The Parable of the Ping Pong Balls
Sep 24, 2025
Hi, I'm Julie Hawkes.
Welcome to The Laws of Peace, where you will learn how to apply and understand God's laws in simple ways so that you can take small steps to create big changes and miracles and become the person you were always meant to be.
The answers are in the scriptures.
Let me show you how to find them.
Today's episode is called The Parable of the Ping Pong Balls and the Difference Grace Makes.
We're going to start with three progressive levels of obedience.
These have to do with our motivation and the reasons why we obey.
All obedience is good.
As we grow in our intentions and as we grow in our abilities, then obedience shifts from becoming transactional to becoming transformational.
We become rather than just do.
That's what we're going to talk about today.
I want to read a quote to you from Elder David A.
Bednar from a talk called Heartfelt and Willing Obedience from Education Week at BYU-Idaho in 2002 and he said, "Obedience is not simply a passive, steady state.
Rather, obedience must grow and develop and deepen and increase and expand.
Our experience with and understanding of the principle of obedience should change as we develop spiritually and as we gain additional light and knowledge, line upon line, precept upon precept.
Also, our spiritual expectations should increase and intensify as we continue to faithfully obey God's commandments."
So Elder Bruce R.
McConkey talks about the three levels of obedience, and I have paraphrased his words so that it's a little bit easier to understand.
The first level of obedience is we do something out of duty.
We do it because we don't want to get in trouble, or we're afraid that something bad might happen if we don't.
In this place, we're using a lot of willpower, a lot of self-discipline, we're white-knuckling it.
And this is also where we're earning blessings, or we're working from a checklist mentality.
We've talked a little bit about that in the past.
The second level is "willingness."
I want to obey.
And so that space, what we're doing is we're starting to shift our attitudes and our beliefs so that they more align with what God's attitudes and beliefs are.
And then the third level is: "I love to."
It's a submission.
It's submitting to God's will and also to God's timetable because sometimes we're really obedient for a really long time before we actually see the blessings come or the promises be fulfilled.
And so having faith in God's timetable is an important part of obedience and the parts that we're doing.
So when we look at this, it's important to know that obedience to law is about becoming someone, not just checking off a list, not just doing the law of Moses or living the letter of the law.
And as we shift into looking at a principle versus a rule, that's the first step that's going to help us in that place.
David A.
Bednar said, Eventually, we want to reach a point where we no longer are driven or directed by rules.
Instead, we learn to govern our lives by principle.
To be sure we keep the rules, but we also to begin to ask ourselves, well, what is the principle involved here?
Such a person becomes less dependent upon external scaffolding and structure and more dependent upon a quiet and ongoing divine direction.
We've talked about personal commandments.
I want to tell a quick story that really illustrates this.
I grew up just totally believing in the letter of the law.
We do everything exactly and we do it just a certain way.
When I got married and our oldest son was involved in sports, and he was in junior high and he was really involved in baseball, and baseball was going to be the same time as the mutual or the church activity for the youth on Tuesday nights.
And I was adamant that no matter what, he could not miss this church meeting.
He needed to go because we were good church people and that's what good church people do.
And my husband had a completely different perspective on this.
He felt like that sports were important too, and we needed to honor that because if he missed practices, then he wouldn't be able to play and all the things.
And I'm like, no, no, no, church is most important, right?
And so I was so adamant about, like I said, living the letter of the law.
I remember one night we had a conversation.
We talked about this for like three hours.
And finally, after he explained what he was feeling and why he felt the way he was and why it was important to him, and he talked about family and he talked about supporting our children in the activities that they're doing.
And he talked about how that's important.
He talked about that he wanted to be the kind of a dad that was always there for his son.
And all of a sudden, I had this completely different perspective, and I started to see from a principal base rather than an exact base.
So back in The Law of Moses, the way they lived the Law of Moses, it was funny.
Like you could only take so many steps on the Sabbath day.
You had to count your steps, right?
That's the same kind of attitude I was looking at about not missing a church activity on a weeknight.
You have to go to this activity no matter what.
But when we looked at it from a principal base of love, and what were the needs of this child, and what were the needs of the family, and what were our values about putting something that the child was learning, and putting family first, and all of these other kinds of thirsts, then we were able to look from a more principal based perspective at it.
And we still had a child that was very active, and very religious, and believed in God, and did all the things.
He just occasionally missed a Tuesday night.
So do you see this question that we ask when we say, what is the principal involved here?
It kind of pulls us out of that black and white thinking for a minute.
It pulls us out of, it has to only be perfect and certain, and that heaviness that comes, that actually I believe pulls us away from God, and the way he would like us to live commandments.
So that's the first thing.
The second thing is I want to go back to this first level of obedience, which again isn't necessarily bad.
