Enduring to the End

We have the charge to keep the commandment to endure to the end.  From dictionary.com, endure means, “to bear without resistance or with patience”.  When I was a child, enduring to the end meant to me trying to pay attention to the talks in sacrament meeting and not on what I wanted to do when I got home.  Until I studied more about it, I thought it meant to pay my tithes and go to church every week until the day I die.  I now know that it means to remain faithful to the laws and ordinances of the gospel of Jesus Christ throughout my life. 

President Dieter F Uchtdorf has stated that, “This belief distinguishes Latter-day Saints from many other Christian denominations that teach that salvation is given to all who simply believe and confess that Jesus is the Christ.”

D&C 14:7 And, if you keep my commandments and endure to the end you shall have eternal life, which gift is the greatest of all the gifts of God.

President Uchtdorf further declared, “Ours is an active religion, helping God's children along the straight and narrow path to develop their full potential during this life and return to Him one day. Viewed from this perspective, enduring to the end is exalting and glorious, not grim and gloomy. This is a joyful religion, one of hope, strength, and deliverance. Adam fell that men might be; and men are, that they might have joy.”

So enduring to the end is more than my just hanging in there through life’s difficulties.  It’s doing my best to keep the commandments of the Lord, including but not limited to keeping my oaths and covenants, honoring my priesthood, being a good husband and father, paying my tithes, service and charity towards others, faithful church attendance, accepting and magnifying my callings in the church, ministering to others through home teaching and sharing the gospel to bring others unto Christ.

“We tend to think only in terms of our endurance, but it is God’s patient long-suffering which provides us with our chances to improve, affording us urgently needed developmental space or time.  Paul observed, “Now no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous: nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness.” Such “peaceable fruit” comes only in the appointed season thereof, after the blossoms and the buds.  Otherwise, if certain mortal experiences were cut short, it would be like pulling up a flower to see how the roots are doing. Put another way, too many anxious openings of the oven door, and the cake falls instead of rising. Moreover, enforced change usually does not last, while productive enduring can ingrain permanent improvement. 

Patient endurance is to be distinguished from merely being “acted upon.” Endurance is more than pacing up and down within the cell of our circumstance; it is not only acceptance of the things allotted to us, but to “act for ourselves” by magnifying what is allotted to us.”

--Elder Neal A Maxwell, “Endure It Well”