"Three Goals to Guide You"

"Do not pray for tasks equal to your abilities, but pray for abilities equal to your tasks. Then the accomplishment of your tasks will be no miracle, but you will be the miracle."

-Thomas S Monson
"Three Goals to Guide You"
Oct 2007

How to Worship

There is no other thing as important as knowing who and how we should worship.

There is no salvation in worshiping a false god. It does not matter one particle how sincerely someone may believe that God is a golden calf, or that he is an immaterial, uncreated power that is in all things; the worship of such a being or concept has no saving power. Men may believe with all their souls that images or powers or laws are God, but no amount of devotion to these concepts will ever give the power that leads to immortality and eternal life.

If a man worships a cow or a crocodile, he can gain any reward that cows and crocodiles happen to be passing out this season.

If he worships the laws of the universe or the forces of nature, no doubt the earth will continue to spin, the sun to shine, and the rains to fall on the just and on the unjust.

With this principle before us, may I now illustrate some of the specifics of that divine worship which is pleasing to him whose we are?

To worship the Lord is to follow after him, to seek his face, to believe his doctrine, and to think his thoughts.

It is to walk in his paths, to be baptized as Christ was, to preach that gospel of the kingdom which fell from his lips, and to heal the sick and raise the dead as he did.

To worship the Lord is to put first in our lives the things of his kingdom, to live by every word that proceedeth forth from the mouth of God, to center our whole hearts upon Christ and that salvation which comes because of him.

It is to walk in the light as he is in the light, to do the things that he wants done, to do what he would do under similar circumstances, to be as he is.

To worship the Lord is to walk in the Spirit, to rise above carnal things, to bridle our passions, and to overcome the world.

It is to pay our tithes and offerings, to act as wise stewards in caring for those things which have been entrusted to our care, and to use our talents and means for the spreading of truth and the building up of his kingdom.

-Bruce R. McConkie

"How to Worship"

OCT 1971 

With Hand and Heart

When we treat people merely as they are, they will remain as they are. When we treat them as if they were what they should be, they will become what they should be.

Prison warden Kenyon J. Scudder has related this experience: A friend of his happened to be sitting in a railroad coach next to a young man who was obviously depressed. Finally the man revealed that he was a paroled convict returning from a distant prison. His imprisonment had brought shame to his family, and they had neither visited him nor written often. He hoped, however, that this was only because they were too poor to travel and too uneducated to write. He hoped, despite the evidence, that they had forgiven him.

To make it easy for them, however, he had written them to put up a signal for him when the train passed their little farm on the outskirts of town. If his family had forgiven him, they were to put a white ribbon in the big apple tree which stood near the tracks. If they didn’t want him to return, they were to do nothing, and he would remain on the train as it traveled west.

As the train neared his home town, the suspense became so great he couldn’t bear to look out of his window. He exclaimed, “In just five minutes the engineer will sound the whistle, indicating our approach to the long bend which opens into the valley I know as home. Will you watch for the apple tree at the side of the track?” His companion changed places with him and said he would. The minutes seemed like hours, but then there came the shrill sound of the train whistle. The young man asked, “Can you see the tree? Is there a white ribbon?”

Came the reply: “I see the tree. I see not one white ribbon, but many. There must be a white ribbon on every branch. Son, someone surely does love you.”

In that instant he stood cleansed by Christ.

His friend said, “I felt as if I had witnessed a miracle.”

Indeed, he had witnessed a miracle appropriately described by the third verse of a favorite Christmas carol, “O Little Town of Bethlehem”:

“How silently, how silently, The wondrous gift is given!

So God imparts to human hearts The blessings of his heaven.

“No ear may hear his coming; But in this world of sin,

Where meek souls will receive him still, The dear Christ enters in.”

—Hymns, no. 165

We, too, can experience this same miracle when we, with hand and heart, as did the Savior, lift and love our neighbor to a newness of life.

-Thomas S. Monson
"With Hand and Heart"
OCT 1971