Thomas S. Monson -The Sustaining of Church Officers
Neal A. Maxwell -"According to the Desire of [Our] Hearts"
- What we insistently desire, over time, is what we will eventually become and what we will receive in eternity.
- Brothers and sisters, we become the victims of our own wrong desires. Moreover, we live in an age when many simply refuse to feel responsible for themselves.
- This is like a sludge which is sweeping society along toward "the gulf of misery and endless wo." Feeding that same flow is the selfish philosophy of "no fault," which is replacing the meek and apologetic "my fault." We listen with eager ear to hear genuine pleas for forgiveness instead of the ritualistic "Sorry. I hope I can forgive myself."
- Like it or not therefore, reality requires that we acknowledge our responsibility for our desires.
- No wonder desires also determine the gradations in outcomes, including why "many are called, but few are chosen."
- It is up to us. God will facilitate, but He will not force.
- "The men and women, who desire to obtain seats in the celestial kingdom, will find that they must battle every day."
- Therefore, true Christian soldiers are more than weekend warriors.
- To be a man is to desire. The good man desires God and other things in God. The sinful man desires things in the place of God, but he is still recognizably human, inasmuch as he has known desire. The slothful man, however, is a dead man, an ariel waste. ... His desire itself has dried up."
- Brothers and sisters, it is our own desires which determine the sizing and the attractiveness of various temptations. We set our thermostats as to temptations.
- "It is evident that many who understand the truth do not govern themselves by it; consequently, no matter how true and beautiful truth is, you have to take the passions of the people and mould them to the law of God.
- "Do you," President Young asked, "think that people will obey the truth because it is true, unless they love it? No, they will not."
- Sometimes reaching out is like trying to pat a porcupine. Even so, the accumulated quill marks are evidence that our hands of fellowship have been stretched out, too!
- It is up to us.
- Righteous parents are teaching more than they now realize.
- Thus the work of eternity is not done in a moment, but, rather, in "process of time." Time works for us when our desires do likewise!
- "Build under the point where the colors fall and you will prosper and have peace."
- When troubles come, the parties to a contractual marriage seek happiness by walking away. They marry to obtain benefits and will stay only as long as they're receiving what they bargained for. But when troubles come to a covenant marriage, the husband and wife work them through. They marry to give and to grow, bound by covenants to each other, to the community, and to God. Contract companions each give 50 percent; covenant companions each give 100 percent.
- Marriage is by nature a covenant, not just a private contract one may cancel at will. Jesus taught about contractual attitudes when he described the "hireling," who performs his conditional promise of care only when he receives something in return. When the hireling "seeth the wolf coming," he "leaveth the sheep, and fleeth ... because he ... careth not for the sheep." By contrast, the Savior said, "I am the good shepherd, ... and I lay down my life for the sheep." Many people today marry as hirelings. And when the wolf comes, they flee. This idea is wrong. It curses the earth, turning parents' hearts away from their children and from each other.
- Of course, some have no opportunity to marry. And some divorces are unavoidable. But the Lord will ultimately compensate those faithful ones who are denied mortal fulfillment.
- Every marriage is tested repeatedly by three kinds of wolves. The first wolf is natural adversity.
- Second, the wolf of their own imperfections will test them.
- The third wolf is the excessive individualism that has spawned today's contractual attitudes.
- Family members are neither slaves nor inanimate objects. But this teacher's fear, shared today by many, is that the bonds of kinship and marriage are not valuable ties that bind, but are, instead, sheer bondage.
- When the wolf comes, may we be as shepherds, not hirelings, willing to lay down our lives, a day at a time, for the sheep of our covenant. Then, like Adam and Eve, we will have joy.
- Let me suggest three other areas or distractions we need to avoid in order to maintain joy and rejoice more fully in the Savior's gift: (1) avoid distractions which keep us from doing what we ought to do, (2) avoid the magnification of small imperfections, and (3) avoid unfavorable comparisons with others.
- 1. We needed to have worthwhile goals.
- 2. We could change our goals at any time.
- 3. Whatever goal we chose, we had to diligently work towards it.
- "For what doth it profit a man if a gift is bestowed upon him, and he receive not the gift? Behold, he rejoices not in that which is given unto him, neither rejoices in him who is the giver of the gift."
- Any call to bear witness and to care for others is not a request for extra service; it is a blessing designed by a loving Heavenly Father and His Son Jesus Christ.
- Sorrow will come from failure either to love or to bear witness. If we fail to feel and show honest concern for those we approach with the gospel, they will reasonably distrust our message. But if out of fear of rejection we fail to tell them what the gospel has meant in our lives and could mean in theirs, we will someday share their sorrow.
- I can make two promises to those who offer the gospel to others.
- The first is that even those who reject is will someday thank us.
- My second promise is that as you offer the gospel to others, it will go down more deeply into your own heart.
- A testimony is a simple expression of what we feel.
- Our bodies change every day.
- Were it not for the Fall, our physicians, beauticians, and morticians would all be unemployed.
- But mortal life, glorious as it is, was never the ultimate objective of God's plan. Life and death here on planet Earth were merely means to an end--not the end for which we were sent.
- To be redeemed is to be atoned--received in the close embrace of God with an expression not only of His forgiveness, but of our oneness of heart and mind.
- The Atonement extends not only to an infinite number of people, but also to an infinite number of worlds created by Him. It was infinite beyond any human scale of measurement or mortal comprehension.
- Jesus was the only one who could offer such an infinite atonement, since He was born of a mortal mother and an immortal Father. Because of that unique birthright, Jesus was an infinite Being.
- The Savior's gift of immortality comes to all who have ever lived. But His gift of eternal requires repentance and obedience to specific ordinances and covenants.
- The earth was created and the Church was restored to make possible the sealing of wife to husband, children to parents, families to progenitors, worlds without end.
I'll be watching the leaves.
Enjoy the day!
-Sarnic Dirchi
The Dream
I was in some sort of enemy stronghold...kinda like the door place in Monster Inc, and the we'd snuck into a big room to rescue people. But at the end I knew someone would come for us (I remembered having a dream like this before) and so we all dashed behind curtains to blend in, because the robots wouldn't be able to see us. Only, one of the robots wasn't a robot, it was a human being who turned out to be deaf. And I could interpret for him. We found out he wasn't a bad guy. It was rather difficult to interpret. I ended up speaking when I should have been signing and viceversa, but it all worked out in the end.
Then the unholy tones of daylight pulled me away....
and I became myself again. :)
-S.N.D
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