What about the enormous power within you? Think of this: you shouted for joy9 to come to a fallen world where all would face physical and spiritual death. We would never be able to overcome either on our own. We would suffer from not only our own sins but others’ sins too. Humanity would experience virtually every imaginable type of brokenness and disappointment10—all with a veil of forgetfulness over our minds and the world’s worst enemy continuing to target and tempt us. All hope for returning resurrected and clean to God’s holy presence rested entirely upon one Being keeping His promise.11 What empowered you to go forward? President Henry B. Eyring taught, “It took faith in Jesus Christ to sustain the plan of happiness and Jesus Christ’s place in it when you knew so little of the challenges that you would face in mortality.”12 When Jesus Christ promised He would come into mortality and give His life to gather13 and save us, you did not simply believe Him. You “noble spirits”14 had such “exceedingly great faith” that you saw His promise as sure.15 He could not lie, so you saw Him as if He had already shed His blood for you, long before He was born.16
We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.
Faithfulness is not foolishness or fanaticism. Rather, it is trusting and placing our confidence in Jesus Christ as our Savior, on His name, and in His promises. As we “press forward with a steadfastness in Christ, having a perfect brightness of hope, and a love of God and of all men,”15 we are blessed with an eternal perspective and vision that stretches far beyond our limited mortal capacity. We will be enabled to “gather together, and stand in holy places”16 and “be not moved, until the day of the Lord come.”
The main point I want to make is that it takes personal experience, not lectures, sermons, or training, to change people’s perspective.
If you think you need help, go help someone.
In the past, we might have been so tied to traditional approaches that it took a pandemic to open our eyes. Perhaps we were still building with sandstone when granite was already available. Of necessity, we are now learning how to use a variety of methods, including technology, to invite people—in normal and natural ways—to come and see, come and help, and come and belong.
It is astonishing what we can learn when we look a little closer at our Heavenly Father’s plan of salvation and exaltation, the plan of happiness, for His children. When we feel insignificant, cast off, and forgotten, we learn that we may be assured that God has not forgotten us—in fact, that He offers to all His children something unimaginable: to become “heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ.”2 What does this mean? That we will live forever, receive a fulness of joy,3 and have the potential to “inherit thrones, kingdoms, principalities, and powers.”4 It is so humbling to know that this magnificent and supernal future is possible—not because of who we are but because of who God is. Knowing this, how could we ever murmur or remain embittered? How could we ever keep our eyes on the ground when the King of kings invites us to take flight into an unimaginable future of divine happiness?
And it must needs be that the devil should tempt the children of men, or they could not be agents unto themselves."
My humble invitation to all of us is to never give up! We are called to “lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith.”12 It is not so much about what we are going through in life but what we are becoming. There is joy in pressing toward the mark. I
And we know that our eternal happiness depends on our doing our best to offer the same lasting happiness to as many of our kindred as we can.
Whatever you must leave behind to follow the path to your heavenly home will one day seem like no sacrifice at all.
The female part of community are apt to be contracted in their views. You must not be contracted, but you must be liberal in your feelings.
our current challenging circumstances are not our final, eternal destination. As
Don't ever allow yourself to be offended by someone who is learning his job.
Elisha knew the young man needed more than calming reassurance; he needed vision... My dear sisters and brothers, you too can pray for the Lord to open your eyes to see things you would not normally see.
Jesus Christ sees people deeply. He sees individuals, their needs, and who they can become. Where others saw fishermen, sinners, or publicans, Jesus saw disciples; where others saw a man possessed by devils, Jesus looked past the outward distress, acknowledged the man, and healed him.
“It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest … most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship. … There are no ordinary people” (C. S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory [2001], 45–46).
As with all gifts the Father so willingly offers, seeing deeply requires us to ask Him—and then act. Ask to see others as He does—as His true sons and daughters with infinite and divine potential. Then act by loving, serving, and affirming their worth and potential as prompted. As this becomes the pattern of our lives, we will find ourselves becoming “true followers of … Jesus Christ.”8 Others will be able to trust our hearts with theirs. And in this pattern we will also discover our own true identity and purpose.
A hundred years from now, today’s seeming deprivations and tribulations will not matter then unless we let them matter too much now.
The central doctrines can quicken in us this desire for a full reunion. The hard sayings can help us in hard times, so that we do not lose the way. These sublime truths will enliven our consciences and stir our dimmed memories of promises made and vows taken—and at those very moments when we would otherwise be pulled from the path. These key truths, when kept before us, will lift our hopes and our eyes when we are downcast or in despair, and will lift our minds and thoughts from lower inclinations that are unworthy of who we are.
