Tapping the Power of Obedience to Rescue Wayward Children
Mar 17th, 2009 by larrybarkdull
It is easy for parents to look beyond the mark when children go wayward. Often parents panic and try everything from screaming to grounding to taking away the car keys. Then, too often in resignation, they turn to God. What he might tell them would seem to some people as “too Sunday School,” a pat answer for a difficult situation. It is at these times that we ought to remember that Moses, too, offered a simple solution to a grievous problem. He raised a brazen serpent, and many refused to even take a peek. I am suggesting that one of the coils on Moses’ serpent was good, old-fashioned obedience.
We have learned before that every effort parents make to sanctify themselves has a redeeming effect on the person for whom they are praying. Here is an example:
An Example of Obedience
A man from Pennsylvania remembered his seminary teacher’s extraordinary example of obedience. “I grew up in a little branch in Pennsylvania. I was the only LDS student in my high school. A woman in the branch, who I will call ‘Sister Williams,’ had joined the Church by herself several years earlier. Neither her husband nor her five children joined. Her husband was supportive, but otherwise uninterested. I knew the children, especially the boys, who were the definition of hooligans.
“Sister Williams had volunteered to teach seminary and I was one her five students. We came to the branch building twice a month on Sundays from a radius of sixty miles. I remember very clearly that Sister Williams would say that she held Family Home Evening in her home each week. Knowing her kids, I wondered how she managed that feat. They despised the Church. I soon learned that she held Family Home Evening with only herself. She told us that even though her family would not join with her in Family Home Evening, she was going to hold it faithfully because the prophet had promised that great blessings would follow: ‘If the [families] obey this counsel, we promise that great blessings will result. Love at home and obedience to parents will increase. Faith will be developed in the hearts of the youth of Israel, and they will gain power to combat the evil influences and temptations which beset them.’ It is a principle with a promise, she would tell us, and she was going to be obedient to it. I remember thinking that this was going to be pretty tough for the Lord given the condition of Sister Williams’ family. Although I believed that the Lord could do anything, I was not optimistic in this case.
“I was closest in age to two of her boys, one who was a couple of grades ahead of me and another boy who was a grade behind me. They both were hanging out with bad company and doing terrible things. The younger boy, who I will call ‘Jim,’ was the worst. Jim was the leader of a gang that terrorized the town and school. I always saw him smoking before, during and after school, drinking and doing drugs. He openly flaunted his lifestyle, and he was the central figure in most of the school brawls. Jim knew that I was a Mormon, but he never tried to hide his behavior from me. We never fought, thank goodness, but I remember feeling anger towards him because of how he was disgracing and openly disrespecting his mother by his actions. I truly felt embarrassed for Sister Williams, and at the same time, I was amazed that she could persevere in so faithfully holding Family Home Evening year after year when her children seemed to be growing steadily worse.
“After I graduated from high school, I received a mission call to the Utah Salt Lake City mission. When I had been out a year, I was laboring in Utah County. One Tuesday morning I received permission to take my district to a devotional where President Spencer W. Kimball was going to speak. As I was hustling to get a good seat in BYU’s Marriott Center, I heard someone call out my name. I turned around and saw nice-looking, clean-cut young man, whom I did not recognize. We exchanged pleasantries for a few minutes, but I still could not place him. Then he smiled and said, ‘I am Jim Williams.’ My jaw dropped to the floor. The last time I saw Jim, his hair was hanging down to the middle of his back and it stuck out from his head about as far. I had always seen him wearing ratty clothes, he smelled like a smoke bomb most of the time, and his eyes always looked glazed. Finally, as I looked hard, I thought I could recognize his face.
“He must have noticed my shock. He embraced me heartily and laughed again. That gave me the courage to ask him what had happened to him. He said he hadn’t graduated from high school, which didn’t surprise me. Instead, he had decided to hitchhike to California. On the way, he stopped in Utah and stayed for a few days, then a week, and then a month. He was so impressed with the people that he had hooked up with that he had decided to meet with the missionaries. Soon, he got a job, cut his hair, cleaned up his life…cold turkey! Later, he was baptized, and now he had set his sights on serving a mission. Now I was completely floored. But he certainly looked like a missionary that day: white shirt and tie. It was great!
“We exchanged phone numbers, and a couple of weeks later we did missionary splits together. We shared some very spiritual moments. Jim went on to straighten out his schooling and his life, and about a year later he was able to serve a mission. When he returned, he married a wonderful woman in the temple, and today they have four children. Eventually, his two brothers and two sisters joined the Church and married in the temple. Sister Williams’ husband was also baptized and served faithfully in the Branch for many years. He took Sister Williams and his children to the temple, where they were sealed together for eternity. When Brother Williams retired, he and his wife served two missions.
