Agency is a tremendous tool, allowing our souls to be re-formed in God’s image. When agency is coupled with humility, we can turn our life experiences into divine understanding. This process absolutely requires repentance. Repentance is the mechanism the turns experience into expansion—that alters the sin from barrier to springboard. But using agency to refuse to repent or continue to make negative choices can have the exact opposite effect spiritually.
The Nephites’ sin was a barrier, not only to their spiritual progress, but also to their very existence. Rather than humbly turning to their God, they refused to hear him. They believed in defenses of earth and wood rather than the defense offered by Yahweh’s infinite power. Of this sad human tendency, Nephi lamented: “Cursed is he that putteth his trust in man, or maketh flesh his arm, or shall hearken unto the precepts of men, save their precepts shall be given by the power of the Holy Ghost” (2 Ne. 28:31).