It is only by yielding to God that we can begin to realize His will for us. And if we truly trust God, why not yield to His loving omniscience? After all, He knows us and our possibilities much better than do we.
A vague goal is no goal at all. The Ten Commandments wouldn't be very impressive, for instance, if they weren't specific, but simply were couched in a phraseology such as 'thou shalt not be a bad person.
Just as meekness is in all our virtues, so is pride in all our sins. Whatever its momentary and alluring guise, pride is the enemy, "the first of the sins." One reason to be particularly on guard against pride is that "the devilish strategy of Pride is that it attacks us, not in our weakest points, but in our strongest. It is preeminently the sin of the noble mind." Not only of the noble mind, but also of the semi-righteous.
How good you and I get at repenting will determine how good life is.
In the economy of Heaven, God does not send thunder if a still, small voice is enough, or a prophet if a priest can do the job.
Do not write a check with your tongue that your actions cannot cash.
It is possible to know when, at least basically, we please God. In fact, Joseph Smith taught that one of the conditions of genuine faith is to have "an actual knowledge that the course of life which [one] is pursuing is according to [God's] will."
In one degree or another we all struggle with selfishness. Since it is so common, why worry about selfishness anyway? Because selfishness is really self-destruction in slow motion.
Consecration thus constitutes the only unconditional surrender which is also a total victory!
It is one of the great ironies of human history that some mortals with incorrect understanding of God and life's purposes sometimes scold God because of the abundance of human misery and suffering-which, indeed, lies all about us. Such individuals almost dare God to demonstrate His existence by straightening things out-and at once! But He is a much different kind of Father than that. Surely it is requisite to eternal life that we come to know God and Jesus Christ whom He has sent (see John 17:3).
Pure religion is having the courage to do what is right and let the consequence follow.
Although goal setting can clearly be overdone, only a few people are overly involved with goals and goal setting; most people do far too little goal setting, including the reflecting that precedes the setting of such goals. Too many marriages have financial goals but not other explicit goals. Yet the gospel is certainly goal-oriented.
Any assessment of where we stand in relationship to Him tells us that we do not stand at all. We kneel.
If we knew how often the obedience of others is affected by our own, and how often our stepping forth soon brings forth a whole platton of helpers, and how often our speaking forth soon creates a chorus - we would be even more ashamed of our slackess and our silence.
Ultimate hope constitutes the anchor of the soul.
The gross size of our talent inventories is less important than the net use of our talents?
The dues of discipleship are high indeed, and how much we can take so often determines how much we can then give.
The Book of Mormon is to be feasted upon, not nibbled.
Those who turn against the Church do so to play to their own private gallery, but when, one day, the applause has died down and the cheering has stopped, they will face a smaller audience, the judgment bar of God.
Patience helps us to view imperfections in others more generously to the end that we may learn to be more wise than they have been.
If another person only had in his storehouse of deserved self-esteem what you had put there, what would he have to draw upon and to sustain him?
If the nearly one-and-a-half million babies aborted in America each year could, somehow, vote, chameleon candidates would find fresh reason to be concerned about abortion, whereas now they are unconcerned.
We may never become accustomed to untrue and unjust criticism of us but we ought not to be immobilized by it.
It is not the years but the changes that make us grow.
Life is an 'open-book' exam, but the problem is that most of the students don't have the 'book', or refuse to open it-a fact that ought to spur us on as Church members to share the gospel more widely so that life would be meaningful for more people.
