Mike's Blog » Holland

This, the Greatest of All Dispensations – Elder Jeffrey R. Holland

mbrinson — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 06:33:25 +0000

We should watch for the signs, we should live as faithfully as we possibly can, and we should share the gospel with everyone so that blessings and protections will be available to all. But we must not be paralyzed just because that event and the events surrounding it are ahead of us somewhere. We cannot stop living life. Indeed, we should live life more fully than we have ever lived it. After all, this is the dispensation of the fulness of times.

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Faith in the Lord Jesus Christ—that is the first principle of the gospel. We must go forward. God expects you to have enough faith, determination, and trust in Him to keep moving, keep living, keep rejoicing. He expects you not simply to face the future; He expects you to embrace and shape the future—to love it, rejoice in it, and delight in your opportunities.

God is eagerly waiting for the chance to answer your prayers and fulfill your dreams, just as He always has. But He can’t if you don’t pray, and He can’t if you don’t dream. In short, He can’t if you don’t believe.

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The other verse I refer to is from the Savior, spoken to His disciples as He faced His Crucifixion and as they faced fear, disarray, and persecution. In His last collective counsel to them in mortality, He said: “These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world” (John 16:33).

So, in a world of tribulation, let’s remember our faith. Let’s recall the other promises and prophecies that have been given, all the reassuring ones, and let’s live life more fully, with more boldness and courage than at any other time.

Christ has overcome the world and made a path for us. He has said to us in our day: “Gird up your loins and be prepared. Behold, the kingdom is yours, and the enemy shall not overcome” (D&C 38:9).

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Lastly, let me share this from President Gordon B. Hinckley, our modern prophet, who currently guides us through the challenging times of our present hour: “We of this generation are the end harvest of all that has gone before. It is not enough to simply be known as a member of this Church. A solemn obligation rests upon us. Let us face it and work at it.

“We must live as true followers of the Christ, with charity toward all, returning good for evil, teaching by example the ways of the Lord, and accomplishing the vast service He has outlined for us.

“May we live worthy of the glorious endowment of light and understanding and eternal truth which has come to us through all the perils of the past. Somehow, among all who have walked the earth, we have been brought forth in this unique and remarkable season. Be grateful, and above all be faithful.”3

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Over a representative period of time, our prophets have focused not on the terror of the times in which they lived and not on the ominous elements of the latter days, in which we are living, but they felt to speak of the opportunity and the blessing and, above all, the responsibility to seize the privileges afforded us in this, the greatest of all dispensations. I love the line from the Prophet Joseph Smith saying that earlier prophets, priests, and kings “have looked forward with joyful anticipation to the day in which we live; and … have sung and written and prophesied of this our day.” What were they so joyful about? I can assure you they weren’t concentrating on terror and tragedy. President Woodruff’s words were: “The eyes of God and all the holy prophets are watching us. This is the great dispensation that has been spoken of ever since the world began.” Let me repeat President Hinckley’s words: “Through all the perils of the past, [s]omehow, among all who have walked the earth, we have been brought forth in this unique and remarkable season. Be grateful, and above all be faithful.”

I don’t know how all of that makes you feel, but suddenly any undue anxiety about the times in which we live dissipates for me, and I am humbled, spiritually thrilled, and
motivated at the opportunity we have been given. God is watching over His world, His Church, His leaders, and He is certainly watching over you. Let’s just make sure we are the “pure in heart” and that we are faithful. How blessed you will be. How fortunate your children and grandchildren will be.

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Let me add another element to this view of the dispensation. Because ours is the last and greatest of all dispensations, because all things will eventually culminate and be fulfilled in our era, there is, therefore, one specific responsibility that falls to those of us in the Church now that did not rest quite the same way on Church members in any earlier time. We have a responsibility to prepare the Church of the Lamb of God to receive the Lamb of God—in person, in triumphant glory, in His millennial role as Lord of lords and King of kings.

We have the responsibility as a Church and as individual members of that Church to be worthy to have Christ come to us, to be worthy to have Him greet us, and to have Him accept, receive, and embrace us. The lives we present to Him in that sacred hour must be worthy of Him!

In the language of the scriptures we are the ones designated in all of history who must prepare the bride (the Church) for the Bridegroom (the Savior) and be worthy of an invitation to the wedding feast (see Matthew 22:2–14; 25:1–12; D&C 88:92, 96).

So, setting aside fear of the future, I am filled with an overwhelming sense of duty to prepare my life (and to the extent that I can to help prepare the lives of the members of the Church) for that long-prophesied day, for the time when we will make a presentation of the Church to Him whose Church it is.

I do not know when this singular day will come. I do not know who will be present to see it. But this I do know: when Christ comes, the members of His Church must be looking and acting like members of His Church are supposed to look and act if we are to be acceptable to Him. We must be doing His work, and we must be living His teachings. He must recognize us quickly and easily as truly being His disciples.

