'You better do a lot of praying' is good counsel for all of the Lord's servants, new or seasoned. It is what His wise servants do. They pray. The disciples of Jesus Christ when He lived on the earth noticed that about Him.
The scriptures make the danger of delay clear. It is that we may discover that we have run out of time. The God who gives us each day as a treasure will require an accounting.
The Savior warns that if we start along the path and go far enough and then fail and deny Him, it would have been better if we had never begun.
Every child of Heavenly Father born in the world is given at birth, as a free gift, the Light of Christ.
When the words of prophets seem repetitive, that should rivet our attention.
When you give your heart to inviting people to come unto Christ, your heart will be changed. You will be doing His work for Him. You will find that He keeps His promise to be one with you in your service. You will come to know Him. And in time you will come to be like Him and 'be perfected in him.'
The gospel may not make a sow's ear into a silk purse, but it will make everybody better if they live it. I've tried it. It stands the test.
The great test of life is to see whether we will hearken to and obey God's commands in the midst of the storms of life. It is not to endure storms, but to choose the right while they rage.
Conversion brings a drive to learn.
Children are the inheritance of the Lord to us in this life and also in eternity. Eternal life is not only to have forever our descendants from this life. It is also to have eternal increase.
The Book of Mormon is another testament of Jesus Christ, and we learn about Him in its pages. We know that it has great power. It has the power to change lives. It has the power to convert. If you read it with an open heart, you will know that it is the word of God and that it is true.
Death is not the end; it is but one more step in a great forward march made possible by the redemption wrought by the Savior. This is the spirit of true science - constant and eternal seeking.
If we look for human frailty in humans, we will always find it. When we focus on finding the frailties of those who hold priesthood keys, we run risks for ourselves. When we speak or write to others of such frailties, we put them at risk.
Our human tendency is to be impatient with the person who cannot see the truth that is so plain to us. We must be careful that our impatience is not interpreted as condemnation or rejection.
You make choices every day and almost every hour that keep you walking in the light or moving away toward darkness.
Those who are faithful to God are protected and prospered. That comes as the result of serving God and keeping His commandments. But with those blessings comes the temptation to forget their source. It is easy to begin to feel the blessings were granted not by a loving God on whom we depend but by our own powers.
The Lord protects, guides, and watches over those who are His trusted friends in His work. His work and that of His Father and our Father is to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of the children of God. And Satan, the enemy of our happiness, opposes those who serve the Lord.
The best counsel for us to give young people is that they can arrive back to Heavenly Father only as they are guided and corrected by the Spirit of God. So if we are wise, we will encourage, praise, and exemplify everything which invites the companionship of the Holy Ghost.
The words of confirmation into the Church are an invitation: 'Receive the Holy Ghost.' And that choice must be made not once, but every day, every hour, every minute.
Apparent contradictions between religion and science often have been the basis of bitter controversy. Such differences are to be expected as long as human understanding remains provisional and fragmentary.
A little prosperity and peace, or even a turn slightly for the better, can bring us feelings of self-sufficiency. We can feel quickly that we are in control of our lives, that the change for the better is our own doing, not that of a God who communicates to us through the still, small voice of the Spirit.
Let us do whatever is required to qualify for the Holy Ghost as our companion and then let us go forward fearlessly so that we will be given the powers to do whatever the Lord calls us to do.
When tragedy strikes, or even when it looms, our families will have the opportunity to look into our hearts to see whether we know what we said we knew. Our children will watch, feel the Spirit confirm that we lived as we preached, remember that confirmation, and pass the story across the generations.
Hard as things seem today, they will be better in the next day if you choose to serve the Lord this day with your whole heart.
The scriptures were one of the ways God spoke to me - even when I was a child - about my needs, my situation, and my life. They still are. Since our needs change over a lifetime, God has different things to tell us at different times.
One of the blessings that comes from paying a full tithing is developing faith to live an even higher law. To live in the celestial kingdom, we must live the law of consecration. There we must be able to feel that all we are and all we have belong to God.
