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Wednesday, April 30, 2025

To be clear, the idea that God has stopped loving should be so far down the list of possible explanations in life that we don’t get to it until after the mountains have left and the hills are gone!

 When we don’t feel the warmth of divine love, it hasn’t gone away. God’s own words are that “the mountains shall depart, and the hills be removed; but [His] kindness shall not depart from [us].” So, just to be clear, the idea that God has stopped loving should be so far down the list of possible explanations in life that we don’t get to it until after the mountains have left and the hills are gone!

I really enjoy this symbolism of mountains being evidence of the certainty of God’s love. That powerful symbolism weaves into accounts of those who go to the mountains to receive revelation and Isaiah’s description of “the mountain of the Lord’s house” being “established in the top of the mountains.” The house of the Lord is the home of our most precious covenants and a place for us all to retreat and sink deeply into the evidence of our Father’s love for us

October 2024
General Conference
Karl D. Hirst

You are not just asking me to change my behavior; you are asking me to change my nature.

 When I first entered the field as a mission president, I met several times with a missionary who was struggling with obedience.

One day in frustration he blurted out: “What then do you want me to do?”

I replied: “You have missed the point. It is not what do I want you to do but what do you want to do?”

There was a moment of silence, and then he made this insightful observation: “You are not just asking me to change my behavior; you are asking me to change my nature.”

He was so right. If someone only changes his behavior while a missionary, then, when he goes home, he will be the very same person he was when he left, subject to the same problems that plagued him before. But if someone changes his nature, he will go home a new man, with the power and discipline to conquer his old Goliaths. If someone is only moral because his date insists on it, then he has only changed his behavior and will be equally susceptible when each new temptation confronts him. But if he is moral whether or not his date so insists, he has changed his nature. Then he will have an increased resistance when similar temptations come. If someone speaks good words but entertains bad thoughts, he has only changed his behavior. If he also changes his thoughts, then he will also change his nature. Our natures have changed when our inner motives and thoughts are consistent with our outward behavior. With the Lord’s help we can transform our natures. 



Becoming Men and Women of Integrity
Tad R. Callister
of the Quorum of the Seventy
December 6, 2011

Monday, April 14, 2025

Shame; Through His Brokeness He Can Make Our Brokenness Unbroken--Whole

 Jesus removes all shame from the broken. Through His brokenness, He became perfect, and He can make us perfect in spite of our brokenness. Broken, lonely, torn, and bruised He was—and we may feel we are—but separated from the love of God we are not. “Broken people, perfect love,” as the song goes.

You might know something secret about yourself that makes you feel unlovable. However right you might be about what you know about yourself, you are wrong to think that you have put yourself beyond the reach of God’s love. We are sometimes cruel and impatient toward ourselves in ways that we could never imagine being toward anyone else. There is much for us to do in this life, but self-loathing and shameful self-condemnation are not on that list. However misshapen we might feel we are, His arms are not shortened. No. They are always long enough to “[reach our] reaching” and embrace each one of us.

October 2024
General Conference
Karl D. Hirst

Wearing the garment of the holy priesthood is a daily reminder of the gift of His power working in you to help you become.

 Wearing the garment of the holy priesthood is a daily reminder of the gift of His power working in you to help you become.

October 2024
General Conference
Emily Belle Freeman

Under His direction, within the order of His priesthood, the sons of God have been ordained to stand in place of the Son of God.

 First, in order for an ordinance to manifest the power of God in our lives, it must be done with authority from the Son of God. The delivery system is important. The Father entrusted Jesus Christ with the keys and authority to oversee the delivery of His priesthood ordinances. Under His direction, within the order of His priesthood, the sons of God have been ordained to stand in place of the Son of God.

October 2024
General Conference
Emily Belle Freeman

I Have Experienced This Power of the Sacramen

 I took that piece of bread and that cup of water. This was a time when I needed power from heaven. In the midst of great heartache, exhaustion, and uncertainty, I wondered about this gift that would allow me to draw upon the power from Him that I so desperately needed. Partaking of the sacrament would increase my companionship with the Spirit of the Lord, allowing me to draw upon the gift of God’s power, including the ministering of angels and the Savior’s enabling strength to overcome.

October 2024
General Conference
Emily Belle Freeman

Saturday, April 12, 2025

Old Crow

You may wonder, at my age, what I can contribute to your lives. I have been where you are and know where you are going. But you have not yet been where I am. I quote a few lines of classic poetry:

The old crow is getting slow.

The young crow is not.

Of what the young crow does not know

The old crow knows a lot.

At knowing things the old crow

Is still the young crow’s master.

What does the slow old crow not know?

—How to go faster.

The young crow flies above, below,

And rings around the slow old crow.

What does the fast young crow not know?

—Where to go.


October 2011, General Conference, Boyd K. Packer