My Missionary Commission

I am called of God. My authority is above that of the kings of the earth. By revelation I have been selected as a personal representative of the Lord Jesus Christ. He is my master, and He has chosen me to represent Him. To stand in His place; to say and do what He Himself would say and do if He personally were ministering to the very people to whom He has sent me. My voice is His voice, and my acts are His acts; my words are His words and my doctrine is His doctrine. My commission is to do what He wants done; to say what He wants said; to be a living modern witness in word and deed, of the divinity of His great and marvelous latter-day work. How great is my calling!

Bruce R. McConkie

He Knows

How we pour guilt over ourselves!

This isn't the gospel! We know that on some level Jesus experiences the totality of mortal existence in Gethsemane. It's our faith that He experienced everything — absolutely everything. Sometimes we don't think through the implications of that belief. We talk in great generalities about the sins of all humankind, about the suffering of the entire human family. But we don't experience pain in generalities. We experience it individually. That means Jesus knows what it felt like when your mother died of cancer — how it was for your mother, how it still is for you. He knows what it felt like to lose the student body election. He knows that moment when the brakes locked, and the car started to skid. He experienced the slave ship sailing from Ghana toward Virginia. He experienced the gas chambers at Dachau. He experienced napalm in Vietnam. He knows about drug addiction and alcoholism . . .

There is nothing you have experienced as a woman that he does not also know and recognize. On a profound level, he understands about pregnancy and giving birth. He know about PMS and cramps and menopause. He understands about rape and infertility and abortion.

His last recorded words to his disciples were, "And, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world" (Matt. 28:20). What does that mean? It means he understands your mother-pain when your five-year-old leaves for kindergarten, when a bully picks on your fifth-grader, when your daughter calls to say that the new baby has Down's syndrome. He knows your mother-rage when a trusted babysitter sexually abuses your two-year-old, when someone gives your thirteen-year-old drugs, when someone seduces your seventeen-year-old. He knows the pain you live with when you come home to a quiet apartment where the only children who ever come are visitors, when you hear that your former husband and his new wife were sealed in the temple last week, when your fiftieth wedding anniversary rolls around and your husband has been dead for two years. He knows all that. He's been there. He's been lower than all that.

Chieko N. Okazaki's Lighten Up!. p174-175

The Storms of Life

There are many things that we cannot change. We all have difficulties and disappointments. But often these turn out to be opportunities. The Lord can measure how strong we are by how we handle these difficulties in our lives. As the Lord said to the Prophet Joseph Smith, “Know thou, my son, that all these things shall give thee experience, and shall be for thy good” (D&C 122:7).

Sometimes the Lord allows us to have trials to shape us into productive servants. In our desire to achieve, we often fail to see that the Lord is trying to prune us away from false pride and vain ambition so He can teach us discipleship. His all-seeing eye is over us and ever watching us as our Eternal Heavenly Parent. When trials come, as surely they will to all of us during mortality, let us not sink into the abyss of self-pity but remember who is at the helm, that He is there to guide us through all the storms of life. 

James E. Faust "Be Not Afraid" October 2002 Ensign

Our Marvelous Potential

What did Paul mean by the words, a sound mind? I think he meant the basic logic of the gospel. To me the gospel is not a great mass of theological jargon. It is a simple and beautiful and logical thing, with one quiet truth following another in orderly sequence. I do not fret over the mysteries. I do not worry whether the heavenly gates swing or slide. I am only concerned that they open. I am not worried that the Prophet Joseph Smith gave a number of versions of the first vision anymore than I am worried that there are four different writers of the gospels in the New Testament, each with his own perceptions, each telling the events to meet his own purpose for writing at the time.

I am more concerned with the fact that God has revealed in this dispensation a great and marvelous and beautiful plan that motivates men and women to love their Creator and their Redeemer, to appreciate and serve one another, to walk in faith on the road that leads to immortality and eternal life.

I am grateful for the marvelous declaration that “the glory of God is intelligence, or, in other words, light and truth.” (D&C 93:36.) I am grateful for the mandate given us to “seek ye out of the best books words of wisdom” and to acquire knowledge “by study and also by faith.” (D&C 88:118.)

I remember when I was a college student there were great discussions on the question of organic evolution. I took classes in geology and biology and heard the whole story of Darwinism as it was then taught. I wondered about it. I thought much about it. But I did not let it throw me, for I read what the scriptures said about our origins and our relationship to God. Since then I have become acquainted with what to me is a far more important and wonderful kind of evolution. It is the evolution of men and women as the sons and daughters of God, and of our marvelous potential for growth as children of our Creator.

Gordon B. Hinckley  "God Hath Not Given Us the Spirit of Fear" October 1984 Ensign

Exchange Rate

“In striving for ultimate submission, our wills constitute all we really have to give God anyway. The usual gifts and their derivatives we give to Him could be stamped justifiably ‘Return to Sender,’ with a capital S. Even when God receives this one gift in return, the fully faithful will receive ‘all that [He] hath’ (DC 84:38). What an exchange rate!”

Neal A. Maxwell, Ensign, May 2002, 38

The Play and the Plan

There are three parts to the plan. You are in the second or the middle part, the one in which you will be tested by temptation, by trials, perhaps by tragedy.

