agency to exercise in the way we decide. This is all part of The Plan of Salvation—to see if we will do everything he has commanded us to do.

In Moroni 10, Moroni discusses how we should offer up our will. He tells us how we should exercise it if we want to be "saved in the kingdom of God." He says that we need to demonstrate faith, hope, and charity to be saved. Instead of reading this as instruction on how one should offer up one's will to God, we can read it as instructions on how we can excerice our will in a way that is pleasing to Heavenly Father and in a way that will benefit us as well.

In speaking of hope, he says that its opposite is despair and that people are in despair due to iniquity. This, to me, shows how we are blessed when we act in a way that is pleasing to Heavenly Father. When we choose to be faithful, hopeful, and charitable, we are more free to exercise our agency and we are more ourselves. On the other hand, when a person chooses to be iniquitous, he is in despair, thereby no longer as free anymore since despair causes him to feel hopeless, and, in effect, he is not completely himself any longer. He is only a shadow of his former self since one needs confidence to truly act as the separate and unique individual that Heavenly Father intends each of us to be.

Sincerely,

Joel