How can you be sure you’re making the right decisions for your future? Elder Quentin L. Cook offers five principles to help.
Photo by James Wheeler
Do you sometimes feel bogged down with the pressure that comes from making big life decisions? Or even the pressure that comes from smaller life decisions, each piling on top of the other? If so, you’re not alone. Many of us face important life decisions without having the confidence of knowing that what we’re choosing is right. How can we know if our decisions today are the best for our future?
Elder Quentin L. Cook of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles gives us five principles in his address “The Eternal Importance of Righteous Choices.” These principles can help us not only to make the right choices but also to be confident in those choices.
Five Principles
- Continue to learn. As we make decisions, we may learn new information that will guide us to make other righteous decisions. Using that knowledge is key to our personal growth.
- Make the righteous choice. If there is an obvious right or wrong answer, we must choose the right even if it is more difficult. We may face opposition in all things (2 Nephi 2:11, 27), but as we strive to live according to Christ’s teachings, the right choices will become clear.
- Give day-to-day focused effort. It is easier to make right choices if we have practice doing so. Choosing to read scriptures, pray, attend church, and make other righteous choices each day will give us the needed practice in making right choices, help us experience the benefits of good choices, and direct us toward the Savior.
- Be strong and immovable in matters of righteousness. Not all our decisions are black and white, but when we make a righteous choice, we must stand firm in our beliefs and not be swayed. Elder Cook quotes President Heber C. Kimball who says to “seek for the testimony of Jesus and cleave to it, that when the trying time comes you may not stumble and fall.”
- Don’t live on “borrowed light.” We must develop our own testimonies of the Lord Jesus Christ rather than relying on the testimonies of others. A testimony of Christ is a solid foundation to base our decisions on.
As we move forward with faith, living by these five principles will not only enhance our ability to make righteous decisions and feel confident in them but also bring us closer to our Savior and bless our lives now and in the future.
Read Elder Quentin L. Cook’s address “The Eternal Importance of Righteous Choices” for further insights on how to make righteous choices with confidence and on why those righteous decisions matter so much.
Source: ChurchofJesusChrist.org
—Jessie Bruner, Latter-day Saint Insights
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Find more insights
Learn more about trusting the Lord Jesus Christ with our decisions in Jenna Ahern’s article “Move Forward in Spite of Fear.”
Take a look at “Waiting on a Green Light From God” by Renee Stevens for insights on how to let God guide you in your decisions.