The consequences of breaking temporal laws are obvious. Fail to feed the meter and you risk a parking ticket. Skip out on paying your taxes and you risk financial penalties. While governance in our world is not perfect, it does provide rules to live by that are intended to benefit everybody.
Living by spiritual laws requires more faith. We may look over our shoulder to see if we will get pulled over while speeding, but many of us don’t give a second thought to breaking spiritual laws. Unfortunately, we don’t know what we are missing when we do so. While breaking temporal laws brings about punishment, breaking spiritual laws withholds blessings.
Being spiritually obedient brings both spiritual and temporal blessings into our lives.
Consistent spiritual obedience gives us confidence that the Lord will answer our righteous desires. It begins with our faith and grows into peace because we know the future is full of hope.
You will have setbacks. That’s just part of the process. Weeds grow in gardens. Cars need repairs. We get sick. But when we know we are doing all we can do, the Lord will see us through those hard times and bless us with a vision of the future that will be of great comfort to us.
“Things will work out.” That phrase, said Elder Jeffrey R. Holland of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, “may well be President [Gordon B.] Hinckley’s most repeated assurance to family, friends, and associates. ‘Keep trying,’ he will say. ‘Be believing. Be happy. Don’t get discouraged. Things will work out’” (“Gordon B. Hinckley,” Ensign, Jan. 2017, 41).
