The Plan of Happiness

The Plan of Happiness
Boyd K. Packer

(link to talk)

(remember I am using the "language of faith" meaning I am wording the counsel and teaching "as if" I already believe or am already doing it. All bold type is my insertion.)

• Marriage is the great adventure of life.
• The end of all activity in the Church is to see that a man and a woman with their children are happy at home, sealed together for time and for all eternity.
• The commandment to multiply and replenish the earth has never been rescinded. It is essential to the plan of redemption and is the source of, the plan of, and the key to human happiness.
• Through the righteous exercise of procreation, we may come close to our Father in Heaven and experience a fulness of joy, even godhood.
• Our happiness in mortal life, our joy and exaltation are dependent upon how we respond to the persistent, compelling physical desire to mate.
• Mating should begin with romance - the storybook feelings of excitement and anticipation, moonlight and roses, love letters, love songs, poetry, holding hands, and other expressions of affection - feelings of joy. It is a prelude to mature love.
• Devotion and comfort spring from longtime married love.
• Though it is tried by temptation, misunderstanding, financial problems, family crises, and illness, mature love has a bliss not even imagined by newlyweds.
• True love requires intimacy only after a pledge of eternal fidelity, a legal and lawful ceremony, and ideally after the sealing ordinance. It is to be shared solely and only with your eternal companion.
• Worthy intimacy combines the most exquisite and exalted physical, emotional, and spiritual feelings associated with the word love. It has no equal, no counterpart, in all human experience and will last eternally, if covenants are kept.
• A fulness of glory includes the continuation of the seeds forever.
• A temple sealing can be sealed by the Holy Spirit of Promise with the promise of thrones, kingdoms, principalities, and powers and dominions.
• Joy awaits those who accept this supernal gift and use it worthily.
• Love is nourished by children who are born to trusted married couples.
• Our spirits are able to feel and perceive spiritual things.
• The spirit and the body are the soul of man which need to obey spiritual and physical laws to be happy.
• Laws relating to the power to give life are eternal and are irrevocably decreed in heaven and are the laws upon which all blessings are predicated.
• procreation is only legitimate and authorized between a legally married man and woman.
• These spiritual laws define the moral standard for mankind.
• Covenants bind, seal, safeguard and give promise of eternal blessings.
• Bridle all your passions, that ye may be filled with love. To bridle is to:
• guide 
• direct
• restrain 
• control 
• lawfully use 
  then procreative powers can bless and sanctify you.
• Temptations are ever present. 
• Satan seeks to degrade, corrupt and destroy the gift of procreation.
• The penalties for polluting these powers or for leading others to transgress are more exquisite and hard to bear than all they physical pleasure could ever be worth and cannot be escaped without repentance.
• Nowhere is the generosity and mercy of God more manifest than in repentance.
• when the process is complete, no scars remain because of the Atonement.
• We escape the guilt of sin by accepting the Atonement of Christ.
• God is loving and generous beyond comprehension. His judgments are just and His mercy without limit.
• He has power to compensate beyond any earthly comparison, to those who:
• are born with limitations and cannot beget children
• have marriage wrecked because of the infidelity of their spouse
• who live in single worthiness
• No matter 
• what you have done or 
• where you have been or 
• how something happened,
  if you truly repent, Christ atones and all that was heartache can turn to beauty and love and eternity.
• The Atonement 
• washes clean every stain no matter how difficult or how long or how many times repeated. 
• It can put you free again to move forward, cleanly and worthily, to pursue that path that you have chosen in life.
• It is individual. 
• Put the Atonement to work on anything that is bothering you - even if it happened so long ago you hardly remember it. It will clean it up, and you and Christ, will remember your sins no more.
  
  General Conference Challenge:
• Seek to have the end result of all my activity in the church be family happiness.
• Teach the doctrine and principles surrounding marriage and family.
• Seek to have my marriage sealed by the Holy Spirit of Promise.
• Bridle all my passions.
• Examine my life to see if anything needs to be repented of, no matter how long ago it happened. Put the Atonement to work.