This post is part of the General Conference Odyssey. This week covers the Sunday Morning Session of the October 2007 Conference.
I've probably read Elder Eyring's "O Remember, Remember" talk ten times, because it's where he talks about keeping a journal of how he saw the Lord's hand in his life, and I re-read it when I'm working on my own such journal (which I call a "tender mercies" book—I always re-read the Elder Bednar talk about the Lord's tender mercies too).
And it's fitting that I write about this "remembering" talk this week, our last week in Quebec, because remembering has been such a theme for us this place—je me souviens!
This time, I noticed some new things in the talk, though, probably because I had just barely read his priesthood session talk (which I wrote about last week) and he repeated some of the same themes. It's interesting when you can find clues to what the apostles are thinking and pondering at a given time in their lives! In the priesthood session talk Elder Eyring described how important it is for our confidence to remember how much God has helped us in the past. In this talk he zeros in on that teaching to urge us to proactively do something to make sure we remember! He says:
When we struggle, as so many do…the enemy of our souls can send his evil message that there is no God or that if He exists He does not care about us. Then it can be hard for the Holy Ghost to bring to our remembrance the lifetime of blessings the Lord has given us from our infancy and in the midst of our distress.
That's true. Part of the reason we even need to "remember" is because our natural tendency is to forget! So, Elder Eyring says, we should use this "simple cure" (fix your forgetting problems with this one weird trick!😄):
The key to the remembering that brings and maintains testimony is receiving the Holy Ghost as a companion. It is the Holy Ghost who helps us see what God has done for us. It is the Holy Ghost who can help those we serve to see what God has done for them.
And not surprisingly, doing this goes back to the cycle of the Doctrine of Christ and our covenant promises:
Heavenly Father has given a simple pattern for us to receive the Holy Ghost not once but continually in the tumult of our daily lives. The pattern is repeated in the sacramental prayer: We promise that we will always remember the Savior. We promise to take His name upon us. We promise to keep His commandments. And we are promised that if we do that, we will have His Spirit to be with us. Those promises work together in a wonderful way to strengthen our testimonies and in time, through the Atonement, to change our natures as we keep our part of the promise.…When we persist in doing that, we receive the gifts of the Holy Ghost to give us power in our service. We come to see the hand of God more clearly, so clearly that in time we not only remember Him, but we come to love Him and, through the power of the Atonement, become more like Him.
I love that cycle: trying to keep the commandments and so receiving the spirit, then seeing God's hand because of the Spirit, then loving God more and wanting to serve Him more because of seeing His hand in our lives!
I also love Elder Eyring's answer to the question (a good one!) about what happens when someone doesn't have a place to jump into the cycle, perhaps someone (as he says) "who knows nothing about God and claims no memory of spiritual experiences at all?" Even for that person, he says:
Even before people receive the right to the gifts of the Holy Ghost, when they are confirmed as members of the Church, and even before the Holy Ghost confirms truth to them before baptism, they have spiritual experiences. The Spirit of Christ has already, from their childhood, invited them to do good and warned them against evil. They have memories of those experiences even if they have not recognized their source. That memory will come back to them as missionaries or we teach them the word of God and they hear it. They will remember the feeling of joy or sorrow when they are taught the truths of the gospel.
I find this so comforting when I think of my loved ones who don't seem to remember or believe that God is working in their lives. I get scared that their unbelief will always just lead to more unbelief until they're lost forever, but that's not how God works. He works so hard and so patiently to bring us back! He has been involved in our lives "from our childhood" (Elder Eyring also emphasized that in the priesthood session talk)—for every person on earth! And so I can have faith that He will keep patiently waiting for the right time, the right stage of readiness, the softening of the heart—and then He will send His spirit at that exact time to help my loved ones remember what they once felt and once saw. God will show them that He has always been there, lovingly working in their lives, even when they didn't know it. I love to think of that time of realization coming in their lives, and maybe it will come as I show an example of remembering God's hand in my own life!
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