Keep reading in 2 Nephi to chapter 25 verse 23. “For we labor diligently to write, to and persuade our children, and also our brethren, to believe in Christ, and to be reconciled to God; for we know that it is by grace that we are saved,
after all we can do.”
This verse makes it sound like works are also vital. So do we only merit grace after we do everything that we can to be righteous? During my 35 years in the LDS church, I hardly heard grace spoken of in sacrament meeting, primary, young women, Sunday school, relief society, early morning seminary, BYU religion classes, general conference or the temple. I didn’t learn anything about the grace of God until I started participating in RCIA. I have carried loads and loads of Mormon guilt my whole life because I could never do everything necessary for salvation. I am working on getting rid of the Mormon guilt through the grace of God. It’s a tough road.
I can give you the “Sunday School” answers.
- Go to church every Sunday.
- Read scriptures daily. The Book of Mormon needs to be read daily. Any reading of the Bible needs to be in addition to reading the BOM, or you can just skip the Bible all together.
- Pray daily, at least morning and evening, in personal prayer. Have family prayer daily. Have couple prayer with your spouse daily.
- Hold Family Home Evening every Monday. It doesn’t really count if you do it another day like Sunday.
- Serve diligently in your callings even if it takes too much time away from your family. Never turn down a calling and never ask to be released.
- Pay tithing (10% on gross income including gifts and inheritances) even if you have to choose between paying tithing and purchasing food for your children.
- Attend the temple at least once a month.
- Do visiting teaching and home teaching each month.
- Provide service to those in need. However, one can only do this through the LDS church. One cannot give Christlike service outside the LDS church (this is what my stake president told me when he showed up at my doorstep unannounced after we stopped attending for about 6 weeks).
- Be married in the temple for time and all eternity. A marriage just isn’t good enough if it is not in the temple and you are doing your children a huge disservice if you are not sealed in the temple.
- Do family history work and make sure you take family names to the temple to do their proxy ordinance work.
- Don’t drink coffee, tea or alcoholic beverages. Actually, you really shouldn’t drink Coke either because it just looks bad drinking anything with caffeine in it.
- Teach your children to be good Mormon children. If they leave the LDS church, this means you did something wrong as a parent.
- Serve a full-time mission. If one doesn’t, the chances of scoring a “worthy” LDS spouse to marry in the temple decreases substantially. Also remember that after you retire, you need to serve at least one mission as a senior missionary couple.
- Believe that the BOM is historically true and that archeologists just haven’t found evidence of horses, chariots or steel swords yet.
- Believe that Joseph Smith was a really great guy even though he had a thing for teenage girls and ‘married’ multiple women behind his legal wife’s back.
- Do whatever your bishop or stake president tells you to do because they are the Lord’s annointed and have the power of discernment. Even if they are exerting power over you just because they can, you have very little recourse.
- Help clean the chapel periodically because the LDS church doesn’t have enough money to hire janitors even after you pay 10% tithing.
- Believe that God was once a sinful man on another planet and that he didn’t actually create the universe. He simply organized matter that just happened to already be there.
- Believe in an infinite regression of generations of Gods until your head explodes.
I’m sure I’ve missed a few things that we need to do so that we can be saved by the Mormon god’s grace.