Talk For Church

Good afternoon brothers and sisters,
In Las Vegas a few years ago there was a kid that was given little or no credit by his ward. He was always portrayed as, ‘that wild boy’ and no one quite knew what to think about him. He went to church, but never really spoke up during classes and always seemed to find something else to do. Outside of the chapel members always worried about him. He never went to mutual activities, rarely if ever was home for the all important family home evening, and always with his friends. His friends were not members, they did not share the same standards as he did, and everyone knew that things weren’t right. Two of his friends tried to commit suicide, one succeeded. Two others were arrested for breaking and entering, drug possession, and grand theft auto with only one day of work on their part, and he was still their friends, and members always questioned.
That boy stands in front of you today.
I do not share this story in attempts to get pity, instead I share this story to share just how much the church has changed my life and the power of what we have. I find it slightly humorous when members of this church say, “I don’t know where I would be without this church” because I do. I know. I know which prison I would be in. This church can change people’s lives.
Today I would like to simply focus on what you need to do to have this church change your life. It can change your life, I know it can because I’ve seen it not only in my life but also in two of my friends lives that converted. It takes work, but the blessings that we receive are worth it.
The first thing that I would suggest to make this church change your life is to simply have faith. It is good to question, it is what the prophet Joseph Smith did, but faith is a key aspect of this church. We have to start out with faith so that when we do run up against a question or something that we do not understand that we can rely on that faith to overcome that obstacle. One such situation is with callings or directions from our leaders. A few years ago President Hinckley challenged each one of us to read the Book of Mormon. He told us it would help us out, and that was it. We each had a decision to make, either to have faith and believe in a person that we sustained as our leader and do what he asked or to be unsure and make up reasons not to. The same goes for callings and suggestions in this ward. We have sustained certain people in this ward to be our leaders. Even if we do not agree with them, even if it seems to be the dumbest idea this side of crossing the planes with handcarts, we have to exercise our faith and follow. God will not always explain everything, and more often than not we’re not going to like the direction that we receive, however through faith we believe that those men and women are called of God and have the right to lead us. Every few months we raise our hands and sustain, which means support and ratify those people in leadership positions. Have the faith, and support them. If you have faith in not only local leaders but the prophet of this church, and you follow that faith, you have taken a step that many people refuse to take, and oddly enough that’s only step one.
The second thing that I would like to talk about is repentance. 2 Nephi 2:21. To make your life change, to really use this in your own life, you need to repent. Have the faith from the first step to believe and hope with all of your heart that what I’m about to tell you is true. God wants to forgive you. He wants you to become better. He wants you back home, and he’s willing to let his only son die to let that happen. Please, follow the steps of repentance and become better. We all know that no one is perfect, so stop worrying about not being perfect, and just make today better than yesterday. Talk with him, and you’ll quickly find out that He is willing to sacrifice everything He can to get you home. Repentance will change your life, and if you truly use it I personally believe that you’ll see a bigger change in your life than any other of these steps. If you truly repent and are willing to strive even more to get back home, you’ll see changes in your life that you thought were only meant for people in the scriptures. It is possible to have experiences like Alma, Paul, and others, but one of the key steps is through repentance and trying to become better. If you don’t try, nothing will happen, but if you try with everything that you’ve got, the sky’s the limit.
The third tip that I’d give is, remember your baptismal covenant. Every Sunday we take the sacrament. What does that mean? The generic answer is that it renews our baptismal covenant, but what does it mean for you? The prayer says that we’re doing this to take upon us the name of Christ. Do we act like that? Think about walking around with a name tag on written on it in big letters, “Hello, I’m the stand in for Christ. He wasn’t able to make it right now, how may I help you?” Would you act any different than what you do in your normal life? A certain part of the young women’s values comes to mind where it says, “in all things and in all places” men if you don’t know what I’m talking about find a girl and get her to recite it to you, it’s a good thing to hear a few times even for us guys. We need act the part, we need to have the faith that eating that little slice of bread and drinking that little table spoon of water makes us have the name of Christ on us. Respect and honor your baptismal covenants.
The final step I’m going to start with the quick reminder of who is in the God head. How that it is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. I’d also like to remind you that they are one in the same, same mind, same actions, same everything. As we learn from Christ, if you meet Christ it’s just as good as if you had met God Himself. The Holy Ghost is the same way. The final step that I would like to talk about today is the gift of the Holy Ghost. Having this gift is having a member of the God head, and we’ve already gone over the members of this exclusive club, with you all the time. If we live our lives worthy, we get that privilege of working in conjunction with a member of the God head. We get to work with the Holy Ghost who works with God and Christ ALL THE TIME. If we listen and follow the promptings of the Holy Ghost, nothing will ever go wrong in the eternal perspective. You might have a bad day, but in the long run, if you follow the Holy Ghost and always make sure that you are in line with the spirit, you have nothing to worry about. Isn’t that an amazing idea? That you’ll never have to worry? Especially now, when it is close to finals time, we know how nice it would be if we could simply walk into a test and have the teacher right next to us giving us hints and occasionally the answers to the quiz. We can have that. We can do that here in the ultimate quiz, called life. We can have a member of the God Head with us all the time, ready and willing to help us out, the only thing we have to do is the first three steps.
To review, to change your life you only need four things. If you are upset with any aspect of your life, there are four simple steps to fix it. If you want a happier better life, here are the four steps for you that will work no matter what happens in the world. If you follow these steps, in only a few years you won’t recognize your old self. Those steps are 1) have faith 2) repent 3) honor your baptismal covenants 4) listen and follow the Holy Ghost. Now I’m not the most eloquent of speakers I tend to put things quite plain and bluntly, so I’m going to quote Joseph Smith’s views on this, “We believe that the first principles and ordinances of the Gospel are: first, Faith in the Lord Jesus Christ second, Repentance; third, Baptism by immersion for the remission of sins; fourth, Laying on of hands for the gift of the Holy Ghost.
This works. This works miracles. We hear it so often that we don’t understand just how powerful something right in front of our faces can be in our lives. You don’t need anything special, you don’t need to be a prophet or an apostle, you simply need to follow what you read in the scriptures. Have faith, repent, keep your baptismal promise, and listen to the Holy Ghost. Please brothers and sisters, I pray that we can all follow these simple steps so that we may all come closer to our Savior who lives and leads this church. And I do so, in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.