“A Saint Through the Atonement of Christ the Lord”
“What we need from everyone, from those of you solidly in the Church as well as those struggling to hold on, is always the same: powerful faith, faith that sustains us here and now, not just on the day of judgment or somewhere in celestial glory.”
Preparing for Life’s Unexpected Storms
The Savior has commanded us to not be afraid, even when the unexpected storms of life are raging around us. This commandment is often easier to articulate than to implement. But, fortunately, the Savior has also promised us that “if ye are prepared ye shall not fear.”
“Yes, and . . .”: The Creative Art of Living
Guided by personal revelation, the creative art of living and becoming requires our full attention and intention to “Yes, and . . .” because that is magic—where the unexpected not only happens but creates something we could have never done on our own.
An Immigrant’s Journey Toward God
Indeed, we “enter to learn,” but may we more fully embrace our calling to then “go forth to serve.” As the Lord Himself told us, it is in the service of others and in taking up our own crosses of suffering that we will find our own selves
The Transformative Power of Faith and Art
Faith that is “tested, wounded, but . . . here” is a powerful, transformative kind of faith. That kind of faith recognizes that because we look through a glass, darkly, we will still have questions. It is a faith that coexists with questions and paradoxes. It is a faith that has battle scars but also enduring resonance.
Enduring and Trusting to the End
It is possible to reach your goals if you work hard, keep the right perspective, and use your challenges as opportunities to grow and develop.
Meekly Placing Our Total Trust in God
Will you shift in your seat and succumb to popular opinion, or will you stand firm and confident in the counsels and blessings of your loving God and let Him have His head?
Why Mountains?
Please remember when you look up at Y Mountain to ask yourself the question “Why Mountains?” My prayer is that you will remember that they are there not to befuddle us but to bless us.
Choose to Trust the Lord
I am learning that my faith in the Lord is not conditioned on getting what I want when I want it. Instead, I have worked to develop trust and love for the Lord that is not transactional, but is relational.
“Thy Troubles to Bless”
In the midst of our adversity, it may be tempting to think that God has not fulfilled His promises. But we do not lean for repose on desired outcomes. As the song says, we lean for repose on Jesus, who will not desert us to our foes, though all hell may shake around us.
The Faith to Do His Will
Do you have faith that your Heavenly Father knows you so well that He knows under what circumstances you will emerge as a stronger, albeit wounded, healer so that you will become a valuable instrument in His hands, able to do His work and comfort His children?
“Lay Hold upon the Word”: The Power of Wholehearted Living
I believe that one of the most significant obstacles to our laying hold upon the word is our inability to fully immerse ourselves in the word or other worthwhile things—our inability to fully focus on them.
Hope As an Anchor of Our Souls
Real hope, based on eternal principles and spiritual experiences, is an anchor to our souls, intended to have and capable of having precisely the same effects as a sea anchor.
His Burden Is Light
Remaining steadfast in Christ through our afflictions and adversity increases our capacity to see our promised end more clearly. Like a powerful spotlight that shines more brightly in complete darkness, our suffering reveals Christ to us.
Which Way Are You Swimming?
What will we do when faced with situations that could potentially cause us to lose our focus? Will we flounder by blaming others and losing focus so that we are sucked under by the whirlpools around us, or will we choose to keep swimming?
Dally Up: Finding Our Anchor in Turbulent Times
When we reflect upon Him as an anchor in our lives, I am grateful for the physical manifestation of the marks driven through His hands and feet that show the depth of sacrifice and charity from Him that sustains and blesses us today.
The Four Steps on the Stairway to Heaven
So the question isn’t, Are you going to crash and burn every once in a while? Of course you are—you are human! In Romans 3:23 we read, “For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.” The question is, What are you going to do about it?
A Grateful Heart
Brothers and sisters, gratitude is a heavenly, spiritual gift and a spiritual force in our lives. May we have hearts that can feel, ears that can hear, and eyes that can see our blessings and live in continual gratitude toward God and those around us.
What Happens When Life Gets One Degree Colder?
A plan in which supposedly everything would go right so nobody would be lost was
already proposed and rejected. The plan of salvation, on the other hand, allows for opposition in all things: sadness and sweetness, wrongdoing
and repentance, trial and testimony.
A Miracle in the Making: Finding the Meaning in Adversity
All of us will experience difficult challenges in life. How you deal with and overcome adversity is what is important.
The Gardener of Gethsemane
If we are looking, we will see the caring hands of the Gardener of Gethsemane shaping our lives in ways we cannot now imagine. I pray that we might yield to this pruning so that we can become the people God would have us be.
Strengthened by the Hand of the Lord
To endure well and not give up amidst the challenges in our journey will require us to have strength beyond our own. We cannot do it alone, but with the Lord’s help our success is assured.
God Did Not Put Us Here to Fail
You and the Lord, working together, can accomplish anything. Never forget—God did not put us here to fail.
Dealing with Challenges
As we move into a new season of life, may we always remember the lessons that we have learned during this “intellectually enlarging” and “spiritually strengthening” season of growth.
Becoming and Overcoming
Fully consecrate your life to Heavenly Father and draw ever closer to Him and His Son. Have an attitude that you will serve Him in spite of the pain you are going through and the lack of true understanding you have of where He is taking you. Continue to feast on the word of God and have faith.
Going Forward with Faith During Difficult Times
Great blessings come when the faithful endure adversity.
Lessons from Liberty Jail
Every one of us, in one way or another, great or small, dramatic or incidental, is going to spend a little time in Liberty Jail—spiritually speaking.
