“Simplicity That Is in Christ”

Elder Shumway: We are so happy for the blessing of being with you today. For those of you who may remember my April 2025 general conference talk,¹ I wanted to introduce you to the three-scoop ice cream girl, Heidi. I would love to hear a testimony from her.

She didn’t know I was going to ask her. That’s not a good marriage tactic. I just realized that after I said it. I’d love to hear a testimony from her first, in large part because Heidi sounds a whole lot like the Holy Ghost. [To Sister Shumway:] So, please, would you share your testimony?

Sister Shumway: Yes. I always love to share testimony. Very briefly, I think what I would like to share would be my witness that God the Father’s plan of salvation, of happiness, and of eternal joy for us—for each of His children—is perfect. And the pivotal part of that plan is His Son, Jesus Christ. And because of Jesus Christ and His Atonement, the Father’s plan won’t fail. So even though we live in a world that is far from perfect—it’s messy—we can trust in Jesus Christ.

I testify that He is “the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6). I testify that by following Him in His ways, we can return to our heavenly home.

I know these truths. I know that He walks with us in this mortal journey that is far from perfect. But I know the example by which He leads—that He has given us—and the teachings that He gives us are real and true, and they are perfect.

We belong in our heavenly home, and I testify that following Jesus Christ will lead us there. That is my witness and that is my testimony. And I say that in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

Elder Shumway:Let me begin by saying thank you. Thank you to the choir that set a perfect tone with their beautiful voices. Thank you to family and friends who are here in person and not in person who we love so very much and are so grateful for. I am grateful for Brother Vorkink and his team who have done a magnificent job helping us to set this up and for others at the Church, Melanie and Karen, who have been so helpful in making this happen.

I remember hearing President Jeffrey R. Holland say, “Second only in importance to bearing witness of Jesus Christ are expressions of gratitude.” So before I go on, let me just say thank you to you. I have a responsibility over the young adults of the Church. Being with you today is a fulfilling experience for me.

Leadership in the Kingdom Is About Helping Others See the Savior

In one of President Russell M. Nelson’s final meetings with the Seventy, he warned that the work of building God’s kingdom will become increasingly challenging. Then he paused, and he pensively told us that in response to that mounting task, the Lord is sending brighter souls. Being with you today, I feel the reality of that prophetic truth. The Lord has immense confidence in you. As Isaiah prophesied, you will do a mighty work to dispel the “gross darkness” that is covering this earth.²

Flying home from Houston recently, I sat by two of you BYU students. I asked them what stood out most to them about President and Sister Reese. Without hesitation, they replied, “They are both just so approachable.”

We may not think of “approachability” as a Christlike attribute,³ but the Savior’s approachability is what gives the sinner the comfort and the timid confidence to “come unto him”⁴ and to receive the blessings of the Atonement of Jesus Christ.

Shane and Wendy Reese possess this Christlike attribute. I’ve seen this for myself. Their genuine love creates a wide and welcoming circle in which people feel seen and valued and in which hearts are directed not to the Reeses but to the Savior.

Leadership in God’s kingdom is never about being seen but about helping others see the Savior. As you lead in God’s kingdom—and you are leading, and you will lead—I invite you to be approachable to the outcast, the lonely, the sin-laden, and the hopeless. Then, just as President and Sister Reese do, point them to Jesus Christ, from whom they can find healing and hope and strength.

As mentioned by President Reese, next week you are going to have the profound privilege of learning from President Dallin H. Oaks. No one on this earth points us more to the Savior than he does. I wish that somehow I could convey to you how much he loves you! I have witnessed that love personally myself. Let me share with you one brief experience.

On occasion, mission leaders can postpone serving due to business or family concerns. When Heidi and I were being considered as mission leaders, we had previously discussed that if we were given that option, we would delay going for one year because this change could be a significant struggle for our daughter who was going to be a senior in high school. We weren’t even sure that this daughter would go with us on the mission.