It's this idea of doing things because we're duty bound, or because we don't want to do anything wrong.
And I want to share a quote from Robert Millett.
This is from his book called After All We Can Do, Grace Works.
And he said, see if you can see yourself a little bit in this.
I know I've seen myself in this.
So often we end up going through the motions, performing the appropriate labors, but not enjoying them.
Think of your checklist of church things you have to do.
Because remember, we're talking about being obedient to a law.
Doing the right things by having to grit our teeth and force ourselves to do them because we're trying to do good works against a will that is not fully surrendered or spiritually transformed.
Remember, we talked about the progressive, the three different spaces that we're going to go to as we progress, and as our heart changes and as we go from transactional to transformational.
This is where the parable of the Ping Pong Balls comes in.
And again, this is from Robert Milley.
He really explains things well.
So he said, I want you to imagine that you're standing in a baptismal font with water up to your waist.
A man in authority empties a large container into the font, and now you have a hundred ping pong balls floating in the font with you.
The man speaks, I hold the key to your salvation.
I'll make a deal with you.
If you can submerge all 100 ping pong balls at the same time, your salvation in the highest heaven is secured.
Will you reflect on this task for a moment?
And you think, I'll take the offer.
Just give me a few moments.
You think to yourself, this should be a snap.
I'm capable.
I'm competent.
I'm coordinated and I'm in excellent physical condition.
I can do it.
You begin.
You manage to submerge 10, then 20, then 30 ping pong balls using only your hands.
Then several of the balls pop back up.
That's okay, you think.
I was only using my hands anyway.
You now go about the task in a serious way, using your arms and your elbows and your chin and your legs and your feet, 60, 70, 80, and then pop.
Up come 10 formally submerged balls.
That's all right, you say to yourself, don't panic, I can do this.
Can you hear the toxic positivity in this?
I've certainly handled tougher situations than this.
Over and over and over again, you attempt to do what eventually appears to be the impossible.
We cannot keep all of the commandments all of the time.
In a sense, our sins are like those ping pong balls, right?
Our list of to do's are like those ping pong balls.
The same is true of performing our assignments and doing everything else that is expected of us.
We can grit our teeth, tighten our grip on the iron rod until our knuckles go white, and hold on for dear life.
We can do our jobs with tenacity and willpower and discipline.
To be sure, a certain amount of discipline is associated with discipleship.
The Lord expects us to give him our best shot.
But he does not expect us to do it all of this by ourselves.
He has offered to help us, to strengthen us, to enable us, and to empower us.
That's a pretty generous offer, and we would be foolish to refuse it or ignore it.
And then he goes on to share a quote from Elder Oaks.
Now remember, when we started this podcast, we talked about shifting from a transactional relationship with God to a transformational relationship with God.
We're going to shift our intentions of why we are obeying the law, any law.
And we're also going to shift out of this overwhelm, this perfectionism, this black and white thinking, either I'm good or I'm bad, I'm right or I'm wrong, I'm righteous or I'm wicked.
And we do that as we shift and change our hearts.
And this is what Elder Oaks had to say about this.
He said, the final judgment is not just an evaluation of the sum total of good and evil acts, right?
Keeping those ping pong balls in the water.
What we have done, it is an acknowledgement of the final effect of our acts and our thoughts, what we have become.
It is not enough for anyone just to go through the motions.
The Commandments, Ordinances, and Covenants of the Gospel are not a list of deposits required to be made in some heavenly account.
The Gospel of Jesus Christ is the plan that shows us how to become what our Heavenly Father desires us to become.
We qualify for eternal life through a process of conversion.
As used here, the word has many meanings, signifies not just a convincing, but a profound change of nature.
So, how do we get there?
How do we stop being the person in the font, trying to hold down all the ping pong balls because we want to do it all and we want to do it right, and we have to do it right or else?
Grace.
Grace is the answer.
Let's talk about grace.
Grace is the enabling power that enables us to do things that we could not do by ourselves.
This is a quote from a different place, but it's the same guy, Robert Millett.
We have this fallacy, this false belief about grace.
There's a scripture in Nephi that says, after all you can do, it is by grace that you're saved.
We think all we can do is the ping pong ball thing.
We have to keep all the ping pong balls down.
But it's not after all we can do is not what we think it is.
Sometimes it's a little bit, sometimes it's a lot.
Mostly it's all about repenting.
But I want to read to you what grace really is.
This is from Robert Millett.
He said, God's grace is his mercy, his love, his condensation towards the children of men.
Grace is unmerited favor, unearned divine assistance, goodwill, heavenly benefit, loving kindness, and tender mercy.
What we want to do is we want to apply grace to our individual circumstances, to whatever commandment is hard for us.
