When I was in fourth grade, I had a teacher who would give the class vocabulary worksheets to have finished by a certain day every week.

The homework was due at the beginning of class, and one week I simply forgot to do it.

Now, I knew that if you didn’t do the worksheet, you would have to sit out during the beginning of recess, and I really didn’t want to sit out. So, during lunch, I quickly finished the worksheet and tried to hand it to my teacher; claiming I had found it in my backpack and actually had done it, I had just forgotten that I did.

Of course, this didn’t fool my teacher.

She sat me down and told me that if I hadn’t lied about doing the worksheet I would only have had to sit out for the first couple minutes of recess, but because I lied, and tried to fool her, I was going to have to sit out for the entire recess period.

Lying didn’t get me anywhere in that situation, in fact, it made things worse. It’s like that with God’s commandments too. God asks us to follow His commandments for our own good. Not so He can control us, but so we can live a happy and long life, full of His blessings.