Extraordinary truths can move us to extraordinary accomplishments
Few doctrines, save those pertaining to the reality of the existence of God, are more basic than the truth that God is omniscient. "O how great the holiness of our God! For he knoweth all things, and there is not anything save he knows it." (2 Nephi. 9:20.) Unfortunately, this truth is sometimes only passively assented to by individuals who avoid exploring it and coming to understand its implications. Later on, such believers sometimes have difficulty with the implications of this core doctrine—which connects with other powerful doctrines such as the foreknowledge of God,foreordination, and foreassignment. The all-loving God who shapes our individual growing and sanctifying experiences—and then sees us through them—could not do so if He were not omniscient.
Therefore, God's omniscience is not solely a function of prolonged and discerning familiarity with us—but of the stunning reality that the past and present and future are part of an "eternal now" with God! (Joseph Smith, History of the Church 4:597.)
President Brigham Young said there are "millions of earths" like this one. (JD 11:41.)
Some find the doctrines of the omniscience and foreknowledge of God troubling because these seem, in some way, to constrict their individual agency. This concern springs out of a failure to distinguish between how it is that God knows with perfection what is to come butthat we do not know, thus letting a very clear and simple doctrine get obscured by our own finite view of things. Personality patterns, habits, strengths, and weaknesses observed by God over a long period in the premortal world would give God a perfect understanding of what we would do under a given set of circumstances—especially when He knows the circumstances to come. Just because we cannot compute all the variables, just because we cannot extrapolate does not mean that He cannot do so. Omniscience is, of course, one of the essences of Godhood; it sets Him apart in such an awesome way from all of us even though, on a smaller scale, we manage to do a little foreseeing ourselves at times with our own children even with our rather finite and imperfect minds.
Ever to be emphasized, however, is the reality that God's "seeing" is not the samething as His "causing" something to happen.
We must not approach God as if He were somehow constrained by finite knowledge and by time. A useful and illustrative episode is the one involving the prophet Elisha and his young manservant. The prophet could see that a surrounded Israel need not fear. (2 Kings 6:15-17.) The alarmed younger man had to have his eyes opened, however, so he too could see that while the mountain was hostilely compassed about with horses and chariots of the enemy, it was also filled with horses and chariots of fire. Thus, even though the prophet said to the young man, "Fear not: for they that be with us are more than they that be with them," he was still puzzled and doubting. Only when his eyes were opened could he see the reassuring reality. Often, so it is with us. We see dimly, or, as Paul said, "through a glass, darkly." (1 Corinthians Such is the relevance of seers. Such is the role of faith. In a very real sense, all we need to know is that God knows all!
Elder James E. Faust of the Council of the Twelve has said, "In the pain, the agony, and the heroic endeavors of life, we pass through the refiner's fire, and the insignificant and the unimportant in our lives can melt away like dross and make our faith bright, intact, and strong." (Ensign, May 1979, p. 53.) Elder Faust continued, "This change comes about through a refining process which often seems cruel and hard. In this way the soul can become like soft clay in the hands of the Master." (Ibid.)
As one who suffered much in a concentration camp, Victor Frankl observed that the one freedom that conditions cannot take from us is our freedom to form a healthy attitude toward those very conditions, grim as those may sometimes be.
President Kimball said, "Could the Lord have prevented these tragedies? The answer is, Yes. The Lord is omnipotent, with all power to control our lives, save us pain, prevent all accidents, drive all planes and cars, feed us, protect us, save us from labor, effort, sickness, even from death, if he will. But he will not. "We should be able to understand this, because we can realize how unwise it would be for us to shield our children from all effort, from disappointments, temptations, sorrows, and suffering. . . . If we looked at mortality as the whole of existence, then pain, sorrow, failure, and short life would be calamity. But if we look upon life as an eternal thing stretching far into the pre-earth past and on into the eternal post-death future, then all happenings may be put in proper perspective."
Elder Orson F. Whitney wrote, "No pain that we suffer, no trial that we experience is wasted." Such cosmic conservation! He continues, "It ministers to our education, to the development of such qualities as patience, faith, fortitude and humility. All that we suffer and all that we endure, especially when we endure it patiently, builds up our characters, purifies our hearts, expands our souls, and makes us more tender and charitable, more worthy to be called the children of God." (Ibid., p. 4.)
Then President Kimball observed with great wisdom, "The gospel teaches us there is no tragedy in death, but only in sin." (Tragedy or Destiny?, Deseret Book, 1977, pp. 2, 6.)