“Prior to my meeting Jim that day in the Marriott Center, I really had thought that he had been one of Satan’s hosts who had somehow slipped through the cracks. But I have since repented. What has always struck me is the amazing miracle that happened in the Williams family because of the faith and obedience of a mother who believed in the Lord enough to persist against all odds. When I miss Family Home Evening in my own home, I am reminded of Sister Williams’ example, and I regroup and set out to be more obedient.”
Obedience-The First Law of Heaven
God places enormous weight on this “first law of heaven.” In the beginning, God created a master law to which all other specific laws are dependent: “There is a [master] law, irrevocably decreed in heaven before the foundations of this world, upon which all [specific] blessings are predicated–And when we obtain any [specific] blessing from God, it is by obedience to that [specific] law upon which it [the specific blessing] is predicated.” Also, “For all who will have a blessing at my hands shall abide the [specific] law which was appointed for that [specific] blessing, and the conditions thereof, as were instituted from before the foundation of the world.”
Because God is a God of truth and cannot lie the promised blessings for obedience to any specific law are certain under the terms of the master law. “What I the Lord have spoken, I have spoken, and I excuse not myself; and though the heavens and the earth pass away, my word shall not pass away, but shall all be fulfilled, whether by mine own voice or by the voice of my servants, it is the same.” The Lord binds himself to deliver the promised blessings associated with every obeyed law: “I, the Lord, am bound when ye do what I say; but when ye do not what I say, ye have no promise.”
Obedience is always accomplished by sacrifice. “Verily I say unto you, all among them who know their hearts are honest, and are broken, and their spirits contrite, and are willing to observe their covenants by sacrifice–yea, every sacrifice which I, the Lord, shall command–they are accepted of me.” The disposition to be obedient by sacrificing has the power to sanctify a person.
Clearly, parents who strive to sanctify themselves through obedience will gain greater power to rescue their wayward children.
Specific blessings for obedience
What blessings would parents of wayward children wish to claim by their obedience to God’s laws? Adam’s example is prime. After Adam had obediently sacrificed for many days, an angel of the Lord appeared to him and proclaimed the atonement of Jesus Christ. The angel’s message was one of redemption and sanctification. Now that Adam had experienced personal redemption, he was empowered to help to redeem others by bringing them to Christ. “And Adam and Eve blessed the name of God, and they made all things known unto their sons and their daughters.” Notice that Adam had observed the law of obedience by long years of sacrificing, and now he was rewarded with the blessings associated with the law of obedience, which blessings were his personal redemption and his increased capacity to help to redeem his children.
Our effort to obey is always worth the price. Adam discovered that obedience results in greater knowledge and understanding of God and his purposes, and we are told that those who are willing to live the law of obedience will “have glory added upon their heads forever and ever.” Obedience results in “liberty and eternal life,” the very blessings we seek for our children. The discipline of obedience requires “the heart and a willing mind,” with this supernal blessing: “the willing and obedient shall eat the good of the land of Zion in these last days.”
Clearly, increasing our level of obedience increases our level of sanctification, which empowers us to petition blessings for us and our children.
The First Presidency, 1915, Era, Vol. 18, p. 734
George D. Watt, ed., Journal of Discourses, 16:247-48
D&C 130:20-21, commentary added
Thank You for this article. My husband who joined the church seven years ago has left the church now. We have three children, the oldest is sixteen. I have struggled with trying to hold FHE for sixteen years. My husband will not participate. Instead he will watch tv, usually a game of some sort. I have tried to work with him but he cannot be bothered. On occasion, i have tried to do it without his cooperation, but it is hard to compete with the tv. I desperately want the blessings that are promised. I have even tried to enlist my parents help by having them join us.
I am encouraged by the story of your teacher. My kids are good kids and don’t really struggle with faith yet, as my husband does, but I know they need more teaching. I fear that I am not preparing them for the future. I know that I am responsible for teaching them and preparing them to face the world. I want to do it, but don’t know how. When I try to compete with the tv it just feels so wrong. It doesn’t feel like FAMILY Home Evening without my husbands participation. And yet it is his choice. I’m sure he thinks it only effects him, but he is so wrong.
We have always been active. We have 4 children and only 1 is active. She sort of came that way. I am discouraged because I feel as though we have tried our best to be obedient; we had family home evening, we went to church weekly, we did what we thought was right. When our children were teenagers, we had a serious financial reversal that affected our lives then and still does now. I’m not sure what we did so wrong, but obviously something. I keep hoping that one day they will want to follow what we taught them growing up, but so far nothing. Your story of the teacher gives me some hope, but not really.
I understand exactly your pain. I too have four children and one that appears struggling to stay active whlle her older siblings have all made choices that only take them further from the gospel. We have not been as diligent as your family has been but have done some things diligently. I do find hope after reading Sister Williams story but am so tired both body and spirit to have the type of faith she had. I hope that all of our children will find their way back to the gospel but first I hope that we can learn to live with, against all odds, faith like Ssiter Williams.
