As I get older, I can appreciate more and more the charge that a Book of Mormon prophet gave to “watch yourselves, and your thoughts, and your words, and your deeds,” (Mosiah 4:30).
I think its the same wisdom in ‘garbage in, garbage out’ and ‘you are what you eat.’ This has been driven home further for me as I watch my two children under the age of two develop and grow. Watching them has taught me how to recognize better how what I see or hear influences me.
The observation I am arriving at is the enhanced ability and access this gives the adversary to tempt us. In recent years, different Church leaders have affirmed that the power of Satan is real, but limited. He cannot read our thoughts, but can entice us. However, he is a damned spirit without a body, he doesn’t have the ability to reach out and affect our lives directly.
In a recent conference address, Elder L. Tom Perry cautioned us to not estimate the adversary’s determination to seek our misery since his fall from grace:
Satan, however, was not done. His backup plan—the plan he has been executing since the time of Adam and Eve—was to tempt men and women, essentially to prove we are undeserving of the God-given gift of agency. Satan has many reasons for doing what he does. Perhaps the most powerful is the motive of revenge, but he also wants to make men and women miserable like he is miserable. None of us should ever underestimate how driven Satan is to succeed. His role in God’s eternal plan creates “opposition in all things” (2 Nephi 2:11) and tests our agency. Each choice you and I make is a test of our agency—whether we choose to be obedient or disobedient to the commandments of God is actually a choice between “liberty and eternal life” and “captivity and death.”
“Obedience to Law is Liberty“, L. Tom Perry
In a day where there really are very few moral reinforcements in society, it requires a great deal of personal honesty to identify the who and what of our desires. Satan cannot directly touch us. He has no physical presence to use to impose upon us. But he does have influence, he does have the power of suggestion. How does one guard against such active and intense manipulation? How do you protect yourself from the most experienced con artist?
Elder Perry’s talk title holds clues. One of my favorite verses from the Doctrine and Covenants speaks of how obedience is a source of protection and power:
“And again, verily I say unto you, that which is governed bylaw is also preserved by law and perfected and sanctified by the same.”
D&C 88:34
May we be mindful of the adversary’s continuous onslaught and find protection and staying power through obedience to God’s laws.