For some of you, paying your tithing feels impossible.
For others of you, going to church feels like torture.
For some of you, forgiveness, forgiving that person who did that thing, you'd rather die.
Whatever it is that is hard for you, God wants you to have the grace necessary, the enabling power, the unmerited favor, the unearned divine assistance so that you can do what feels impossible.
How do we get it?
Let's go to the scriptures where it gets exciting.
First of all, the first principle that we want to know with this is this.
Second Corinthians chapter 12, this is Paul.
He's talking about that he had a thorn in his flesh and he asked God to take it away and God didn't.
And this is the principle.
He says, for this thing, I would be sought the Lord Thrice starting in verse 8 of chapter 12.
And he said unto me, My grace is sufficient for the for my strength is made perfect in weakness most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities that the power of Christ may rest upon me.
Therefore, I take pleasure in infirmities and reproaches and necessities and persecutions and distresses for Christ's sake.
For when I am weak, then I am strong.
It takes a lot of humility and meekness to recognize that we are weak.
We can't do it all by ourselves.
And when we try to do it all by ourselves, we are leaving the Savior out of the equation.
And so what is being invited is to accept that, yes, we do have some weaknesses and in the space of our weakness, in our challenges, the God will be with us and that he will help us and he will help us to do what feels most hard for us personally.
Quick story.
I am the mother of seven children and all the years that I've been raising my children, we don't have a dishwasher.
And for I tried really hard to have a good attitude about it.
I would pretend I was a mother from the fifties where they had all these kids in this little tiny space and not and they had to dish wash dishes by hand.
There was no such thing as dish washers back then.
Luckily, I had a home that was big enough to hold my giant family, but the dishes were overwhelming.
I had some challenges as a child that made doing dishes as an adult, very difficult and very painful.
And I would look at my kitchen and I would look at those stacks of dishes and they would stack after just one meal.
And I would think I can't, this is too much.
I can't do these dishes and I would sit on my couch and I would feel guilty and I would feel frustrated and I'd feel upset and I'd feel grumpy.
And I would just know that another meal was coming and that there was no counter space to create that meal and no dishes to create it with.
So what I did was I would beg the Lord, I would pray and I would say, Heavenly Father, please help me so that I can have the strength to stand up and wash the dishes.
Now, for some of you, you're like, the dishes, what's the big deal?
Just get in there and get it done.
Yes, maybe, but for me, that was a tremendous weakness for a lot of many, many reasons.
And so I would pray and within a couple of minutes, I would feel like I could stand up and start doing dishes.
I would do one and then two and then three and then four, and I would do dishes for a few minutes.
And then I'd probably have to go change a baby.
Then I'd come back and then I'd have to break up a fight.
But then I'd come back, but I would come back and I would find myself able to do something that felt impossible to me in the moment.
And that's what grace is.
Grace helps us do what feels impossible in the moment.
Grace is what helps us to be obedient to the personal commandments that God is inviting us to live that feel impossible and scary and hard and uncomfortable and overwhelming because God's never going to invite us to do something unless he's going to provide a way to do it.
Let's go to one more scripture.
This is in Hebrews chapter 4 verse 16, and this is what it says.
It says, Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need.
Let's acknowledge that we can't do it by ourselves.
Let's acknowledge that we need the Lord.
Let's choose to ask for help instead of trying to figure out ourselves, number one.
Number two, let's trust that God is going to make up the difference.
Then number three, let's take action based on inspiration.
Not some checklist that somebody else made for us.
This is the challenge that I have for you.
I want to finish with a quote.
This is from Mere Christianity and this is CS.
Lewis.
He says this most beautiful thing that I love.
He said, and in yet another sense, handing everything over to Christ does not of course mean that you stop trying.
To trust it means of course trying to do all the things he says.
There would be no sense in saying you trusted a person, you would not take his advice.
Thus, if you really handed yourself over to him, it must follow that you are trying to obey him.
But trying in a new way, a less worried way, a less hurried way, not doing things in order to be saved, but because he has already begun to save you.
Not hoping to get to heaven as a reward for your actions, but inevitably wanting to act in a certain way because a first faint of the gleam of heaven is already inside of you.
Isn't that beautiful?
Do you see how that shifts us from that transactional into that transformational?
There is so much hope.
Look at those laws that you're being invited to live, those personal commandments, those laws that feel hard and impossible.
Look at the reasons why you're obeying them and see if you can just make a tiny shift into trusting the Lord just a little bit more.
To do things in a less worried way, in a less trying to earn heaven way, but instead trusting that the Lord has your back, that he's going to give you the grace you need to do what feels impossible, and that he always, always keeps his promises.
Thank you so much for being here today.
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