The younger of my two sons has been a problem since birth. He got into alcohol at about age ten, raiding his father’s liquor cabinet. I was about to put him into a locked down substance abuse program for teens, covered by our insurance, but my (now ex) husband refused to sign the permission form. I got no cooperation from my ex as the problems went from bad to worse.
Shortly after our divorce in 1988, my parents died and I moved into the house they left me. After the divorce agreement for sharing college expenses ran out in 1993, my ex had my son call me and tell me he wanted to go back to school. I told him to try to get into a school near where I lived, and that there would be a behavior contract involved. He got into an expensive private college. I used the college money my father had put aside for him for the first year. He signed the contract and a release for his grades, etc. I was in law school and struggling financially. After my last semester exam, I received a letter from the college telling me my son was being expelled from the dormitory for cocaine use. Finding no psychologists available to do an intervention, I scrabbled one together myself, with the college dean, an old prosecutor friend of my dad’s and a taped (over the phone) hellfire and brimstone sermon from my grandmother in Texas. He was stonefaced until he heard his great-grandmother’s voice. Then he began to stifle sobs. He left the intervention without agreeing to therapy. I thanked everyone and went home. That night, he called me, asking what he should do. I told him his choices were either a one way ticket back to his father (per the contract) or therapy. He chose the therapy. The next day, he was admitted to a local hospital substance abuse unit. He did very well after emerging from the inpatient program, getting excellent grades and then becoming president of the student body. But then he got in with the wrong crowd and began drinking again.
Starting into his senior year, I got to the point where I could put no more tuition on my credit card. I told him he would have to sit out a semester while working for his tuition. He protested that he could no longer be president of the student body (the first positive achievement of his life). I sympathized, and took out another loan. Three months into his first semester as a senior, he confessed to me that he had written checks on the student government account for his own expenses. I had a fit; explained to him what he had done, had him sign an agreement that there would be no more support from me if he did it again. I took out still another loan and deposited the amount he had embezzled back into the student government account. At the semester’s end, I got a call from the student government advisor. He had done it again. I called him, took back the car I had lent him and told him there would be no more support (except prayer) from me.
By this time, I had decided to join the Church. I picked him up to bring him to my baptism. He said, “Gee, Mom, they’re nice people, but you don’t have to get baptised to hang out with them.” After he heard my testimony, he understood.
I had a job now, and was paying off my law school debt as fast as I could. I was transferred away from my son. I have not seen his face in thirteen years. Fleeing the long arm of the law, he went to a far away part of the world and now has a little boy with a local girl. A friend who communicates with both me and my ex thought it was terrible that I had a grandchild that I didn’t know about, and told me. I got a court settlement with my ex that he would forward presents to my grandchild. The result is that I am in contact with the grandchild and his mother. I went to visit them last year. My son lives less than a half mile away, but I never saw him. He used to call and say nothing. When I realized who it was, I began to talk to him. I made the mistake of telling my older son this. Obviously, he told his father, and now the calls have stopped.
People wonder how I can go on with things this way. I pray for my sons daily (neither has joined the Church, so my posterity is lost to me). I just think of the younger son as dead. I don’t know what else to do.
Thanks for listening.
I have witnessed both sides of the coin: just how devastatingly destructive disobedience and subsequent apostasy can be to a family when the parents do not keep their temple covenants and how healing repentance is, not just for the individual who returns to the fold, but to their entire family. A wise counselor once told me that one person’s healing in a family is EVERYBODY’S healing. Those who never fall away serve as an anchor drawing the lost ones back as well.
I was a wayward child myself for most of my young adult life. I was raised LDS, but my parents apostatized and joined a polygamist group and were ex-communicated before I could be baptized into the church. My maternal grandmother and my aunts and uncles on my mom’s side have always respected and loved me, even when my life choices disappointed them. I know that their prayers for me and good examples of faithful Latter-Day Saints were great helps to lead me back into the fold. When I was ready to change my life, all the good memories of attending church with my grandmother, several kind church leaders I encountered as a child, especially in the Primary and Young Women’s organization, and the gospel teachings I learned from my mother and other relatives all came flooding back to me and helped me to regain a testimony of the true church and of Jesus Christ. I have witnessed how the Lord’s arm has stretched out over the years to draw me, then my mom back into the fold and even some of my siblings. Although some of them have fallen away again and others have not yet made the decision to join, all seem to be making positive changes in their lives.
