Went to Church today. I was asked to share a spiritual message in my Priesthood Executive Meeting this morning. I chose to share a very touching talk from this October’s General Conference by President Henry B. Eyring entitled “A Witness“. Here are the two sections I shared:
I was once invited to speak at graduation services at a university. The university president had wanted President Gordon B. Hinckley to be invited but found that he was unavailable. So by default I got the invitation. I was then a junior member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.
The person who invited me to speak became anxious as she learned more about my obligations as an Apostle. She called me on the phone and said that she now understood that my duty was to be a witness of Jesus Christ.
In very firm tones she told me that I could not do that when I spoke there. She explained that the university respected people of all religious beliefs, including those who denied the existence of a God. She repeated, “You cannot fulfill your duty here.”
I hung up the phone with serious questions in my mind. Should I tell the university that I would not keep my agreement to speak? It was only two weeks before the event. My appearance there had been announced. What effect would my failing to keep my agreement have on the good name of the Church?
I prayed to know what God would have me do. The answer came in a surprising way to me. I realized that the examples of Nephi, Abinadi, Alma, Amulek, and the sons of Mosiah applied to what I was. They were bold witnesses of Jesus Christ in the face of deadly peril.
So the only choice to be made was how to prepare. I dug into everything I could learn about the university. As the day of the talk grew closer, my anxiety rose and my prayers intensified.
In a miracle like the Red Sea parting, I found a news article. That university had been honored for doing what the Church has learned to do in our humanitarian efforts across the world. And so in my talk I described what we and they had done to lift people in great need. I said that I knew that Jesus Christ was the source of the blessings that had come into the lives of those we and they had served.
After the meeting the audience rose to applaud, which seemed a little unusual to me. I was amazed but still a little anxious. I remembered what happened to Abinadi. Only Alma had accepted his witness. But that night, at a large formal dinner, I heard the university president say that in my talk he heard the words of God.
I saw… (a) miracle in the bedroom of a man who had given sufficient faithful service to think that he had done enough to rest.
I knew that he had undergone lengthy and painful treatment for a disease and had been told by the doctors that it was terminal. They offered neither treatment nor hope.
His wife took me to his bedroom in their home. There he was, lying on his back on the top of the carefully made-up bed. He wore a freshly pressed white shirt, a tie, and new shoes.
He saw the look of surprise in my eyes, laughed quietly, and explained, “After you give me a blessing, I want to be ready to respond to the call to take up my bed and go to work.” As it turned out, he was ready for the interview he would soon have with the Master, for whom he had worked so faithfully.
He was an example of the fully converted Latter-day Saints I meet often after they have given a life of dedicated service. They press on.
President Marion G. Romney described it this way: “In one who is wholly converted, desire for things [contrary] to the gospel of Jesus Christ has actually died, and substituted therefor is a love of God with a fixed and controlling determination to keep his commandments.”
These events are true examples of what is found in the book of Mosiah.
Mosiah 18:9 – Yea, and are willing to mourn with those that mourn; yea, and comfort those that stand in need of comfort, and to stand as witnesses of God at all times and in all things, and in all places that ye may be in, even until death, that ye may be redeemed of God, and be numbered with those of the first resurrection, that ye may have eternal life—
-via Mosiah 18
In the first story, President Eyring was , after much prayer, determined to “stand as witnesses… at all times… and in all places” and in the second story the Faithful Servant was ready “stand as witnesses… even until death”.
I can see the desires of worldly things dying in me as I strengthen my relationship with our Heavenly Father. I didn’t grow up a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and although I was a relatively good kid, I struggled with the temptations of the world just like everyone else. But now, as I spend more time in sincere prayer and studying the scriptures I’ve found the things of the world appear less and less appetizing.