Remember this! The line, “And they all lived happily ever after” is never written into the second act of a play. That line belongs in the third act, when the mysteries are solved and everything is put right.

Until you have a broad perspective of the eternal nature of the plan, you won’t make much sense out of the inequities in life. Some are born with so little and others with so much. Some are born into poverty, with handicaps, and pain, with suffering. Some experience premature death, even innocent children. There are the brutal, unforgiving forces of nature and the brutality of man to man. We have seen a lot of that lately.

Do not suppose that God willfully causes that which, for his own purposes, he permits. When you know the plan and the purpose of it all, even these things will manifest a loving Father in Heaven.

President Boyd K. Packer, Satellite Broadcast, May 7, 1995

Promptings

Don't postpone a prompting.

Thomas S Monson "Your Choice" BYU Devotional  10 March 1998

A Light unto the World

This entire people have become as a city upon a hill which cannot be hid. Sometimes we take offense when one who is a member of the Church is involved in a crime and the public press is quick to say that he is a Mormon. We comment among ourselves that if he had been a member of any other church, no mention would have been made of it.
 

Yet, is not this very practice an indirect compliment to our people? The world expects something better of us, and when one of our number falters, the press is quick to note it. We have, indeed, become as a city upon a hill for the world to see. If we are to be that which the Lord would have us be, we must indeed become 'a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that [we] should shew forth the praises of him who hath called [us] out of darkness into his marvelous light.' (1 Pet. 2:9.)

Gordon B. Hinckley, "A City upon a Hill," Ensign, July 1990, 4

True Gratitude

True gratitude is the ability to humbly see, feel, and even receive love. Gratitude is a form of returning love to God. Recognize His hand, tell Him so, express your love to Him. As you come to truly know the Lord, you will find an intimate, sacred relationship built on trust. You will come to know He understands your anguish and will, in compassion, always respond to you in love."

Gene R. Cook, "Charity: Perfect and Everlasting Love," Ensign, May 2002, 83

Planning for Failure

There are important ways in which planning for failure can make failure more likely and the ideal less so. Consider these twin commandments as an example: "Fathers are to . . . provide the necessities of life . . . for their families" and "mothers are primarily responsible for the nurture of their children." Knowing how hard that might be, a young man might choose a career on the basis of how much money he could make, even if it meant he couldn't be home enough to be an equal partner. By doing that, he has already decided he cannot hope to do what would be best. A young woman might prepare for a career incompatible with being primarily responsible for the nurture of her children because of the possibilities of not marrying, of not having children, or of being left alone to provide for them herself. Or she might fail to focus her education on the gospel and knowledge of the world that nurturing a family would require, not realizing that the highest and best use she could make of her talents and her education would be in her home. Because a young man and woman had planned to take care of the worst, they might make the best less likely.

Henry B. Eyring "The Family" CES Fireside 5 November 1995

Crown Jewels

Dear daughters of God, you are the crown jewels of all of His creations. There has never been a sunset, symphony, or work of art as lovely as you. May you catch the vision that you are destined to be a refined and regal queen, honored by an uncountable posterity, worlds without end. 

Douglas L. Callister "Your Refined Heavenly Home" BYU Speech 19 September 2006

The Inside Out

The Lord works from the inside out. The world works from the outside in. The world would take people out of the slums. Christ takes the slums out of people, and then they take themselves out of the slums. The world would mold men by changing their environment. Christ changes men, who then change their environment. The world would shape human behavior, but Christ can change human nature.

Ezra Taft Benson, "Born of God", Ensign, July 1989, 2

What It Means to Study

For the gospel to be written in your heart, you need to know what it is and grow to understand it more fully, . . . sometimes reading a few verses, stopping to ponder them, carefully reading the verses again, and as you think about what they mean, praying for understanding, asking questions in your mind, waiting for spiritual impressions, and writing down the impressions and insights that come so you can remember and learn more. Studying in this way, you may not read a lot of chapters or verses in a half hour, but you will be giving place in your heart for the word of God, and He will be speaking to you.

D. Todd Christofferson, "When Thou Art Converted," Ensign, May 2004, 11

A Blessing to Guide Your Way

A patriarchal blessing is a revelation to the recipient, even a white line down the middle of the road, to protect, inspire, and motivate activity and righteousness. A patriarchal blessing literally contains chapters from your book of eternal possibilities. I say eternal, for just as life is eternal, so is a patriarchal blessing. What may not come to fulfillment in this life may occur in the next. We do not govern God's timetable. 'For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord.' . . .
Your patriarchal blessing is yours and yours alone. It may be brief or lengthy, simple or profound. Length and language do not a patriarchal blessing make. It is the Spirit that conveys the true meaning. Your blessing is not to be folded neatly and tucked away. It is not to be framed or published. Rather, it is to be read. It is to be loved. It is to be followed. Your patriarchal blessing will see you through the darkest night. It will guide you through life's dangers. . . . Your patriarchal blessing is to you a personal Liahona to chart your course and guide your way.

