Be 100 Percent Responsible | Elder Lynn G. Robbins

Agency and accountability are paired principles that cannot be separated. Take responsibility for your actions, and you take control of your life.
Sections:
Introduction: 0:05
The Korihor Principle--Separating Agency from Responsibility: 3:24
The Nehor Principle--Denying Justice: 4:26
The Anti-Responsibility List: 6:30
Excuses Do Not Equal Results: 12:06
The Difference Between Making an Excuse and Giving a Reason: 13:43
The Power and Reward of Being Responsible: 14:37
100 Percent Responsibility in the Distribution Center: 14:58
"Putting my Marriage Before My Pride": 22:25
The Greatest Example of All: 26:49
Two Ways to Deny the Lord's Justice: 30:49
Conclusion: 45:50
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"Brothers and sisters, I am grateful to be with you in this opening session of the 2017 BYU Campus Education Week. This year’s theme comes from Doctrine and Covenants 50:24, with special emphasis on these words: “And he that receiveth light, and continueth in God, receiveth more light.”
I am going to take a different approach to this theme than might be expected by exposing and illustrating some very cunning and effective ways that the “wicked one” prevents people from progressing and receiving more light (D&C 93:39).
Many gospel principles come in pairs, meaning one is incomplete without the other. I want to refer to three of these doctrinal pairs today:
-Agency and responsibility
-Mercy and justice
-Faith and works
When Satan is successful in dividing doctrinal pairs, he begins to wreak havoc upon mankind. It is one of his most cunning strategies to keep people from growing in the light.
You already know that faith without works really isn’t faith (see James 2:17). My primary focus will be on the other two doctrinal pairs: first, to illustrate how avoiding responsibility affects agency; and second, how “denying justice,” as it is referred to in the Book of Mormon (see Alma 42:30), affects mercy.
The Book of Mormon teaches us that we are agents to “act . . . and not to be acted upon” (2 Nephi 2:26)-or to be “free to act for [our]selves” (2 Nephi 10:23). This freedom of choice was not a gift of partial agency but of complete and total 100 percent agency. It was absolute in the sense that the One Perfect Parent never forces His children. He shows us the way and may even command us, but, “nevertheless, thou mayest choose for thyself, for it is given unto thee” (Moses 3:17).
Assuming responsibility and being accountable for our choices are agency’s complementary principles (see D&C 101:78). Responsibility is to recognize ourselves as being the cause for the effects or results of our choices-good or bad. On the negative side, it is to always own up to the consequences of poor choices...
Being 100 percent responsible is accepting yourself as the person in control of your life. If others are at fault and need to change before further progress is made, then you are at their mercy and they are in control over the positive outcomes or desired results in your life. Agency and responsibility are inseparably connected. You cannot avoid responsibility without also diminishing agency. Mercy and justice are also inseparable. You cannot deny the Lord’s justice without also impeding His mercy." - Lynn Robbins
Lynn G. Robbins, a member of the Presidency of the Seventy of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, delivered this devotional address on August 22, 2017, during BYU Campus Education Week.
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