Your Heavenly Father has given you agency, the ability to choose right from wrong and to act for yourself. You have been given the Holy Ghost to help you know good from evil. While you are here on earth, you are being proven to see if you will use your agency to show your love for God by keeping His commandments.
While you are free to choose for yourself, you are not free to choose the consequences of your actions. When you make a choice, you will receive the consequences of that choice. The consequences may not be immediate, but they will always follow, for good or bad. Wrong choices delay your progression and lead to heartache and misery. Right choices lead to happiness and eternal life. That is why it is so important for you to choose what is right throughout your life.
You are responsible for the choices you make. you should not blame your cirumstances, your family, or your friends if you choose to disobey God's commandments. You are a child of God with great strength. You have the ability to choose righteousness and happiness no matter what your cirumstances.
You are also responsible for developing the abilities and talents Heavenly Father has given you. You are accountable to Him for what you do with your abilities and how you spend your time. Do not idle away your time. Be willing to work hard. Choose to do many good things of your own free will.
Matthew 25:14-29 (scriptures at the end are also good reference points)
*Laura's thoughts and reflections*
I've come to learn that Heavenly Father gave us agency, the ability to choose for ourselves right or wrong things, in order for us to learn to always choose the right things that will help us return to heaven and to His presence in the life to come. However, agency isn't necessarily about good 24/7. With agency comes the ability to choose things or situations or what have you that can harm us, both physically, mentally, and spiritually. Another key role in this gift, is that of accountability and being responsible for our actions and choices, and being able to suffer the consequences whatever they may be, whether positive or negative ones.
Like it states above, we were placed here on this earth and given the gift of agency by Heavenly Father as sort of a test, to see whether or not we would be able to use it in order to choose good things that show the love we have for God by obeying His commandments. He did this for us so that we could be happy and not have our progression hindered by having to live through agony and dispair and unhappiness. Would you want to waste such a precious gift as that by making choices that hurt you and in turn make Him hurt? I wouldn't!
Accountability runs through the principle of agency like blood does through living beings, it goes hand in hand. We are accountable for every single thing we do, say, think, and believe. We are held accountable for how our time is spent, whether in idleness or in earnest hard work, and also in how we cultivate our many talents and abilities that we've been granted, in whether or not we develop them to their full maximum potential or whether or not we just don't act like we care. He made each and every single one of us in a unique image of Himself with individual talents, strengths/weaknesses, abilities, and circumstances that are apart of Him. By not wasting our time and talents, and instead working hard and developing the gifts we've been given, we are again using our agency to make the right choices and show God and Jesus Christ how much we love and care for them.
