Obedience

There is no substitute for obedience. It is the first law of heaven. When I look back at my life, and my mission experience, the happiest times that I have had were those times when I did exactly what I knew I was suppose to do. I have always been happiest when I have followed the rules instead of ignoring them. Or when I pretended they didn't exist.
From modern revelation we learn that "When we obtain any blessing from God, it is by obedience to that law upon which it is predicated" (Doctrine and Covenants 120:21, pg. 265). All of our blessings can be tied back to some law or commandment that we have decided to be obedient to. Sometimes it may seem like commandments restrict our freedom, but I know that living commandments it what really makes us free.
 Take a funnel for instance:

   Say you needed to get one piece of rice through a funnel.  So, you hold the funnel right-side up and put the grain of rice in the top. There are a lot of different ways you can get the rice into the funnel. It can go in on the right side, on the left side, down the middle, etc... But as the grain of rice goes down the funnel there is only one way that it can escape. There is only one little tiny tiny hole at the bottom. However, if you hold the funnel upside-down, there is only one hole for the rice to go in, but there are so many different ways that the grain of rice can come out! It can escape on the right side, the left side, down the middle, etc... This is how commandments can be viewed. If we disregard commandments it may seem freeing in the beginning. There seem to be so many different ways to go. But what about in the end? How many options do we have to escape? When we obey the commandments- even though it may seem restricting in the beginning- we have so much more freedom in the end.
  I know God loves us enough to give us commandments. I know we are given commandments for a reason, even if we don 't completely understand why. I know that when we are obedient to those commandments peace and joy will begin to fill our lives.