Top BYU Speeches of 2020

This past year, devotional speakers shared words of hope, optimism, and compassion for one another. More than 1.8 million of you read, watched, or listened to their speeches and resonated with their messages. Below are excerpts from and links to the 10 most-viewed speeches given in 2020.

10) Gérald Caussé, “Harmony of Body and Spirit,” October 13

“Our physical condition can profoundly influence our spiritual wellness. Conversely, our spiritual strength and the feelings of our hearts deeply affect our physical well-being. In other words, the beautiful harmony that can exist between our physical and spiritual natures is an important condition for finding true happiness in our mortal journey and in the eternities to come.”

9) Quentin L. Cook, “Be Not Weary in Well-Doing,” August 24

“One area that can help us to build faith is being particularly sensitive in creating unity and being grateful for diversity. We are in a particularly heated period when deep and personal wrongs have been highlighted among our Black brothers and sisters. We each need to be at the forefront of righteously repenting and following the counsel of President Russell M. Nelson, who asked us ‘to build bridges of cooperation instead of walls of segregation.’”

8) Kevin J Worthen, “The Process and Power of Hope,” September 8

“At those times when you wonder if there is any reason to hope, when you wonder if anyone cares—or if anyone should care—I invite you to ask God what He thinks of you—what He really thinks of you. I know that can seem to be a frightening endeavor since you know that He knows better than anyone all your faults. But if you are truly sincere, you will be pleasantly surprised by His response, because He loves you much more than you can imagine.”

7) Michael T. Ringwood, “Everything We Need,” January 14

“Our Heavenly Father has provided us with great and marvelous gifts for our journey here in mortality—and for the greatest quest of all: to come unto our Savior and gain eternal life. These gifts help us navigate the tests and tribulations of life: distresses, persecutions, famines (both temporal and spiritual), injuries, and even death. Without them, we cannot succeed. Yet with them, we are transformed—strengthened and readied to return to the presence of our Eternal Father and to receive all that He has.”

6) Bonnie H. Cordon, “Ask of God: Our Solace, Guide, and Stay,” February 4

“The Savior has invited us to ‘abide in me.’ Notice the promise. It is not ‘with me’ but ‘in me.’ I testify that as we abide in Him, His Spirit—which is ‘the Spirit of truth,’ the Comforter—will ‘abide with [us].’ There is no need to muddle through life alone; we can have heaven’s help. Through prayer we will come to understand who we are and how much we are loved. We will know what steps to take to move forward in our own life and how to bless those around us. Our trust, confidence, and humility will increase. I testify of the knowledge and miracles that come from continual communion with our Heavenly Father.”

5) Terence M. Vinson, “Meekly Placing Our Total Trust in God,” February 11

“When we combine sincere humility and faith with the integrity and strength gained through embracing and living absolute truth and intimately knowing God, we become meek. And those who are meek are anything but weak.

“So our objective should be to be humble and submissive to the Lord and to increase in strength and power as a result. We do this by growing closer to Him and multiplying the experiences we have with Him. This requires our acting with commitment and not being acted upon.”

4) Kevin J Worthen, “Enduring Joy,” January 7

“Joy is the key to our spiritual survival in the trying times in which we live, as well as in the trying times that lie ahead of us. When we experience ‘opposition, anxiety, heartache, pain, disappointment, and sorrow’—things all of us are likely to face in this coming year—how are we to survive? By tapping into the power of joy.”

3) M. Russell Ballard, “Children of Heavenly Father,” March 3

“In this country and in many other countries around the world, a great divide has grown between political parties. Belonging to a political party can be a very good thing when it helps us align ourselves with candidates and others who share our personal values and beliefs. But we must never forget that although we may be a member of a political party, we are first and foremost citizens or residents of our country. That larger and more important shared identity should bind us to one another and help us overcome the petty squabbling and demonization that has sadly become standard operating procedure in contemporary partisan politics throughout most of the world. That is why we need to constantly pray for our countries and for our leaders.

“. . . The group that is most important to identify with is being the children of God. We declare that we are all the spiritual children of Heavenly Parents; thus we are brothers and sisters in God’s family. We will continue to be a part of God’s family after we die and throughout all eternity. Nothing can change that relationship. We must always keep this uppermost in our minds.”

2) Jack N. Gerard, “Could We Have Supposed?” March 17

“While we often point to Nephi and his father Lehi, I would invite you to consider Nephi’s mother, Sariah. It is significant that Sariah did all they did, but she did not have the benefit of the visions of her husband or of her son. We are all more like her than we are like Lehi and Nephi. Most of us will not have direct visions and hear the voice of the Lord or see angels. Neither did she. But she was faithful and heeded the Lord’s commandments to leave her comfortable life and home in Jerusalem and head out into the wilderness to a place she had never seen, on a path she had never traveled, with only the confirmation of the Spirit that, somewhere out there, the Lord would guide them to the promised land and that the promised life would be better than anything she could imagine.”

1) Dallin H. Oaks, “Racism and Other Challenges,” October 27

“Of course Black lives matter! That is an eternal truth all reasonable people should support. Unfortunately, that persuasive banner was sometimes used or understood to stand for other things that do not command universal support. Examples include abolishing the police or seriously reducing their effectiveness or changing our constitutional government. All these are appropriate subjects for advocacy, but not under what we hope to be the universally accepted message: Black lives matter.”