With that as background, we met with President Oaks. As we walked into his office, he said, “I’ve been studying about you and asking the Lord two questions: First, does He want you to serve? And second, if He does, when would He want you to serve?”

President Oaks continued: “I have felt impressions about those two questions, but before I share my feelings, I would like to know yours.”

Now I have felt pressure before in my life, but this was low-key next-level!

I was grateful that President Oaks turned to Heidi first.

“I don’t know the answer to the first question,” she said, “but about the timing of when we should go, I think we should go now.”

My jaw hit the floor. I turned to Heidi and whispered, “What did you say? I thought we talked about this.”

She whispered back, “I know. I’m sorry!”

To which I replied, “Well, that’s just not gonna cut it!”

President Oaks began to be amused at this. He chuckled and finally said, “Well, my feelings align with Sister Shumway’s.”

Now I felt about two inches tall. But I found the courage to express our concern for our daughter.

President Oaks tenderly replied: “I understand. I’d like to visit with her.”

We were stunned. With President Oaks’s busy schedule, how would he ever manage this?

Still, we set up this meeting with two of our daughters. In the meeting, President Oaks again asked us to share our feelings. Heidi and I went first, followed by our younger daughter Sophie.

Then President Oaks turned to Callie, and she began to cry. It was difficult for her to say anything.

President Oaks lovingly said: “Oh, sweet Callie, I have all the time in the world for you. When you are ready, we can chat.”

Then he patiently waited and kindly listened to Callie.

Did President Oaks have all the time in the world? No! And yet he took time to love and minister to the one.

He blessed me. He blessed my daughters. He blessed our family. And now, as God’s living prophet, he blesses the entire world!

Yes, President Oaks is the Lord’s voice “unto the ends of the earth.”⁵ To accomplish the mighty work of dispelling darkness that I spoke of earlier, you will need to know this truth deeply for yourself. But I also hope you know that President Oaks is a loving and compassionate disciple of Jesus Christ who is personally interested in helping each one of us return to live with God.

I saw this truth with our Callie—who did decide to join us in the mission field and had a life-changing experience.

Watching President Oaks make time for my daughter—and then seeing President and Sister Reese find time to love and draw people to Christ—has compelled me to ask a very hard question: Why do their lives feel so calm, so available, so interruptible—while mine, at times, has felt hurried and overcrowded?

The answer, I have come to believe, is found in their deliberate efforts to simplify and to foster first each day what matters most. Today I speak about the abundant life we find in Jesus Christ when we simplify and put first each day the things of eternity.

Learn to Simplify

The picture I show now was taken the year before Heidi and I graduated from BYU. [A picture from the Shumways’ wedding day was shown.] I have always been smitten by Heidi’s beauty, but her greatest influence on me comes from her unwavering ability to focus on what matters most—on people and on her relationship with Jesus Christ.

When I attended this university, I had great ambitions. I loved God. I wanted to please Him. But I often became overextended with good endeavors that distracted me from the essential ones. I’m sure that has never been a challenge for any of you.

I assumed that life would become simpler after graduation. It did not.

So, 30 years later, if I were sitting in your seat again and could give my younger self one piece of advice—something that would bless my family, influence my career, and shape my discipleship—it would be this: Learn to simplify by sacrificing lesser endeavors and consecrating time at the beginning of each day to what is essential—and by essential, I mean eternal.

Listen to Sister Patricia T. Holland’s wise counsel on this matter:

As I look back at my life, and if I could live any part of it over again, I would do one thing differently—very differently: simplify! It seems to me that everything is better when it is simplified. . . . What I regret most in my youth is that I didn’t see the simple beauty of the gospel; I made even the gospel too complex. I felt it was too overwhelming, too difficult, and sometimes even too mysterious. It seemed to me that even as a young adult I had to climb a mountain of righteousness, go through a fiery furnace of purification, and unravel every doctrinal controversy known to mankind if I were ever to be acceptable before God.

