Question
Dear Gramps,
My wife and I were sealed in the temple almost 11 years ago, but since that time she has fallen away from the church and says she doesn’t believe in the gospel anymore. I love my wife very much and she is a good mother and person (that is why I married her). If I remain faithful will I be with her after this life?
Tyler
Answer
Dear Tyler,
We live in successive moments of time, but the tendency is to regard each moment as eternal. However, there are unlimited virtual realities stretching out before us. The physical reality is determined by which choice we make, moment after moment.
In the case of your question, the implied condition is only a virtual reality. That condition is that no changes will be made in the future to alter the conditions of the present. That, of course, is almost never the case. In particular, the time may well come when your wife will come to her senses, realize her erroneous path, repent of all her wrong doings, and therefore, be forgiven by the Lord of all her sins and be welcomed back into His presence. This hopeful change could occur yet in mortality, or in the post-mortal spirit world. If and when that would occur, there would be restored to her all of the blessings promised to her in the holy temple.
Your own faithfulness is a powerful active ingredient in this scenario. Our Father is ever close to us and is solicitous for our welfare. Marvelous things could happen as a result you’re your earnest, faithful and sincere importuning of your Father for His help and intervention. Earnest prayer is a very powerful tool. It has the power to influence the mind God, to bring into play His kindness, mercy and intervention. He has required us to pray often, to continue instant in prayer. We read the following comforting thoughts regarding our Father’s kind intervention in the Doctrine and Covenants:
Search diligently, pray always, and be believing, and all things shall work together for your good, if ye walk uprightly and remember the covenant wherewith ye have covenanted one with another (D&C 90:24).
Therefore, let your hearts be comforted; for all things shall work together for good to them that walk uprightly, and to the sanctification of the church (D&C 100:15).
One of the key ingredients that influences our Father’s will is the principal of faith–be believing. Now faith is to have the confidence and expectation of reality; to have faith in something is to act as if you knew that it were true. If you can bring that about, you will no more be anxious or worried. You will assume with confidence that the Lord will intervene and will cause to be brought about that in which you have implicit faith. We may be instructed by the example of Jacob in the Book of Mormon—
Wherefore, we search the prophets, and we have many revelations and the spirit of prophecy; and having all these witnesses we obtain a hope, and our faith becometh unshaken, insomuch that we truly can command in the name of Jesus and the very trees obey us, or the mountains, or the waves of the sea (Jacob 4:6).
Perhaps the outstanding example of the intervention of God in turning around the life of a loved one is found in Mosiah 27:14—
And again, the angel said: Behold, the Lord hath heard the prayers of his people, and also the prayers of his servant, Alma, who is thy father; for he has prayed with much faith concerning thee that thou mightest be brought to the knowledge of the truth; therefore, for this purpose have I come to convince thee of the power and authority of God, that the prayers of his servants might be answered according to their faith.
This could happen to you.
Gramps