He Cares More About the Shoulder Than About the Wheel
He who is omnipotent really does not need us to move the wheel or to build anything for Him. It is not His ultimate objective to cover the world with chapels and temples. That is a means to His end, and I believe we can all easily quote that end, His ultimate objective: “For behold, this is my work and my glory—to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man.” I believe that He cares more about the shoulder than about the wheel—that wheel is how we are moved to come home to Him. The wheel, the work, is a blessing to us. This is important. The work is a blessing.
The Power of Deliverance
Your experience in enduring well in the trials of life by drawing on God’s power of deliverance can bring you the assurance you need to find peace in this life and confidence for the next.
The Love of God: Suffering Tribulation in the Redeemer’s Name
[God] has blessed me with many wonderful days—more of those than of difficult days of suffering and despair. And yet even in those difficult days I have felt the Lord reach out to me, felt the darkness disperse, and felt His personal love fill my very soul.
Pray Not for Light Burdens but for Strong Backs
We can expect trials and tribulation—they are an essential part of the great plan. Some we will experience because of our own mistakes—our sins—others merely as a part of living in mortality, and others because the Lord loves us and provides experiences that tend to our spiritual growth.
Pray Not for Light Burdens, but for Strong Backs
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The Nobility of Failure
"And the Savior’s apparent failure at Calvary was in actuality the greatest conquest in all eternity, the conquest over sin and death."
The Crucibles of Eternal Identity
Our prophets have reminded us that this mortal estate is a school to learn how to be gods and goddesses, having increase and creating worlds while giving all glory to the Father. I would like to suggest that crucibles are one way in which we move toward eternity—connecting our premortal, mortal, and postmortal identities.
Vast and Intimate: The Atonement in the Heavens and in the Heart
The Atonement is intensely individual, reaching to every single soul, and it is universal, reaching to all creation. In both of these aspects, planetary and personal, the Atonement overcomes separation of every kind.
Trusting God When Things Go Wrong
Ultimately it is this faith in what God has done for us and revealed to us through his Son that will strengthen our trust in him when things go wrong.
Strength in Adversity
I pray that the Lord’s blessings will be with us as we are proven, as we are tried, as we go into that crucible of adversity, that we will know there is always going to be the brighter day, and the brightest day will be the day when, if we stay true and faithful and we understand, we can enter into the presence of God the Father and Jesus Christ.
Lessons from the Potter and the Clay
You are the clay—and as such you are of utmost importance to the Lord. He loves you and desires to shape you into a magnificent vessel of honor—designed and glazed for all eternity.
Adversity
Like the mortal life of which they are a part, adversities are temporary. What is permanent is what we become by the way we react to them.
Knowing When to Persevere and When to Change Direction
But if I could turn back the clock, would I also have to trade in what I have learned? I wouldn’t want to give that part back. Always having our first choice might mean giving up unknown benefits.
After the “Y”— What Then?
"When we don’t use our arms, we lose the use of our muscles. So it is with our talents and testimonies in our lives."
Find Beauty in the Storm
I used to think that faith in God came in the form of feeling certain that life would be as I wanted it to be. I have grown to understand that to have ultimate faith in God is to know he is with us and will give us unfailing strength to help us through life’s challenges.
Fear Not, Little Flock
My message to you today is to “fear not, little flock.” It is to encourage you to rejoice in the great blessings of life. It is to invite you to feel the great thrill of gospel living and our Father in Heaven’s love.
No Joy Without the Struggle
Some of our greatest problems can be the most help as we work through to the solution or toward overcoming these obstacles. And it is there in the growth and development of our character that we find great happiness and joy.
There Is Always Hope
Reverberating through all eternity, all creation exults: “In Christ there is always hope.” I know whereof I speak.
Thy Will Be Done
May we really cultivate that power to say to our Heavenly Father, “O Lord, thy will be done.”
For Times of Trouble
Troubles we all have, but the “germ” of discouragement, to use Fitzgerald’s word, is not in the trouble, it is in us.
The Blessings of Adversity
There can be a necessary refining process in adversity which increases our understanding, enhances our sensitivity, and makes us more Christlike.
What Shall We Do Then?
"Look to tomorrow with happy expectancy, realizing that with God’s help you can do all things."
Let Not Your Heart Be Troubled
My dear young friends, don’t partake of the spirit of our times. Look for the good and build on it. Don’t be a “pickle sucker.” There is so much of the sweet and the decent and the good to build on.
But for a Small Moment
The catalyst of prayer helped Jesus to cope with suffering, and by his suffering he emancipated all men from death and made possible eternal life. This cardinal fact about the central act of human history, the Atonement, ought to give us pause, therefore, as we face our challenges individually.
Murmur Not
Marvin J. Ashton reminds us that murmuring leads to personal apostasy. While it may seem like fun or be easier to murmur, when we do, we turn away from God.
God Is the Gardener
Whatever undertakings may demand of you and of your attention, I tell you, young men and young women, you cannot make a better resolution today than this: “I am going to keep close to the Lord. I am going to understand Him better, and, understanding Him, I will understand myself and will try to put my life into harmony with His.”
“Let Not Your Heart Be Troubled”
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Sweet Are the Uses of Adversity
God has promised that adversity and affliction are temporary—but the blessings and growth that can come from them are eternal.
Whither Shall We Go?
The power of choice is within you. The roads are clearly marked: one offering animal existence, the other life abundant…
A Few Lessons from Joseph
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The Story of My Life
Thomas L. Martin humorously describes the main events of his life and highlights how the hand of the Lord worked to help him reach all his righteous goals.