Thomas S. Monson, "Your Patriarchal Blessing: A Liahona of Light," Ensign, Nov. 1986, 66

Happy Exhaustion

Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher said, "Look at a day when you are supremely satisfied at the end. It’s not a day when you lounge around doing nothing. It’s when you’ve had everything to do, and you’ve done it.”1

 

Work that seems beyond our capacity is often a blessing and brings us a happy exhaustion. It obviously doesn’t need to be performing life-saving surgery on accident victims to fit this description. Hikers atop a mountain after a strenuous climb, athletes who willed their way to a difficult win, or parents who collapse on the couch after a day full of sacrifices of time and energy for their children—they all know what it feels like to be spent but smiling. In such moments, we discover what we’re made of, and we find that we are capable of much more than we thought. We might be physically tired, but we are emotionally renewed.

 

It’s a myth that the key to a satisfying day is to relax, put your feet up, and sip cold lemonade. The real way to feel joy at the end of the day is to have achieved your goals, to have pushed yourself to accomplish your tasks. When our day is filled with unexpected challenges, instead of seeing them as obstacles that interfere with an easy schedule, perhaps we can reframe that outlook and see them as opportunities for fulfillment and satisfaction—the unexpected rewards for a job well done.

 

 

1. In David K. Hatch, comp. Everyday Greatness: Inspiration for a Meaningful Life (2006), 241.

 

Music and the Spoken Word Program #4311

I Want You To Play Football

A friend of mine recently shared what he considered to be a choice learning experience. It was provided by his young son. Upon returning home from his day’s work, this father greeted his boy with a pat on the head and said, “Son, I want you to know I love you.”

The son responded with, “Oh Dad, I don’t want you to love me, I want you to play football with me.” Here was a boy conveying a much-needed message.

The world is filled with too many of us who are inclined to indicate our love with an announcement or declaration.

Marvin J Ashton "Love Takes Time" October 1975 General Conference

Forgiveness

"Sometimes we carry unhappy feelings about past hurts too long. We spend too much energy dwelling on things that have passed and cannot be changed. We struggle to close the door and let go of the hurt. If, after time, we can forgive whatever may have caused the hurt, we will tap 'into a life-giving source of comfort' through the Atonement, and the 'sweet peace' of forgiveness will be ours. Some injuries are so hurtful and deep that healing comes only with help from a higher power and hope for perfect justice and restitution in the next life. . . . You can tap into that higher power and receive precious comfort and sweet peace."

James E. Faust "Instruments in the Hands of God" October 2005 General Conference

Finding our Ancestors

“The process of finding our ancestors one by one can be challenging but also exciting and rewarding. We often feel spiritual guidance as we go to the sources which identify them. Because this is a very spiritual work, we can expect help from the other side of the veil. We feel a pull from our relatives who are waiting for us to find them so their ordinance work can be done. This is a Christlike service because we are doing something for them that they cannot do for themselves.”

James E. Faust "The Phenomenon That Is You" October 2003 General Conference

Ancestors

“Many of your deceased ancestors will have received a testimony that the message of the missionaries is true. When you received that testimony you could ask the missionaries for baptism. But those who are in the spirit world cannot. The ordinances you so cherish are offered only in this world. Someone in this world must go to a holy temple and accept the covenants on behalf of the person in the spirit world. That is why we are under obligation to find the names of our ancestors and ensure that they are offered by us what they cannot receive there without our help.

For me, knowing that turns my heart not only to my ancestors who wait but to the missionaries who teach them. I will see those missionaries in the spirit world, and so will you. Think of a faithful missionary standing there with those he has loved and taught who are your ancestors. Picture as I do the smile on the face of that missionary as you walk up to him and your ancestors whom he converted but could not baptize or have sealed to family until you came to the rescue. I do not know what the protocol will be in such a place, but I imagine arms thrown around your neck and tears of gratitude.”

Henry B. Eyring "Hearts Bound Together" April 2005 General Conference

A Sacred Trust

“While we tend to equate motherhood solely with maternity, in the Lord’s language, the word mother has layers of meaning. Of all the words they could have chosen to define her role and her essence, both God the Father and Adam called Eve “the mother of all living” —and they did so before she ever bore a child. Like Eve, our motherhood began before we were born. Just as worthy men were foreordained to hold the priesthood in mortality, righteous women were endowed premortally with the privilege of motherhood.  Motherhood is more than bearing children, though it is certainly that. It is the essence of who we are as women. It defines our very identity, our divine stature and nature, and the unique traits our Father gave us.

Motherhood is not what was left over after our Father blessed His sons with priesthood ordination. It was the most ennobling endowment He could give His daughters, a sacred trust that gave women an unparalleled role in helping His children keep their second estate. ”

Sheri L. Dew "Are We Not All Mothers?" October 2001 General Conference

Recipient of Revelation

“There are some guidelines and rules necessary for one to be the recipient of revelation and inspiration; they include (1) to try honestly and sincerely to keep God’s commandments, (2) to be spiritually attuned as a receiver of a divine message, (3) to ask in humble, fervent prayer, and (4) to seek with unwavering faith.” 

James E. Faust "Communion with the Holy Spirit" Mar 2002 Ensign