Total submission is required

It is easy to make some change to our lives and in so doing fool ourselves into believing we have aligned ourselves with God, when we have actually left much more important changes undone, or limited those changes to only the most superficial of depths. In Jesus’ day, he railed against the Pharisees for overemphasizing the easy, superficial parts of the law of Moses while abundantly ignoring the deeper, more difficult matters:

23 Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith: these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone.
24 Ye blind guides, which strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel. (Matthew 23)

Submission to God cannot be feigned. He knows any limits you may have in your trust in him. God cannot be fooled. He sees all, and even the slightest rebellion from him will alienate you from him:

And he doth not dwell in unholy temples; neither can filthiness or anything which is unclean be received into the kingdom of God; therefore I say unto you the time shall come, yea, and it shall be at the last day, that he who is filthy shall remain in his filthiness. (Alma 7:21)

....No man can enter into the kingdom of God, except through forsaking everything in him that is not like God. (Matthew 19:26, Author’s Reflection)

Alignment with God is not a shallow act. It requires that you yield yourself to God’s will, which will almost always be different than yours:

For the natural man is an enemy to God, and has been from the fall of Adam, and will be, forever and ever, unless he yields to the enticings of the Holy Spirit, and putteth off the natural man and becometh a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord, and becometh as a child, submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon him, even as a child doth submit to his father. (Mosiah 3:19)

Superficial changes or changes in only some areas are insufficient to yield our hearts to God. You must crucify all things within and without that oppose Jesus Christ:

And they that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts. (Galatians 5:24)

21 And another of his disciples said unto him, Lord, suffer me first to go and bury my father.
22 But Jesus said unto him, Follow me; and let the dead bury their dead. (Matthew 8)

61 And another also said, Lord, I will follow thee; but let me first go bid them farewell, which are at home at my house.
62 And Jesus said unto him, No man, having put his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God. (Luke 9)

Wherefore teach it unto your children, that all men, everywhere, must repent, or they can in nowise inherit the kingdom of God, for no unclean thing can dwell there, or dwell in his presence; for, in the language of Adam, Man of Holiness is his name, and the name of his Only Begotten is the Son of Man, even Jesus Christ, a righteous Judge, who shall come in the meridian of time. (Moses 6:57)

Too many try to hide limits in submission to God by overcompensating in the things they have no problem doing. Unsurprisingly, those who limit their submission to God do not enjoy communion with him. Those who walk in willing misalignment from God cannot come to know him better, because they live in open rebellion against him:

36 And now, I say unto you, my brethren, that after ye have known and have been taught all these things, if ye should transgress and go contrary to that which has been spoken, that ye do withdraw yourselves from the Spirit of the Lord, that it may have no place in you to guide you in wisdom’s paths that ye may be blessed, prospered, and preserved—
37 I say unto you, that the man that doeth this, the same cometh out in open rebellion against God; therefore he listeth to obey the evil spirit, and becometh an enemy to all righteousness; therefore, the Lord has no place in him, for he dwelleth not in unholy temples. (Mosiah 2)

Submission to God cannot be partial. The Lord didn’t partially come down from heaven, or partially give his life for us. Animals were not partially sacrificed in typifying his sacrifice. We do not follow him by partially submitting to him. In the scriptures, total submission is called having a “broken heart and contrite spirit.”¹ Though rarely understood and hardly ever lived, this is the plain message in the oftgiven admonition to:

...love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy might, mind, and strength; and in the name of Jesus Christ thou shalt serve him. (D&C 59:5)[^455]

You must “...come with full purpose of heart, and cleave unto God as he cleaveth unto you.” (Jacob 6:5) To “cleave unto” him requires you to remove any deviation from how he would think, feel, or act in your life:

Yea, I say unto you come and fear not, and lay aside every sin, which easily doth beset you, which doth bind you down to destruction, yea, come and go forth, and show unto your God that ye are willing to repent of your sins and enter into a covenant with him to keep his commandments, and witness it unto him this day by going into the waters of baptism. (Alma 7:15)

Sanctification comes only as you obtain and retain total submission to God,² first by completely aligning your life to God, and then by maintaining this alignment as he teaches you more about himself over time.