Re-Reviewing Conference and Being "Saved"

This morning, I wanted to blog about Elder Robert D. Hales' talk at the start of Conference, where he talked about the wisdom of reviewing General Conference. As I said in my latest post, it's easier to get more detailed notes when you review Conference talks online than when you hear them broadcast for the first time. Talking Elder Hales' advice, I reviewed his and President Monson's first talk from this Conference and took extensive notes. But now those notes are gone.

I must have accidentally closed the program before saving the changes I made to the word processor, which is unusual, because the program prompts me to save before closing it. Maybe I shut down the computer without closing the program first? I'm surprised I didn't save the changes before walking away from the computer, just out of habit. While writing essays for school, I save my changes frequently. It's astonishing that I didn't save my notes. I still have the notes I took at Conference, though, so I still have some notes from his talk. But I had many notes on the computer that I didn't have on paper.

I'm going to try to see this as a blessing in disguise. This is an opportunity to re-review Elder Hales' talk, and maybe pick up a new insight that I didn't get the last two times (at the expense of whatever insights I caught the last time I reviewed his talk, but can't remember now). It's also a lesson in learning to save your progress. I wonder how that could be adapted into an analogy....

In life, you can't really "save your progress." Heaven doesn't measure a person's worthiness in how many good deeds they've done. There's no Celestial bank account where, if you have enough Goodness Points stored up, you qualify for Heaven. You're never "safe." You're never done. There will never be a point, while you're still alive, where you can breathe a sigh of relief and sit back and relax, knowing that you're already Saved. No matter how good you are or have been, your soul is still being fought over, and you could still lose it.

Satan doesn't give up. It doesn't matter how high the odds are stacked against him or how little he stands to gain by trying to tempt someone that refuses to give in to temptation. He will always keep trying to win. (In fact, I kind of admire that about him. I wish I had that much tenacity.) The point is that since he will always keep trying to steal our souls, we must always stay vigilant to protect them. Though we can make great progress toward our goal of Eternal Life, we can never "save" that progress; we need to continually keep fighting to maintain it.

Just as I lost many of the insights I gained yesterday, I could easily lose my spiritual progress if I don't apply the insight I gained today. I don't think God cares about who we were or what we did anywhere near as much as He cares about who we are and what we do. Whether we were sinners who repented and, or saints who fell into sin, I think God cares more about where we end up than where we've been. And whether we were better people before or are better people now, that doesn't mean anything to the future. Whether we're good or bad right now, there's still time to rise or fall as long as we're still breathing. If we want to be completely sure that we're good people when we pass on to be judged, we need to be careful to keep rising, to not lose the progress we've made.