Submission to God is not complete, even when a person sincerely commits to following God in whatever way he reveals in the future. Submission to what you know and expect isn’t the same as unconditional submission. You can believe that you would obey anything that God says and still find yourself disobeying something he says that you did not anticipate.
True submission to God occurs when your decision to submit to God transcends all conditions, constraints, and exclusions.3 When you achieve unconditional submission to God, you believe sufficiently in his love, knowledge, and other character qualities that you unfailingly assume that anything he asks of you is worth instantly and joyfully pursuing with your whole soul. You know and trust his character enough that no possible information would ever be rejected, resented, disobeyed, or ignored by you. The brother of Jared reached such a state with God, which is why God revealed greater things to him than he had to anyone prior.4 The Lord promised to reveal the same things to any who exercise the same faith as the brother of Jared.5 What milestone did the brother of Jared reach in his faith? He believed anything God could say before he said it. He had attained unconditional submission to God.6
You grow towards true unconditional submission to God through achieving and maintaining submission to God in all things that you can presently imagine. Initial submission to God consists of correcting any differences you know about between how you are and how you understand him to be. Thereafter, every change you make will consist of differences that you did not and could not have seen before. God is infinite and eternal, and unless you are precisely as he is, you cannot know ahead of time what he might ask of you, or how hard it may be. You achieve unconditional submission to God through repeatedly promoting God’s will and character above your own in all things, submitting to everything you currently know and continuing to submit as he reveals more of himself to you until you trust him under all circumstances possible in life.
Your submission to God grows through the maintenance of your reconciliation to him in spite of greater opposition.7 As you proceed through life, God will incrementally expose you to greater degrees of sacrifice than you previously expected in order to give you opportunities to advance in your reconciliation to and trust in him. The passage of time will bring additional information about God and new life circumstances, and in each moment you will face the decision of whether to remain reconciled to God or not. Submission to God becomes more difficult to maintain as God exposes you to more of life’s difficulties and asks of you greater sacrifices. Life’s circumstances magnify the details of your desires, articulating and revealing the inclination of your heart beyond what you would otherwise see.694 Each situation you face in life can be used to illustrate the limits of your submission and give you the opportunity to submit more completely.
As in all things, the Lord set the example of increasing and unfettered submission to God. The Lord’s entire life was a pattern of learning more about the Father and bringing himself into submission to what he learned. Jesus never quit in spite of the fact that his mortal life was an unbroken chain of new requests from the Father that were harder than he had expected. He did not say it was finished until he died.
Footnotes
- 1. Master, which is the great commandment in the law? Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. (Matthew 22:36-38) ↩
- 2. Therefore, O ye that embark in the service of God, see that ye serve him with all your heart, might, mind and strength, that ye may stand blameless before God at the last day. (D&C 4:2) ↩
- 3. And we are willing to enter into a covenant with our God to do his will, and to be obedient to his commandments in all things that he **shall** command us, all the remainder of our days, that we may not bring upon ourselves a never-ending torment, as has been spoken by the angel, that we may not drink out of the cup of the wrath of God. (Mosiah 5:5) ↩
- 4. ...never were greater things made manifest than those which were made manifest unto the brother of Jared. (Ether 4:4) ↩
- 5. And in that day that they shall exercise faith in me, saith the Lord, even as the brother of Jared did, that they may become sanctified in me, then will I manifest unto them the things which the brother of Jared saw, even to the unfolding unto them all my revelations, saith Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Father of the heavens and of the earth, and all things that in them are. (Ether 4:7) ↩
- 6. See Ether 3:11-13, cited previously. ↩
- 7. And we will prove them herewith, to see if they will do all things whatsoever the Lord their God shall command them. (Abraham 3:25) ↩