Keep My Commandments

Reading: “When the Lord Commands,” Elder Bruce A. Carlson of the Seventy, April 2010 General Conference, Saturday Afternoon Session

The Lord has given us a set of commandments in order to help us to be safe and happy. Sometimes we may think we don’t need to follow a certain commandment. Elder Carlson discusses three reasons people have for not following a commandment. These include:

1. This Commandment Doesn’t Apply to Me
2. This Commandment Is Not Important
3. This Commandment Is Just Too Hard

Elder Carlson discusses a story in the scriptures of people who used these excuses, and then suffered the consequences. He encourages everyone to weed out such thoughts and to obey all the commandments of God.

Recently I have been renewing my efforts to establish a home food storage. As I have been planning my efforts (so that I can do so wisely and efficiently) I have been plagued with thoughts that it’s not really important, and that we don’t have room (we have plenty, but will have to sacrifice some space) for storage, or time to go down to home storage center (which is about an hour away) just to buy things I can by at the grocery store across the street (items bought at the grocery store, though, would be more expensive and would not be properly packaged for long term storage). I also have thought that since it hasn’t been mentioned in General Conference lately, maybe it’s not important anymore. This talk, and my own pondering, helped me to realize that it is still a commandment even though it may not be convenient. If it hasn’t been talked about in our meetings, it’s probably because so many people right now are not in a position to collect a food storage. We, however, are in the perfect position to build a food storage, despite my little excuses, and so I will continue to work on it.

Do you have any commandments you are ignoring right now for one of these reasons? Would you benefit from a re-examination of your reasoning?

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