i know this is long..but i promise it is worth it. if you have 5-10 minutes, let what Elder Holland said sink in.
it is worth it. (if you DONT have time... scroll through and i bolded my favorite quotes, you lazy, lazy people.)
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Lessons from Liberty Jail- Jeffrey R. Holland
1. Everyone Faces Trying Times
Now then, three lessons from Liberty Jail: May I suggest that the
first of these is inherent in what I’ve already said—that everyone,
including (and perhaps especially) the righteous, will be called upon to
face trying times. When that happens we can sometimes fear God has
abandoned us, and we might be left, at least for a time, to wonder when
our troubles will ever end. As individuals, as families, as communities,
and as nations, probably everyone has had or will have an occasion to
feel as Joseph Smith felt when he asked why such sorrow had to come and
how long its darkness and damage would remain. We identify with him when
he cries from the depth and discouragement of his confinement: “O God,
where art thou? . . . How long shall thy hand be stayed . . . ? Yea, O
Lord, how long shall [thy people] suffer . . . before . . . thy bowels
be moved with compassion toward them?” (
D&C 121:1–3).
That is a painful, personal cry—a cry from the heart, a spiritual
loneliness we may all have occasion to feel at some time in our lives.
Perhaps you have had such moments already in your young lives. If so,
I hope you have not had too many. But whenever these moments of our
extremity come, we must not succumb to the fear that God has abandoned
us or that He does not hear our prayers. He
does hear us. He
does see us. He
does
love us. When we are in dire circumstances and want to cry “Where art
Thou?” it is imperative that we remember He is right there with us—where
He has always been!
We must continue to believe, continue to have
faith, continue to pray and plead with heaven, even if we feel for a
time our prayers are not heard and that God has somehow gone away. He is there. Our prayers are heard. And when we weep He and the angels of heaven weep with us.
When lonely, cold, hard times come, we have to endure, we have to
continue, we have to persist. That was the Savior’s message in the
parable of the importuning widow (see
Luke 18:1–8; see also
Luke 11:5–10).
Keep knocking on that door.
Keep pleading. In the meantime, know that
God hears your cries and knows your distress. He is your Father, and you
are His child.
When what has to be has been and when what lessons to be learned have
been learned, it will be for us as it was for the Prophet Joseph. Just
at the time he felt most alone and distant from heaven’s ear was the
very time he received the wonderful ministration of the Spirit and
wonderful, glorious answers that came from his Father in Heaven. Into
this dismal dungeon and this depressing time, the voice of God came,
saying:
“My son, peace be unto thy soul; thine adversity and thine afflictions shall be but a small moment;
“And then, if thou endure it well, God shall exalt thee on high; thou shalt triumph over all thy foes” (
D&C 121:7–8).
Even though seemingly unjust circumstances may be heaped upon us and
even though unkind and unmerited things may be done to us—perhaps by
those we consider enemies but also, in some cases, by those whom we
thought were friends—nevertheless, through it all,
God is with us. That
is why we had our marvelous choir sing tonight Sarah Adams’s
traditional, old Christian hymn “Nearer, My God, to Thee” with that
seldom-sung fourth verse, which they sang so beautifully:
Out of my stony griefs
Bethel I’ll raise;
So by my woes to be
Nearer, my God, to thee.
12
We are not alone in our little prisons here. When suffering, we may
in fact be nearer to God than we’ve ever been in our entire lives. That knowledge can turn every such situation into a would-be temple.
Regarding our earthly journey, the Lord has promised: “I will go
before your face. I will be on your right hand and on your left, and my
Spirit shall be in your hearts, and mine angels round about you, to bear
you up” (
D&C 84:88). That is an everlasting declaration of God’s love and care for us, including—and perhaps especially—in times of trouble.
2. Even the Worthy Will Suffer
Secondly, we need to realize that just because difficult things
happen—sometimes unfair and seemingly unjustified things—it does not
mean that we are unrighteous or that we are unworthy of blessings or
that God is disappointed in us. Of course sinfulness does bring
suffering, and the only answer to that behavior is repentance. But
sometimes suffering comes to the righteous, too. You will recall that
from the depths of Liberty Jail when Joseph was reminded that he had
indeed been “cast . . . into trouble,” had passed through tribulation
and been falsely accused, had been torn away from his family and cast
into a pit, into the hands of murderers, nevertheless, he was to
remember that
the same thing had happened to the Savior of the world, and because He was triumphant, so shall we be (see
D&C 122:4–7).
In giving us this sober reminder of what the Savior went through, the
revelation from Liberty Jail records: “The Son of Man hath descended
below them all. Art thou greater than he?” (
D&C 122:8).
No. Joseph was not greater than the Savior, and neither are we.
And
when we promise to follow the Savior, to walk in His footsteps and be
His disciples, we are promising to go where that divine path leads us.