Pasted from <http://www.lds.org/ldsorg/v/index.jsp?vgnextoid=2354fccf2b7db010VgnVCM1000004d82620aRCRD&locale=0&sourceId=86bde5e18be63110VgnVCM100000176f620a____&hideNav=1>

Remember Lot’s wife

mbrinson — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 15:15:45 +0000

So, if history is this important — and it surely is — what did Lot’s wife do that was so wrong?
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Apparently what was wrong with Lot’s wife is that she wasn’t just looking back, but that in her heart she wanted to go back.
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It is possible that Lot’s wife looked back with resentment toward the Lord for what He was asking her to leave behind.
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So it isn’t just that she looked back; she looked back longingly. In short, her attachment to the past outweighed her confidence in the future.
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The past is to be learned from but not lived in. We look back to claim the embers from glowing experiences but not the ashes. And when we have learned what we need to learn and have brought with us the best that we experienced, then we look ahead, we remember that faith is always pointed toward the future — faith always has to do with blessings and truths and events that will yet be efficacious in our lives. So a more theological way to talk about Lot’s wife is to say she did not have faith. She doubted the Lord’s ability to give her something better than she had.
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There is something in us, at least in too many of us, that particularly fails to forgive and forget earlier mistakes in life — either mistakes we ourselves have made or the mistakes of others. That is not good. It is not Christian. It stands in terrible opposition to the grandeur and majesty of the Atonement of Christ. To be tied to earlier mistakes — our own or other people’s — is the worst kind of wallowing in the past from which we are called to cease and desist.
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Perhaps at this beginning of a new year there is no greater requirement for us than to do as the Lord Himself said He does: “Behold, he who has repented of his sins, the same is forgiven, and I, the Lord, remember them no more” (D&C 58:42). The proviso, of course, is that repentance has to be sincere, but when it is and when honest effort is being made to progress, we are guilty of the greater sin if we keep remembering and recalling and rebashing someone with their earlier mistakes, and that “someone” might be ourselves.
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Forgive, and do that which is harder than to forgive. Forget. And when it comes to mind, forget it again. You can remember just enough to avoid repeating the mistake, but put the rest of it on the dung heap Paul spoke of to those Philippians. Dismiss the destructive and keep dismissing it, until the beauty of the Atonement of Christ has revealed to you your bright future, and the bright future of your family and your friends and your neighbors. God doesn’t care nearly as much about where you have been as He does about where you are, and with His help, where you are willing to go.
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This is an important matter to consider at the start of a new year — and every day ought to be the start of a new year and a new life.
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Somewhere on that path we stopped and wondered what we had gotten ourselves into. Life that day seemed overwhelming, and the undergraduate plus graduate years we still had before us seemed monumental, nearly insurmountable.
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On a spot which I could probably still mark for you today, I turned to Pat and said something like, “Should we give up? I can get a good job and carve out a good living for us. I can do okay without a degree. Should we stop trying to tackle what right now seems so difficult to face?” In my best reenactment of Lot’s wife I said, in effect, “Let’s go back. Let’s go home. The future holds nothing hopeful for us.”
Then my beloved little bride did what she has done for 45 years since then. She grabbed me by the lapels and said, “We are not going back. We are not going home. The future holds everything hopeful for us.”
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Will I be safe? Will life be sound? Can I trust in the Lord and in the future? Or would it be better to look back, to go back, to go home?
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To all such of every generation I call out, “Remember Lot’s wife.” Faith is for the future. Faith builds on the past but never longs to stay there. Faith trusts that God has great things in store for each of us and that Christ is the “high priest of good things to come.”

Excerpts from Elder Holland’s talk on Lot’s wife and looking to the future with faith.

via LDS Church News – Elder Jeffrey R. Holland: Remember Lot’s wife.

Teaching

Mike — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 21:40:21 +0000

Most people don’t come to church looking merely for a few new gospel facts or to see old friends, though all of that is important. They come seeking a spiritual experience. They want peace. They want their faith fortified and their hope renewed. They want, in short, to be nourished by the good word of God, to be strengthened by the powers of heaven. Those of us who are called upon to speak or teach or lead have an obligation to help provide that, as best we possibly can. We can only do that if we ourselves are striving to know God, if we ourselves are continually seeking the light of His Only Begotten Son. Then, if our hearts are right, if we are as clean as we can be, if we have prayed and wept and prepared and worried until we don’t know what more we can do, God can say to us as He did to Alma and the sons of Mosiah: “Lift up thy head and rejoice. … I will give unto you success.” 16

When crises come in our lives—and they will—the philosophies of men interlaced with a few scriptures and poems just won’t do

via LDS.org – Ensign Article – “A Teacher Come from God”.