I married an alcoholic and was divorced by the time our son was four. My second husband turned out to be an inactive member of the church and I did not even know this fact until after his oldest daughter from his first marriage joined the church, surprisingly enough due to the influence of a younger brother of mine who had gained a testimony of the restored gospel from an LDS aunt and uncle he lived with when he got into some legal trouble as a teen. He continued to struggle with addictions, but bore his testimony to my step-daughter and started the process of all of us joining the church. Interestingly enough, he was not able to give up his wild lifestyle and did not join the church until at least a decade later, and still struggles to faithfully keep the word of wisdom and to remain active, but I will be eternally grateful to him. I was baptized, both my husband’s daughters and my son from my first marriage were baptized and then my second husband eventually became active again all because a faithful aunt and uncle took in a wayward teenage boy and made such an impact on his life that he passed that on. So, you never know. Your missionary efforts may bear fruit in some very unusual, unexpected ways.
I noticed a significant increase in my husband’s spiritual progress after I received my own temple endowments and after we fasted for him as a family. I learned the hard way by making all the mistakes that it is much more effective to simply love inactive or non-member family members rather than to harangue or judge them. Unfortunately, my second husband passed away only four months after receiving the Melchezidek Priesthood and before we could make it to the temple. Through a series of miraculous events I was able to be sealed to him within two weeks of his death and all of our children, including one of his daughters from his first marriage and my son from my first marriage were sealed to us a couple of months later(which required written permission from their non-member parents, yet another miracle)! I have seen how the power of this sealing has blessed my life and helped all of our children. Because of the dysfunctional and abusive environment we were all climbing out of when we joined the church, our children have all struggled with multiple issues, especially the older ones who did not always have the gospel influence in their lives. My husband’s oldest daughter moved back in with her alcoholic mom when she was 16, and she took the path of drinking and drugging and has lived a very tragic life which includes selling her body for drugs. Her sister was a faithful member for many years, but after a first disastrous marriage, a painful estrangement from me and the other children after her father died, and some other challenges to her faith, she left the church. My oldest son went inactive during his late teen years, but never lost his testimony and has always kept the word of wisdom faithfully and shared his belief in the Book of Mormon to friends. One of his former girlfriends joined the church and partly due to her influence, he and his live-in girlfriend began taking the missionary discussions last year. In January, they were married and my daughter-in-law was baptized that very same day. They are both actively attending church now and have set a goal to be married in the temple next year. This came about after many, many agonizing years of prayer and fasting. Sadly, my oldest daughter stopped going to church this past year as soon as she moved away from home and has announced that she is bisexual, so her way back to the fold appears to be long and difficult at best.
My father legally married his second wife after my mom divorced him and now my step-mother and he have been baptized and are working their way to the temple. My two step-daughters have not come back to the fold as of yet, but I now have a good relationship with the younger one and have heard that the older one has begun attending a Christian church in her area and trying to change her life. I am remarried now to a wonderful, faithful priesthood holder and we do our best to attend the temple at least once a month. He has adopted my younger daughter from my second marriage and she is very steadfast in the faith. We have two children together that we are raising in the gospel and praying will remain faithful.
I truly see the Spirit of Elijah spoken about in Malachi 4:5-6 working on this side of the veil as well as the other side. I have had reconciliations I never dreamed would be possible and as time goes on and my husband and I stay faithful to our temple covenants, more and more members of our families are being drawn to the Lord. They are all on different levels. Some have accepted Christ as their Savior, but thus far have rejected the restored gospel. Some are still enslaved to addictions, some come back to the fold, then fall away, but the main thing is that our welding link of FAMILIAL LOVE is getting stronger and stronger and I have no doubt that the sealing power of ordinances made in the temple and all those who have remained faithful to those covenants on both sides of the veil are greatly blessing the ones who are still wandering in forbidden paths. I know I will be forever grateful to them as I would not be where I am today, with all the blessings I have received from returning to the fold if it were not for their steadfast faith, good Christian examples and unconditional love and prayers.
NEVER GIVE UP!!! If I can be retrieved and saved, anybody can.
We have 4 children, 2 sons, 2 daughters. We raised our children in the gospl of Jesus Christ. They were all a joy to raise and I am grateful for those memories. But as they have gone out on their own as adults, my sons have chosen a different path. While they were obedient and faithful while in our home as children and youth, as adults, they have chosen to be “among the unbelievers”. Although I find some amount of comfort in hearing that others struggle with similar problems, the pain and heartbreak is still almost unbearable. Reading about the power of being “sealed by the Holy Spirit of Promise” along with reading about how wayward children will be brought back into the fold, and seeing the effects of it are two different things at this point in my life. Although we work at the temple, have had FHE for many years, and strive to be faithful, I’m stuggling to reconcile two gosple principles – our being obedient and faithful with their free agency. We are taught God will never override free agency. I have many examples before me of people who have died without coming back into the fold. How can my obedience affect their choices? Needless to say, I don’t feel power to save my children, but rather powerless. And I am wondering how the Lord can save them from their sins. I do pray for an “Alma the Younger” experience for them, though. However, no matter what lies ahead, I will always be true to my covenants and strive to serve and be as obedient as I can.