Saratoga Springs Utah Temple with a rising waxing gibbous moon.
Excerpt None of us is immune from trial. Elder Neal A. Maxwell teaches that if we endure well, today’s struggles are shaped into tomorrow’s blessings. Here’s my mark-in-time takeaway and how I’m applying it.
Intro I listened again to Elder Neal A. Maxwell’s devotional “If Thou Endure Well.” The sentence that stayed with me: None of us can or will be immune from the trials of life. However, if we learn to endure our struggles well, they will be turned into blessings in eternity. That’s both bracing and kind—God doesn’t waste pain when we place it in His hands.
Straight line (what he’s saying) • Mortality guarantees opposition; surprise is optional. • Enduring well ≠ grim hanging-on; it’s faithful submission, patience, and continuing to choose light. • Timing is part of God’s tutoring—deliverance sometimes tarries so discipleship can deepen. • Gratitude and meekness change how trials shape us. They don’t shorten the storm, but they change the sailor. • The Lord consecrates affliction to our gain when we refuse cynicism and keep covenant routines (scripture, prayer, sacrament, service).
Final reflection Enduring well is a decision repeated—quietly—over and over. It’s choosing not to narrate my trial as abandonment, but as apprenticeship. It’s trusting that God is doing more with my life than I can see from the shoreline.
Pocket I’m keeping • Expect opposition; practice patience on purpose. • Pair prayers with small, durable acts (keep the next covenant, serve the next person, take the next right step). • Measure “progress” by faithfulness, not by ease.
What I hear now Tonight’s images—reflections, a quiet bench, a waxing gibbous over the spire—feel like a lesson in waiting. I can’t rush the moon to its mark, but I can keep framing, steady my hands, and choose light again. If I endure well, God will finish the alignment.
September 3, 2025 — after ~20 listens/reads since last night
Manila Temple × Milky Way. Elder Neal A. Maxwell’s “Free to Choose” reminds me that joy needs both agency and daily submission—souls matter more than stars.
Intro
Elder Maxwell’s final BYU devotional (2004) feels like a compass: agency = joy + daily submissiveness. The line that keeps ringing: “Souls matter more than stars.” Freedom to choose is breathtaking—and sobering—because God honors our desires and won’t force us. That means peace is possible without compulsion, and accountability is real.
Straight Line
Agency is God-given and personal. “I have given unto man his agency” (Moses 7:32). “Thou mayest choose for thyself” (Moses 3:17).
Agency is complete—consequence included. We can “live and move and do according to [our] own will” (Mosiah 2:21), but “whoso doeth iniquity, doeth it unto himself” (Hel. 14:30).
Opposition is required, not optional. We’re enticed “by the one or the other” (2 Nephi 2:16); no neutral exists.
Desires direct judgment. We receive “according to [our] desires” and “wills” (Alma 29:4). Educate desire = spiritual continuing ed.
Real risk: some are “not willing to enjoy that which they might have received” (D&C 88:32). Tragedy = turning down joy.
No decision is a decision. Delay discards the holy present; accountability stands “astride every path.”
Lucifer can tempt but not compel. God won’t force; the devil can’t force.
Souls > stars. The cosmos is vast, but the gift to choose—and choose God—is vaster. Joy needs freedomandsubmissiveness.
God’s posture: “What could I have done more?” He gives the maximum reward and the minimum penalty justice allows.
Final Reflection
Agency isn’t adrenaline; it’s alignment. The Spirit clarifies; He doesn’t coerce. Maxwell hooks joy to two daily moves:
Choose (don’t drift).
Submit (trust the Father’s will), like the Savior did.
That mix removes panic from decision-making. It reframes boundaries as worship, not deprivation. It also explains why I can feel peace while longing tugs—the peace marks my stance, not the absence of pressure.
Pocket lines I’m keeping
No decision is a decision.
Educate your desires.
Souls matter more than stars.
He will not force us.
What I hear now
Name the choice: I will use my freedom to choose covenant-keeping over compulsion.
Educate desire (micro-habits): one scripture paragraph; one honest prayer; one tiny act of service. Desires follow diet.
Boundary as submission: Not replying to triggering messages is choosing God now, not “avoiding.”
Presence over pressure: Wife is in town—people > stars (and > screens). Focus mode stays on; lock-screen previews stay minimal.
Work lens: In interviews, I’ll listen for agency patterns: signal → hypothesis → test → decision → ROI. Under heat, do they choose calmly and own consequences?
One-line prayer:Father, I choose Thy will in this hour; educate my desires and make my joy clean.
“Meeting the Challenges of Today” — Elder Neal A. Maxwell
Intro
Driving to the Syracuse Temple, I queued up Elder Neal A. Maxwell’s 1978 devotional “Meeting the Challenges of Today.” One line kept burning: God’s foreknowledge and foreordination “underline how very long and how perfectly God has loved us and known us with our individual needs and capacities.” That changes how I face pushback—not with heat, but with holy steadiness.