. . . He wants us to know that the gospel is beautifully simple and simply beautiful.⁶

Such wise counsel from a remarkable woman.

Among the lessons “of great worth”⁷ that I find in Zenos’s allegory of the olive tree⁸ is a pattern for building an uncompromising relationship with the Savior by simply simplifying and prioritizing our lives around what matters most.

For our purposes today, we will consider three symbols in the allegory that could be likened to us learning and living this pattern.

First, the tree could represent our individual lives. In the allegory, the Lord says, “I will liken thee . . . unto a tame olive tree.”⁹ The Lord repeatedly expresses sorrow over the tree, saying, “It grieveth me that I should lose [this tree—or a child].”¹⁰ Heavenly Father’s concern for saving His children is so deep that it causes Him to weep.¹¹

Second, the branches could represent our pursuits and responsibilities, such as school and work, callings, sports, hobbies, and so forth—which may or may not provide good fruit, depending on their connection to the roots.

Third, the roots could represent our covenant relationship with Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ. This is the source of our strength that keeps our tree alive and stable to withstand the storms of life.

The allegory teaches that the recurring problem with the tree is imbalance. Seeing this imbalance, “the Lord of the vineyard wept,”¹² and He asked, “Who . . . has corrupted my vineyard?”¹³

The servant replied:

Is it not the loftiness of thy vineyard—have not the branches thereof overcome the roots which are good? And because the branches have overcome the roots thereof, behold they grew faster than the strength of the roots, taking strength unto themselves. Behold, I say, is not this the cause that the trees of thy vineyard have become corrupted?¹⁴

The tree perishes when the branches take “strength unto themselves” and grow faster than the strength of the roots. The tree becomes top heavy and root poor, so it collapses under the weight of its own complexity. To restore balance, the Lord instructs the servant to “keep the root and the top thereof equal”¹⁵ in strength by pruning the branches and strengthening the roots.

So what do we learn from this allegory about how to simplify and prioritize our lives?

Lesson 1

Both “pruning” (which I liken to the law of sacrifice) and “grafting in” (which we can liken to the law of consecration) are necessary to simplifying our lives.

In Zenos’s allegory, trimming, pruning, and clearing away branches are necessary to the productivity and preservation of the tree. In our lives, we become more productive when we intentionally prune away or sacrifice the unnecessary or distracting branches. And then we cultivate the abundant life as we “graft in”¹⁶—consecrating that time toward a nobler pursuit. The scriptures teach this: “Lay aside the things of this world, [to] seek for the things of a better.”¹⁷

It’s important to understand that the timing of when we graft in those better things is important to the Lord and helps us to simplify. Listen to this quote from President Henry B. Eyring:

A morning prayer and an early search in the scriptures to know what we should do for the Lord can set the course of a day. We can know which task, of all those we might choose, matters most to God and therefore to us.¹⁸

Those who daily “seek . . . first the kingdom of God”¹⁹ discover President Ezra Taft Benson’s imperative truth to simplifying our lives: “When we put God first, all other things fall into their proper place or [they] drop out of our lives.”²⁰

You may recall that some ancient sacrificial offerings had to be the firstborn and the unblemished.²¹ If time is our modern-day offering that we are giving to God, then what do we give during the firstborn and unblemished hours? As we begin each day, what does our offering of time say about what we value most? As we give God the firstlings of time each day, He gives us the power to simplify and focus on what matters most.

Lesson 2

Even good branches—good pursuits of life—can become problematic if they take “strength unto themselves” by not being grafted to the root of Jesus Christ and Heavenly Father.²²

In the allegory, some branches that were once fruitful became corrupted because they lost their connection to the roots.²³

When good activities become the focus of our growth and the source of our worth, we become top heavy and root poor. We lose what Paul calls “the simplicity that is in Christ”²⁴ and we begin “to perish”²⁵ under the weight of our many complex endeavors.