God carefully scales "all these things," since we cannot bear all things now. He has told us: "Behold, ye are little children and ye cannot bear all things now; ye must grow in grace and in the knowledge of the truth." (D&C 50:40.) We will not be able to say shruggingly at judgment time, "I was overcome by the world because I was overprogrammed or overtempted." For the promises are that temptation can either be escaped or endured. (1 Corinthians 10:13.) The promise is also that throughout tribulation God's grace is sufficient for us—He will see us through. (2 Corinthians 12:9; Ether 12:26-27.) Thus, for a host of reasons, correct conduct under stress is more likely when one has correct expectations about life. If we understand the basic purpose of life, we will find it easier to see purpose in our own life.
Isn't it interesting that of the many ways in which the Lord might have phrased the object of the "thou shalt" in the second great commandment, He chose the word neighbor—not mankind, not organizations, not people, and not society, but neighbor. In keeping the second great commandment, the most significant and basic service we can regularly render unto others will emerge from our most basic roles—as brothers and sisters, as parents, as neighbors, as disciples. What we do vocationally and professionally matters, of course—and sometimes very much. But those of us who try to escape from, or neglect, our basic roles will find that we have only made the effective keeping of the second great commandment even more difficult. Keeping the commandments and sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ are the two most relevant things we can do to assist our fellowman in our time. In addition to keeping the second commandment by direct service to others, what a service we render others when we do not commit adultery or steal, even though these become more and more fashionable!
Let us think of service not only as giving, but also as receiving righteously. Parenthetically, one of the many reasons some of today's children have not learned to give is that some parents do not know how to receive.
Let us in our professional and vocational chores serve with excellence even if others care more and more about pay and less and less about quality in their workmanship.
Evil people exist. The in-betweeners merely survive. But those who have really lived will be those who have lived righteously, because they will have lived righteously and served selflessly in a time of stunning contrasts. They will have managed to keep clean in a dirty world. And being free, they will be happy in otherwise sad times, and all their experiences will be for their good.
Corrective counsel is facilitated when there is shared expectation that it will be given.
If our efforts to communicate with someone are tied to their role rather than our regard for them, these efforts will not survive when that individual's role changes. If our friendship is a matter of function, what do we do when the function is changed or dissolved—cease caring? This is a bigger block to communication than we may care to acknowledge. While the blocks that seem to get in the way of brotherly communication include the obvious, much restraint no doubt reflects the fact that communication is not risk-free. Communication opens the windows of our soul—and what is inside will be seen. Communication, of course, needs to take careful account of the realities of our mortal relationships in order to avoid errors.
Thus one of the biggest blocks to Christian communication is that we are so afraid of being misunderstood. So, when in doubt, we withhold. Yet Paul said to speak the truth in love; we can then take the chance. We worry (and understandably so) that some communications will only produce more distance. But silence is very risky, too.
If we received a genuine and regular flow of deserved recognition and appreciation, we would be freed from the concerns over whether or not we are valued and whether or not we are going to get credit for something. We would know that we are valued—whether or not a particular idea of ours makes its way through the network successfully! When life is seen as good, a bad day can easily be absorbed.
Our pride should not hold us hostage when we have erred, nor should we mourn our mistakes for the wrong reasons. Yet correction, when it comes, is seldom welcome, and often the issue becomes "Can we take it?" Yet those who have proved that they can "take it" usually have so much to give!
To use the supposed errors of others, including those of the Brethren, as an excuse for our lessened devotion is a most grave error! All of us are in the process of becoming—including prophets and General Authorities.
There are even those who refuse to follow the Brethren because these individuals have overidentified with a single doctrine, principle, or practice; sadly, they exclude all other counsel, which leads to a dangerous spiritual imbalance. The difficulty with such individuals is that they have a strange sense of justification about that which they are doing. In their intensity they lack, of course, the spiritual symmetry that comes from pursuing, in a balanced way, all the commandments of God. These individuals are so hardened in their devotion to one thing that they are unable to follow the Brethren in all things. It is as if the adversary, upon seeing someone get religious, skillfully deflects their devotion so that it becomes a damaging and not a developing thing. We are responsible for our reactions when we see imperfections in others.
We may, therefore, see the imperfections in leaders in the Church. How we react to these manifestations of mortality is the key to our salvation—not theirs!
It is strange that when one is remodeling a portion of his house, he expects visitors to be tolerant of improvements that are so obviously underway. Yet while one is remodeling his character, we often feel obligated to call attention to the messy signs of remodeling, or feel called upon to remember aloud things as they were. Forgetting is such a necessary part of forgiving.
As we come to understand and experience God in all His perfected attributes and as we struggle to develop these same attributes in ourselves, we move from appreciation for Him to adoration of Him!
When you see only problems, you're not seeing clearly.
When I take a small pebble and place it directly in front of my eye, it takes on the appearance of a mighty boulder. It is all I can see. It becomes all-consuming—like the problems of a loved one that affect our lives every waking moment.
