Agency

        I have compiled an exciting group of quotes about Agency for you. Agency is many things but simply put, it is the power to chose what we want. We can chose to wake up in the moring and make our selves a delightful egg sandwich if we would like. Or we can chose to sleep in. Satan wanted and still wants today to strip from us this gift. He originaly wanted to force us into choosing the right all the time. Now he wants the perfect opposite. He would have us to make every wrong choice we could. Lie, cheat, steal and use volgar language while we are doing all that. He chose to not follow our heavenly fathers plan for his children and ever sense has been in a tailspin of bad choices. What a sad demise. Thankfully we do have agency, we do have the power to change our future and shape it how we see fit. Who we are today is a sum total of the choices we have made throughout our lives. 

Now that you have read my thoughts, enjoy the pricise words in the quotes below. 

We know that we had our agency before this world was and that Lucifer attempted to take it from us. He had no confidence in the principle of agency or in us and argued for imposed salvation. He insisted that with his plan none would be lost, but he seemed not to recognize--or perhaps not to care--that in addition, none would be any wiser, any stronger, any more compassionate, or any more grateful if his plan were followed.

President Thomas S. Monson
The Three Rs of Choice
http://www.lds.org/general-conference/2010/10/the-three-rs-of-choice?lang=eng

Recently I received a letter from a friend of over 50 years who is not a member of our church. I had sent him some gospel-related reading, to which he responded: “Initially it was hard for me to follow the meaning of typical Mormon jargon, such as agency. Possibly a short vocabulary page would be helpful.”

I was surprised he did not understand what we mean by the word agency. I went to an online dictionary. Of the 10 definitions and usages of the word agency, none expressed the idea of making choices to act. We teach that agency is the ability and privilege God gives us to choose and “to act for [ourselves] and not to be acted upon.”1 Agency is to act with accountability and responsibility for our actions. Our agency is essential to the plan of salvation. With it we are “free to choose liberty and eternal life, through the great Mediator of all men, or to choose captivity and death, according to the captivity and power of the devil.”2

Elder Robert D. Hales
Agency: Essential to the Plan of Life
http://www.lds.org/general-conference/2010/10/agency-essential-to-the-plan-of-life?lang=eng

Staying on the gospel path of covenants, commandments, and ordinances protects us and prepares us to do God’s work in this world. When we obey the Word of Wisdom, our agency is protected from addictions to substances like alcohol, drugs, and tobacco. As we pay our tithing, study the scriptures, receive baptism and confirmation, live for the constant companionship of the Holy Ghost, partake of the sacrament worthily, obey the law of chastity, prepare for and receive the Melchizedek Priesthood, and make sacred covenants in the temple, then we are prepared to serve.

Elder Robert D. Hales
Stand Strong in Holy Places
http://www.lds.org/general-conference/2013/04/stand-strong-in-holy-places?lang=eng

There is a wonderful lesson for us all. The way for loving parents and grandparents and all of God’s servants will not be easy in a decaying world. We cannot force God’s children to choose the way to happiness. God cannot do that because of the agency He has given us.

Heavenly Father and His Beloved Son love all of God’s children no matter what they choose to do or what they become. The Savior paid the price of all sins, no matter how heinous. Even though there must be justice, the opportunity for mercy is extended which will not rob justice.

President Henry B. Eyring
To My Grandchildren
http://www.lds.org/general-conference/2013/10/to-my-grandchildren?lang=eng

What was my grandfather likening to a harness and bit? I believed then, as I believe now, that my grandfather was teaching me to follow the promptings of the Holy Ghost. In his mind’s eye, the harness and bit were spiritual. An obedient horse which is part of a well-trained team of horses needs little more than a gentle tug from the driver to do exactly what he wants it to do. This gentle tug is equivalent to the still, small voice with which the Lord speaks to us. Out of respect for our agency, it is never a strong, forceful tug.
Men and women who ignore the gentle promptings of the Spirit will often learn, as the prodigal son learned, through the natural consequences of disobedience and riotous living. It was only after natural consequences humbled the prodigal son that “he came to himself” and heard the whisperings of the Spirit telling him to return to his father’s house (see Luke 15:11–32).

Elder L. Tom Perry
Obedience through Our Faithfulness
http://www.lds.org/general-conference/2014/04/obedience-through-our-faithfulness?lang=eng

Since knees often bend long before minds, holding back this “part” deprives God’s work of some of mankind’s very best intellects. Far better to be meek like Moses, who learned things he “never had supposed” (Moses 1:10). Yet, sadly, brothers and sisters, in the subtle interplay of agency and identity, there is so much hesitation. The surrender of the mind is actually a victory, because it then introduces us to God’s stretching and “higher” ways! (see Isa. 55:9).

Elder Neal A. Maxwell
Consecrate Thy Performance
http://www.lds.org/general-conference/2002/04/consecrate-thy-performance?lang=eng

Agency is essential to the plan of happiness. It allows for the love, sacrifice, personal growth, and experience necessary for our eternal progression. This agency also allows for all the pain and suffering we experience in mortality, even when caused by things we do not understand and the devastating evil choices of others. The very War in Heaven was waged over our moral agency and is essential to understanding the Savior’s earthly ministry.

Elder Quentin L. Cook
Personal Peace: The Reward of Righteousness
http://www.lds.org/general-conference/2013/04/personal-peace-the-reward-of-righteousness?lang=eng

Perhaps it is because we have a revealed knowledge of our premortal history. We recognize that when God the Eternal Father presented His plan to us at the beginning of time, Satan wanted to alter the plan. He said he would redeem all mankind. Not one soul would be lost, and Satan was confident he could deliver on his proposal. But there was an unacceptable cost--the destruction of man’s agency, which was and is a gift given by God (see Moses 4:1–3). About this gift, President Harold B. Lee said, “Next to life itself, free agency is God’s greatest gift to mankind.”3 Then it was no small thing for Satan to disregard man’s agency. In fact, it became the principal issue over which the War in Heaven was fought. Victory in the War in Heaven was a victory for man’s agency.

Elder L. Tom Perry
Obedience to Law Is Liberty
http://www.lds.org/general-conference/2013/04/obedience-to-law-is-liberty?lang=eng

First, be not moved in choosing right. In these latter days, there are no small decisions. The choices you are making right now are of critical importance. Agency, or the ability to choose, is one of God’s greatest gifts to His children. It is part of the plan of happiness you and I chose and defended in our premortal existence. Live your lives in such a way that you can listen to and hear the Holy Ghost, and He will help you make correct decisions. In fact, He will tell you “all things what ye should do.”5

Elaine S. Dalton

Be Not Moved!

http://www.lds.org/general-conference/2013/04/be-not-moved?lang=eng

A consecrated life respects the incomparable gift of one’s physical body, a divine creation in the very image of God. A central purpose of the mortal experience is that each spirit should receive such a body and learn to exercise moral agency in a tabernacle of flesh. A physical body is also essential for exaltation, which comes only in the perfect combination of the physical and the spiritual, as we see in our beloved, resurrected Lord. In this fallen world, some lives will be painfully brief; some bodies will be malformed, broken, or barely adequate to maintain life; yet life will be long enough for each spirit, and each body will qualify for resurrection.

D. Todd Christofferson
Reflections on a Consecrated Life
http://www.lds.org/general-conference/2010/10/reflections-on-a-consecrated-life?lang=eng