Satan promotes complexity in countless ways and means.²⁶ We have millions of songs from iTunes; countless smartphone apps at our fingertips; posts and websites galore; thousands of TV channels, limitless video games, and an overabundance of activities and hobbies seeking our attention.

As one author observed, “You cannot overestimate the unimportance of practically everything.”²⁷

Hence the Savior warned it is “the lusts of other things” that enter into our lives that may cause us to become “unfruitful.”²⁸ No matter how good these other endeavors or these “other things” may be, if our first and primary focus is not the Savior Jesus Christ, it can be so easy to waste away “the days of [our] probation.”²⁹

President Nelson taught it this way: “It is simple. You focus on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will know how to resolve every challenge you have.”³⁰

The devil is unlikely to get you—a valiant Saint—to do something wicked. Rather, for the disciple, distracting us away from Christ and getting us to focus on lesser things is the adversary’s go-to tactic.³¹

Look, it’s not a bad thing to be a go-getter.³² But as Elder Neal A. Maxwell warned:

Someday, when we look back on mortality, we will see that so many of the things that seemed to matter so much at the moment will be seen not to have mattered at all. And the eternal things will be seen to have mattered even more than the most faithful of the Saints imagined.³³

I invite you to examine what branches in your life have taken “strength unto themselves”? What can you prune? What can you graft back to the Savior? Where are you spending your time? What has your love? Your loyalty? Are the good endeavors of your life connected to Christ so that you can experience the simplicity and the abundance found only in Him?³⁴

Lesson 3

Decisions rooted in our covenant relationship with God lead to a life of clarity, abundance, and simplicity.

When our covenant relationship with God and Jesus Christ is the prevailing foundation from which our decisions are made, God changes our natures. He transforms our “wild branches” into “tame” ones.³⁵ Conversely, decisions based on a secular value system or on pragmatic thinking only temporarily affect our behavior.

Consider the following example of this truth. As a parent, you see that one of your children spends an unhealthy amount of time on social media or video games—a potentially wild branch of a modern-day tree. How do most parents attempt to fix this? They might take away the child’s device or delete an app. Maybe some of you in this room have done what I’ve done and tried that tactic for yourself. These pruning actions only temporarily change behavior, because as soon as the app is reinstalled or the device is returned, what happens? The behavior returns.

On the other hand, as parents focus on the roots by teaching their child about covenants with God, that child learns to connect to the powers of heaven. They understand why and what they need to prune by living the law of sacrifice and they understand what to graft in through consecration. They choose the covenant path for themselves, whereupon God changes their nature.

As parents and leaders, we should teach and focus more on the covenant path than the ordinance path by ensuring that our children are more knowledgeable and excited for the covenants made at baptism than for the ordinance of baptism. This would be a transformational change to help God’s children better access His power to simplify and guide their choices.

The prevailing challenge in choosing a covenant relationship with God is that the world overvalues what it can see and undervalues what is not seen.³⁶

Branches are seen. They have a temporary outward show that others use to judge our abilities and our beauty. So it is tempting to give an unhealthy amount of time and effort to the branches.

In contrast, our covenant relationship with God is eternal and mostly unseen. It is nourished by secret alms³⁷ such as prayer, time in the Book of Mormon, and worshipping Jesus Christ during the sacrament and in the temple.

When covenants are the basis of decisions, we gain laser-like clarity. We discover the abundant life found by simplifying, by focusing on that which is, as the allegory states, “most precious above all other.”³⁸

Prayer: A Divine Gift and Tool to Help Simplify and Prioritize Our Lives

May I offer a practical suggestion that could help you to simplify and focus on what matters most? One of the greatest gifts and tools that God has given us to help us simplify and to prioritize is prayer.³⁹ I learned this truth from President Oaks.

When President Oaks called me and Heidi as mission leaders, he asked us if we had any questions.

“Well, yes,” I said. “With your heavy load, how can you find time to visit with my daughter? With the many important things that you have to do each day, how do you know what matters most?”

