The Precious and Potent Gift of Agency

I have been thinking of late on the concept of agency.  Earlier in recovery I hated agency.  I hated it because I could never master it.  I couldn't seem to make the correct choices and at times it was as if my agency had been completely robbed of me.

Boyd K. Packer touches on this concept:

Addiction has the capacity to disconnect the human will and nullify moral agency.  It can rob one of the power to decide.

I have heard all my life that agency is a gift but I couldn't fathom, let alone comprehend, that my agency was given to me as a tool for my own good.  I felt it was more of a burden.  I just wanted to be made to do what I was suppose to do so that I wouldn't continually screw up.

I'm sad.  I didn't realize it till just now, but in those moments of cursing agency I was in fact regretting choosing Heavenly Father's plan.  I was wishing for Satan's plan.

Dear God, I am so very sorry.

But Heavenly Father is good to me even through my lapses in judgement.  He knew how I felt.  And even though Satan had me bound by unseen flaxen chords the Lord saw those chords and intricately rescued me from them.  He answered my whiny prayers begging for rescue.  He spoke to me through scripture.

The following passages of scripture freed me from the darkness of viewing agency as a burden and filled me with precious hope.  In these scriptures I found the desire to choose righteously and return home.

Read these scriptures in order, as if being gently spoke to...

Alma 5:60

And now I say unto you that the good shepherd doth call after you; and if you will hearken unto his voice he will bring you into his fold.

Ezekiel 34:11-12,16

For thus saith the Lord God; Behold, I, even I, will both search my sheep, and seek them out.  As a shepherd seeketh out his flock in the day that he is among his sheep that are scattered; so will I seek out my sheep, and will deliver them out of all places where they have been scattered in the cloudy and dark day.  I will seek that which was lost, and bring again that which was driven away, and will bind up that which was broken, and will strengthen that which was sick.

Alma 15:8

If thou believest in the redemption of Christ thou canst be healed.

Alma 13:29

Having faith on the Lord; having a hope that ye shall receive eternal life; having the love of God always in your hearts, that ye may be lifted up at the last day and enter into his rest.

2 Nephi 10:23-25

Therefore, cheer up your hearts, and remember that ye are free to act for yourselves - to choose the way of everlasting death or the way of eternal life.  Wherefore, my beloved brethren, reconcile yourselves to the will of God, and not to the will of the devil and the flesh; and remember, after ye are reconciled unto God, that it is only in and through the grace of God that ye are saved.  Wherefore, may God raise you from death by the power of the resurrection, and also from the everlasting death by the power of the atonement, that ye may be received into the eternal kingdom of God, that ye may praise him through the grace divine.

2 Nephi 27:23

For behold, I am God; and I am a God of miracles; and I will show unto the world that I am the same yesterday, today, and forever; and I work not among the children of men save it be according to their faith.

3 Nephi 9:13

Will ye not now return unto me...that I may heal you?

I bear solemn witness that the Lord loves us.
He wants to rescue us.
He wants to heal us.
He wants us to simply reach for him, even if fleetingly at first.   
He doesn't care where we are when we call on Him to save us.
He simply wants us to love Him and turn to Him.
He wants to be the balm to our aching and tormented hearts.
We simply need to choose to let Him...

Choose ye this day: This day... not tomorrow or the next.  THIS day.