Walking Uprightly Before God

“King Mosiah having gone the way of all the earth, having warred a good warfare, walking uprightly before God. . .” (Alma 1:1)

To walk uprightly before other people, to be able to hold our head up and know we are okay, is a significant sign of recovery (repentance and redemption) and a God-given self-worth. It took a dream, however, to teach me the far deeper significance of what it means to be able to walk “uprightly before God.”

In the dream I saw myself about to enter a great court or hall. There was a long aisle down the middle of the room, lined on either side by all my significant others—every person I had ever wanted to impress or have the approval of in my mortal life. They were all watching me as I entered the hall through some large, heavy doors. I was so tempted to search out their faces in that seemingly numberless crowd, hoping to find them finally beaming with approval and admiration of me. Somehow, I knew, though, that there was no one in that hall more significant than the glorious Beings that sat enthroned at the far end of the room. Everyone paled in comparison to Them. Their glory seemed to fill the whole room and everyone, including myself, was bathed in it. For a moment, I stood transfixed in awe and wonder, and in the next moment I remembered Them. They were my Heavenly Father and Mother!

My heart melted with the most intense love I had ever known. Eons of the eternal childhood I had spent before mortality, nurtured and guided by these two shining beings, came flooding back to me. But at that same moment that my heart began to melt, it also seemed to freeze. The memory of all my earthly sins (and they had been many and serious) began to crowd my mind. I felt as if I had come to a great celebration, a great reunion, in dirty and stained garments. I had shown up looking like a vagabond and an orphan.

I was about to drop my eyes in shame, to hang my head in abject sorrow and misery. “Why?” I thought, “Dear Jesus, why couldn’t You have come through those doors with me? Why couldn’t I have come here, hidden behind your spotless robes? You kept me and carried me through my whole mortal journey. How could You put me down just outside those doors and then go and stand up there, so far away, and leave me to enter in so naked and alone?” My eyes began to waver and my head to fall.

Then came His precious voice, still and small. “I am still with you, Colleen. Keep your eyes on me and come ahead.”

There! There stood my Savior, my best Friend (and sometimes it had felt in mortality, my only friend). My eyes riveted to His; my heart flew ahead of me to His familiar, safe presence. I nearly began to run up the long aisle.

Then I saw who was standing with Him. There were the glorious, shining figures of a man and a woman. Their brightness exceeded His own.

I searched His distant face and found His eyes once again. I heard His voice continue: “Do not let your vision drop. Do not look to the left or to the right. Your faith in me and in my power to make you clean is demonstrated in this very hour by holding your head up. Let your confidence wax strong in the presence of God. Not confidence in yourself, but confidence in me and in my atoning power. Walk uprightly before me. Walk uprightly before God.”

That dream was some years ago. I hope I never awake from its message. I know that in body, the Lord, Jesus Christ is waiting for me, along with my Heavenly Parents, at the end of this long walk of mortality. I also know that in spirit and voice He is with me the whole way. I do not walk alone.

I have decided to practice (which means I don’t do it perfectly) keeping my chin up and my eyes single to His glory. I have seen the hour when I will need all the practice I can get at being confident in the presence of God. I have seen that this very confidence will be my final judgment.

To “walk uprightly before God” means more than just living an honest, exemplary life on earth, although, of course, that too is a correct application of the thought. To walk uprightly before God is also a statement of my own sense of worth as a child of God. It is a statement of my belief in how important He thinks I am.

The Lord gave His life for you and me. Does that give us any hint, any insight into what our worth is to God?

We will only be able to walk uprightly before Him in that day of final judgment if we have put away all reverse pride (thinking we’re more powerful to do wrong than He is to make right) and self-reliance, and have accepted with all our hearts His offering to redeem us.

As I walked into God’s presence in that dream, I realized that the final judgment is up to me. My Heavenly Family was waiting to receive me with aching arms and glowing countenances. Their eyes sought mine, hoping to see that I had learned enough about the power and Atonement of Christ to feel worthy; hoping I understood that through Him and His merits–not by any doing of my own–I was worthy to enter into Their presence and to rejoin them in eternal life.

I remember again the thought that came as I was tempted to hang my head in shame, “You have no need to cast your eyes upon the ground, Colleen. I, even Jesus Christ, have washed you purest white in my blood. Can you accept that? I can only give you this gift if you will accept it. I can only function in your life if you believe I can.”

In that hour I fought the same “good warfare” that we must all fight every hour of our mortal lives—the battle with the temptation to believe that I, with all my foolishness and folly, am greater than Christ, with all His mercy and love. It is the same battle that Nephi admitted fighting when he said:

O wretched man that I am! Yea, my heart sorroweth because of my flesh; my soul grieveth because of mine iniquities. I am encompassed about because of the temptations and the sins which do so easily beset me. And when I desire to rejoice, my heart groaneth because of my sins, . . .” (2 Nephi 4:17–19)

If we feel like Nephi, or even ten times worse, may God bless us all to return over and over to the same conclusion, despite our weaknesses and shortfalls, that he did: Nevertheless, I know in whom I have trusted. (2 Nephi 4:19) May we, even as Mosiah, war this good warfare and win.