We would say, “I may not soon make it to the top, but I can do this next step right now.” Over time the daunting task ultimately became achievable—step by step.
Our Heavenly Father wants us to love ourselves—not to become prideful or self-centered, but to see ourselves as He sees us: we are His cherished children. When this truth sinks deep into our hearts, our love for God grows. When we view ourselves with sincere respect, our hearts are open to treat others that way too. The more we recognize our divine worth, the better we understand this divine truth: that God has sent us right here, right now, at this momentous time in history, so that we can do the greatest possible good with the talents and gifts we have. This is our time!
Though there are things about the priesthood as it relates to both men and women that I don't understand, this does not concern me, because wrestling with spiritual questions is a fundamental aspect of mortality. It is an exercise that strengthens our faith and spurs our growth, if we'll allow it to. Learning, after all, is integral to progression.
As we love the temple, touch the temple, and attend the temple, our lives will reflect our faith. As we come to these holy houses of God, as we remember the covenants we make within, we shall be able to bear every trial and overcome each temptation. The temple provides purpose for our lives.
Speaking of this affluence, one youngster said: "Kids are caught between the values given them as desirable by their churches, schools, and parents on one hand and on the other the spectacle of mothers and fathers both working with great concentration to get 'things.'"
We are the sons and daughters of Almighty God. We have a destiny to fulfill, a life to live, a contribution to make, a goal to achieve.
To be prepared spiritually for leadership overshadows all other types of preparation. A wise leader cautioned, "When you play, play hard. When you work, don't play at all." Leadership requires effort, hard work, a do-or-die philosophy. When we speak of work as an essential ingredient of leadership, we speak also of teamwork. Getting along with others must be part of our work and service pattern, or leadership assignments will pass us by. One cannot perform all of the needed work by himself. J. C. Penney, the business leader, advised, "My definition of leadership is brief and to the point. It is simply this: Getting things done through the aid of other people. Cooperativeness is not so much learning how to get along with others as taking the kinks out of yourself so that others can get along with you."
May each of us think big, prepare well, work hard, and live right, thereby finding success in life.
It has been said by one, years ago, that history turns on small hinges, and so do people's lives. Our lives will depend upon the decisions we make, for decisions determine destiny.
Think of the decision of a fourteen-year-old boy who had read that if anyone lacked wisdom, he should ask of God, "that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him." (James 1:5.) He made the decision to put to the test the epistle of James. He went into the grove and he prayed. Was that a minor decision? No—that was a decision that has affected all mankind and particularly all of us who are members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. What are the important decisions our youth must make? First, what will be my faith. Second, whom shall I marry. And third, what will be my life's work.
My counsel to returning missionaries and to every youth is that they should study and prepare for their life's work in a field that they enjoy, because they are going to spend a good share of their lives in that field. I believe it should be a field that will challenge their intellect and a field that will make maximum utilization of their talents and their capabilities, and, finally, a field that will provide them sufficient remuneration to provide adequately for a companion and children. Such is a big order, but I bear testimony that these criteria are very important in choosing one's life's work.
Life presents challenges and setbacks, and we all must face some dark days and storms. Through it all, if we “let God prevail in our lives,”21 the light of the Holy Ghost will reveal that there is purpose and meaning in our trials, that they will ultimately transform us into better, more complete individuals with a firmer faith and brighter hope in Christ, knowing that God was there with us in our dark days all along. As President Russell M. Nelson has counseled, “The increasing darkness that accompanies tribulation makes the light of Jesus Christ shine ever brighter.”
Through Jesus Christ and His atoning sacrifice, we can experience a mighty change of mind and heart, bringing a fresh attitude, both toward God and toward life in general.
We do not see things as they are. We see things as we are.
What about the enormous power within you? Think of this: you shouted for joy9 to come to a fallen world where all would face physical and spiritual death. We would never be able to overcome either on our own. We would suffer from not only our own sins but others’ sins too. Humanity would experience virtually every imaginable type of brokenness and disappointment10—all with a veil of forgetfulness over our minds and the world’s worst enemy continuing to target and tempt us. All hope for returning resurrected and clean to God’s holy presence rested entirely upon one Being keeping His promise.11
What empowered you to go forward? President Henry B. Eyring taught, “It took faith in Jesus Christ to sustain the plan of happiness and Jesus Christ’s place in it when you knew so little of the challenges that you would face in mortality.”12 When Jesus Christ promised He would come into mortality and give His life to gather13 and save us, you did not simply believe Him. You “noble spirits”14 had such “exceedingly great faith” that you saw His promise as sure.15 He could not lie, so you saw Him as if He had already shed His blood for you, long before He was born.16
Missing Reference