One of my roommates showed me a powerful quote during our Stake Conference this past Sunday. I don’t have the exact wording, and I don’t know the source, but it read something like this:
Your worth was decided before you got here. You can’t change your worth by what you do or have done. You can, however, change your worthiness.
What is our worth? D&C 18:10 tells us to “Remember the worth of souls is great in the sight of God.” We are valuable to the Lord. He knows and loves us as individuals, His spirit children. He cares for us. That love is not affected by the mistakes that we have made, or will make in the future.
Our worthiness, on the other hand, can be very volatile. We know that “no unclean thing can dwell with God” (1 Ne. 10:21) “[n]or dwell in his presence” (Moses 6:57). This means that we must be completely clean, through continual repentance, to be considered worthy to be in the Lord’s presence. This is completely within our control. As we remember the Lord in our daily lives and strive to ALWAYS choose the right (and repent when we fail to do so), we can be clean through the atonement of Christ.
Though our worth remains, regardless of our choices, our worthiness to live in the Lord’s presence is entirely up to us.