Listening loop: I’ve listened/read this message 30+ times since Thursday—car to Jordan River, then to Syracuse. Each pass peeled back another layer.
Selected lines (to read slowly)
“In the months and years ahead, events will require of each member that he or she decide whether…to follow the First Presidency.”
“A new irreligion seeks to make itself the state religion…using preserved freedoms to shrink freedom.”
“Be principled but pleasant…perceptive without being pompous.”
“We were measured before and found equal to our tasks…God will not overprogram us.”
Doctrine Note: Foreordination ≠ Predestination
Foreordination is a conditional stewardship, not a guarantee. God can foresee outcomes without forcing them; agency remains intact.
David: God foresaw David’s fall but did not cause it. David chose Bathsheba; agency—and accountability—were David’s.
Martin Harris (116 pages): God foresaw the loss and prepared a remedy centuries earlier (see D&C 10; Words of Mormon).
Conclusion: God is never surprised; we are never compelled. Foreordination calls us to faithfulness, not fatalism.
When minor defeats loom
“There will also be times, happily, when a minor defeat seems probable, that others will step forward, having been rallied to righteousness by what we do.” — Elder Neal A. Maxwell
How I’ve seen this: when I was knocked down at work, unexpected help appeared—quiet encouragements, timely messages, and small mercies that kept me moving. God’s compensating provisions are often people.
Practice today:Who can I quietly rally by how I show up? Act first; announce later.
My working understanding now
God doesn’t live inside my clock. He sees past–present–future at once.
Agency is real. He allowed me to choose Utah and walk hard roads; He wasn’t the cause of every sorrow, nor surprised by any of it.
Compensating provisions exist. He prepares remedies far ahead of my missteps.
**We are not foreordained to fail, but called to succeed—**and to become.
Becoming, Not Just Describing
Maxwell doesn’t invite us to argue; he invites us to become. Utah’s quiet—sometimes lonely—became the classroom where I finally studied harder, worshiped more steadily, and let the doctrine soak until it changed my reflexes.
How I’ll practice becoming (small and daily):
Act > announce: do the next right thing before I say the next right thing.
Covenant rhythm: weekly temple worship, even when feelings lag.
Charity first: measure responses by love, not by likes or score-keeping.
Ask once, then release: honor others’ agency as God honors mine.
Working creed:God foresees; I choose. If I stay on the covenant path, I’m not “stuck”—I’m becoming what my blessing already pointed to.
“Foreordination is like any other blessing—it is a conditional bestowal subject to our faithfulness… Prophecies foreshadow events without determining the outcomes… God foresaw the fall of David, but was not the cause of it… God foresaw, but did not cause, Martin Harris’s loss… and made plans to cope with that failure over fifteen hundred years before it was to occur.”
Premortal memory (often called the “council in heaven”) — Joseph F. Smith:
“In coming here, we forget all, that our agency might be free indeed… by the power of the Spirit… we often catch a spark from the awakened memories of the immortal soul, which lights up our whole being as with the glory of our former home.” (Gospel Doctrine, pp. 13–14)
Why this belongs here: Foreordination honors agency; mortal forgetting protects it. The Spirit’s “spark” is what turns doctrine into direction—reminding me who I’m to become, not scripting how I’m forced to get there.
When minor defeats loom (for this week’s online heat)
“There will also be times, happily, when a minor defeat seems probable, that others will step forward, having been rallied to righteousness by what we do.”
Application: in the FB pile-on, unexpected help appeared. God’s compensating provisions are often people. Charity begets courage in others.
Tone to keep (even online):
“Be principled but pleasant… perceptive without being pompous… have integrity and not write checks with our tongues which our conduct cannot cash.”
We cannot judge who will come (God’s sight ≠ our verdicts)
“The Lord… said, ‘Cast the net on the right side’… If he knew beforehand the whereabouts of fishes in the Sea of Tiberias, should it offend us that he knows beforehand which mortals will come into the gospel net?”
Application: He knows who will soften, when, and how. My job is faith and kindness—not forecasting souls.
A living (not retired) God
“One dimension of worshipping a living God is to know that he is alive and seeing and acting. He is not a retired God… He is, at once, in all the dimensions of time—past, present, and future—while we labor within time’s limits.”
Takeaway: He foresees without forcing, prepares without pampering, and lives to help—now.
Final Reflection
If God truly knew us and trusted us with these exact days, then opposition isn’t proof He abandoned us; it’s evidence He appointed us. Foreordination isn’t status—it’s stewardship; not a guarantee—but a charge to be faithful.
What I hear now
Choose loyalty early; live it quietly.
Be firm without sharpness—principled but pleasant.
Treat foreordination as fuel for service, not status.
When weary, remember: we were measured before, and God won’t press more than we can bear.
Let pushback refine your discipleship, not redefine it.
