The Blessings Of The Plan Of Salvation

As members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints we have a code name for our life here on earth.  It’s called the Plan of Salvation.  What is this plan, you ask? Let me tell you it is what gives us happiness.  We know who we are, we know where we came from and we know where we are going.

We believe that we lived in a beautiful place with our Father in Heaven before we came to earth.  We were all brothers and sisters together who listened to a plan presented to us which allowed us to gain a body and experience on earth so we could return back to live with our Father in Heaven.  The experience is similar as parents who have children here on earth. We see them grow and mature, making choices in their life as adults and hopefully return home successful.

So, what are the blessings of the Plan of Salvation?

We receive a body:

This first big blessing from the Plan of Salvation is receiving a body!! We are born as babies and then grow to adulthood.  We learn to exercise and coordinate our physical bodies to do many wonderful things. Play sports, prepare food, eat food, take care of our homes, drive a car, type on a computer, and create most any craft imaginable with our hands. Whether it’s sewing our own clothes or canning food, quilting, building a house, write on paper, we can learn to do so many things all because we have a body.  I think sometimes I take having a body for granted.  I need to remember to be thankful for such a wonderful blessing and always try to take care of this blessings as much as possible.

We have free agency:

This is a gift from God which helps us to understand the good from the evil. From a General Conference talk in April 1975, Delbert Stapley said, “The privilege of choice (which) was introduced by God the Eternal Father to all of his spirit children in the pre-mortal state occurred in the great council in heaven before the peopling of this earth. The children of God were endowed with freedom of choice while yet but spirit beings. The divine plan provided that they be freeborn in the flesh and become heirs to the inalienable birthright of liberty to choose and act for themselves in mortality. It was essential for their eternal progression that they be subjected to the influences of both good and evil.”

For me, free agency is one of the most difficult aspects of the Plan of Salvation.  No one wants to watch another person suffer from their bad choices. No one wants to witness another go through pain but this is a necessary aspect of free agency.  We cannot force others (including our own children) to make right choices in their life. They have to want to choose it on their own.

From the Book of Mormon we learn of a prophet who led his children to the Promised Land. Lehi taught his son Jacob: “For it must needs be, that there is an opposition in all things. If not so … righteousness could not be brought to pass, neither wickedness, neither holiness nor misery, neither good nor bad.” (2 Nephi 2:11)

As we live our life and remember all that we have experienced on earth and know we had a choice in what we did in our life, we can take responsibly for our actions. We know (or will know) that free agency is a great blessing to us.

We know who we are and where we came from:

This blessing helps us to understand our divine nature. From The Family: A Proclamation to the World we read that “In our pre-mortal life, each of us was born as a beloved spirit son or daughter of heavenly parents and, as such, each has a divine nature and destiny.”

We live in a world where there are many people searching for meaning and peace. But when we understand the Plan of Salvation, we know who we are and where we came from which is a great blessing to us.

We can return to be with our families:

We lived as families before we came to earth and now we are living with a family here on earth.  It makes sense to me that we will be living with our families when we return back to our Heavenly Father. In most cases, our families help us. Belonging to a family gives us a sense of well being. The great blessing of being part of a family on earth and then return to that family is very important and it is part of the Plan of Salvation.

Atonement:

The atonement is a wonderful blessing for all mankind because we can be forgiven of our wrong doings and be given comfort in our heart aches.  Yet most people find it difficult to understand how the Atonement works.  David Bednar, an LDS Apostle of the Lord said: “There is no physical pain, no spiritual wound, no anguish of soul or heartache, no infirmity or weakness you or I ever confront in mortality that the Savior did not experience first. In a moment of weakness we may cry out, ‘No one knows what it is like. No one understands.’ But the Son of God perfectly knows and understands, for He has felt and borne our individual burdens.” (Bear Up Their Burdens with Ease,” Ensign, May 2014, 90.)

These are five blessings from the Plan of Salvation that we can be thankful for in our life. At times we can take a step back and think about the eternal perspective of what happens to us on earth and know that we can be successful in this test. We can understand what we are here for and comfort each other through difficult challenges. The Plan of Salvation is truly a great blessing.