He replied that the first thing he does each day is offer prayer expressing his foremost desire to know and do God’s will. He then goes on a walk; he ponders what the Lord would have him do. He returns to pray again for confirmation of his thoughts and for further direction in dividing the light from the darkness in that day’s decisions and endeavors.

The Bible Dictionary states that “prayer is a form of work.”⁴⁰ If you have ever planted a tree, you know that you need to spend time on your knees working to nourish the roots and prune those “sucker” branches that signal stress and suck away meaningful growth.

So I ask: How hard are you working at your prayers?

There are many ways we can work at our prayers, including giving attention to our posture, listening, recording and acting on impressions, and developing sincere questions to take to the Lord in counsel. It is worthwhile to consider ways you can make your prayers more meaningful and effective.⁴¹ But today I would like to suggest one way to work at your prayers, and that is this: Work at patiently waiting upon the Lord.

When Christ fed the 5,000-plus multitude,⁴² one person in that massive gathering had to be the last to eat. And when 2,500 people felt the resurrected Savior’s wound marks, one of them was last in line.⁴³ You can almost hear that person’s concerns and doubts: “What if the food runs out?” or “What if the Savior leaves before it’s my turn?”

Perhaps you have asked: Have my chances run out? Will I ever receive the answers I seek? Is God listening to me? Is He real?

Satan wants us to believe that the bread is going to run out before we are fed or that the Savior is going to leave before we have had our chance to feel His wounds. So what do we do? We sometimes metaphorically get up from our prayers and walk away before the Savior shows up with a miraculous loaf of bread prepared just for us!⁴⁴

If you are pleading for a blessing, work at being patient. Jacob taught, “For the people of the Lord are they who wait for him.”⁴⁵

Christ is the bread of life who fed thousands. He offers us more than we will ever need.⁴⁶ He suffered and rose again so that His grace is never out of our reach. Even when we are in confusion, in stress, under heavy expectations, or swamped with responsibilities, Christ will never forget us!⁴⁷ He stands at the door ready and knocking.⁴⁸ We just have to choose to let Him in.

So let Him in by clearing away time for meaningful prayer. Prayer helps us know what to “trim” and what to “prune.” It helps us know what to “graft in” so that we can “preserve” what matters most.⁴⁹ Prayers that do not involve much work will lack the power to help us simplify and prioritize our lives.

When we work at our prayers, we are promised that they become “an appointed means for obtaining the highest of all blessings.”⁵⁰ That is an astonishing promise! And though I don’t fully understand that statement, I close by sharing one final thought.

In the First Vision, Joseph Smith knelt to pray, seeking wisdom. Before the answer came, darkness pressed in. It was so real and so heavy that he feared he would be destroyed. In that moment of despair, Joseph exerted all the power he possessed to call upon God.

And deliverance came. Light descended. Darkness fled. And Joseph found himself in the presence of God the Father and His Son, Jesus Christ.⁵¹

Sometimes we speak about the first word of the Restoration being the name Joseph, showing the intimate nature of God—that He knows each of us personally.⁵² But perhaps the first and most sacred lesson of the Restoration is that when we kneel in sincerity and call upon God, He delivers.⁵³

Each of us will face moments when life feels overwhelming, when we feel burdened by responsibilities and expectations—when the noise and the chaos and the complexity of the world threaten to drown out what matters most.

In those moments, Jesus Christ invites us to come unto Him in prayer, wherein He delivers us—not always by removing the burden⁵⁴ but by strengthening us and giving us clarity, peace, and power to move forward with the simplicity found in Him.

I bear witness that Jesus Christ is the source of the abundant life.⁵⁵ He is the strength of our roots, the One who brings order and peace and meaning out of complexity.

May we each find the quiet courage to lay aside what is unnecessary, to choose what is eternal, and to center our lives more fully on Jesus Christ, who I witness is the Great Deliverer!⁵⁶ In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

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