And the path of salvation has always led one way or another through
Gethsemane. So if the Savior faced such injustices and discouragements,
such persecutions, unrighteousness, and suffering, we cannot expect that
we are not going to face some of that if we still intend to call
ourselves His true disciples and faithful followers. And it certainly
underscores the fact that the righteous—in the Savior’s case, the
personification of righteousness—can be totally worthy before God and
still suffer.
In fact, it ought to be a matter of great doctrinal consolation to us
that Jesus, in the course of the Atonement, experienced all of the
heartache and sorrow, all of the disappointments and injustices that the
entire family of man had experienced and would experience from Adam and
Eve to the end of the world in order that we would not have to face
them so severely or so deeply. However heavy our load might be, it would
be a lot heavier if the Savior had not gone that way before us and
carried that burden with us and for us.
Very early in the Prophet Joseph’s ministry, the Savior taught him
this doctrine. After speaking of sufferings so exquisite to feel and so
hard to bear, Jesus said, “I, God, have suffered these things for all,
that they [and that means you and I and everyone] might not suffer if
they would repent” (
D&C 19:16).
In our moments of pain and trial, I guess we would shudder to think it
could be worse, but the answer to that is clearly that it
could be worse and it
would be worse.
Only through our faith and repentance and obedience to the gospel that provided the sacred Atonement is it kept from being worse.
Furthermore, we note that not only has the Savior suffered, in His
case entirely innocently, but so have most of the prophets and other
great men and women recorded in the scriptures. Name an Old Testament or
Book of Mormon prophet, name a New Testament Apostle, name virtually
any of the leaders in any dispensation, including our own, and you name
someone who has had trouble.
My point? If you are having a bad day, you’ve got a lot of
company—very, very good company. The best company that has ever lived.
Now, don’t misunderstand. We don’t have to look for sorrow. We don’t
have to seek to be martyrs. Trouble has a way of finding us even without
our looking for it. But when it is obvious that a little time in
Liberty Jail waits before you (spiritually speaking), remember these
first two truths taught to Joseph in that prison-temple.
First, God has not
forgotten you, and second, the Savior has been where you have been,
allowing Him to provide for your deliverance and your comfort.
As the prophet Isaiah wrote, the Lord has “graven thee upon the palms
of [His] hands,” permanently written right there in scar tissue with
Roman nails as the writing instrument. Having paid that price in the
suffering that They have paid for you, the Father and the Son will never
forget nor forsake you in your suffering. (See
Isaiah 49:14–16; see also
1 Nephi 21:14–16.) They have planned, prepared, and guaranteed your victory if you desire it, so be believing and “endure it well” (
D&C 121:8). In the end it “shall be for thy good” (
D&C 122:7), and you will see “everlasting dominion” flow unto you forever and ever “without compulsory means” (
D&C 121:46).
3. Remain Calm, Patient, Charitable, and Forgiving
Thirdly, and tonight lastly, may I remind us all that in the midst of
these difficult feelings when one could justifiably be angry or
reactionary or vengeful, wanting to return an eye for an eye and a tooth
for a tooth, the Lord reminds us from the Liberty Jail prison-temple
that “the rights of the priesthood are inseparably connected with the
powers of heaven, and that the powers of heaven cannot be controlled nor
handled only [or ‘except’] upon the principles of righteousness” (
D&C 121:36).
Therefore, even when we face such distressing circumstances in our life
and there is something in us that wants to strike out at God or man or
friend or foe, we must remember that “no power or influence
can or
ought
to be maintained [except] by persuasion, by long-suffering, by
gentleness and meekness, and by love unfeigned; . . . without hypocrisy,
and without guile” (
D&C 121:41–42; italics added).
It has always been a wonderful testimony to me of the Prophet
Joseph’s greatness and the greatness of all of our prophets, including
and especially the Savior of the world in His magnificence, that in the
midst of such distress and difficulty they could remain calm and
patient, charitable and forgiving—that they could even talk that way,
let alone live that way. But they could, and they did. They remembered
their covenants, they disciplined themselves, and they knew that we must
live the gospel at all times, not just when it is convenient and not
just when things are going well.
Indeed, they knew that the real test of
our faith and our Christian discipleship is when things are not going smoothly. That is when we get to see what we’re made of and how strong our commitment to the gospel really is.
Surely the classic example of this is that in the most painful hours
of the Crucifixion the Savior could say, “Father, forgive them; for they
know not what they do” (
Luke 23:34).
That is a hard thing to ask when we’re hurting. That is a hard thing to
do when we’ve been offended or are tired or stressed out or suffering
innocently. But that is when Christian behavior may matter the most.
Remember, “the powers of heaven cannot be controlled nor handled
[except] upon the principles of righteousness.” And do we need the
powers of heaven with us at such times! As Joseph was taught in this
prison-temple, even in distress and sorrow we must “let [our] bowels . .
. be full of charity towards all men . . . ; then [and only then] shall
[our] confidence wax strong in the presence of God; and . . . the Holy
Ghost shall be [our] constant companion” (
D&C 121:45–46).
Remaining true to our Christian principles is the only way divine
influence can help us.
The Spirit has a near-impossible task to get
through to a heart that is filled with hate or anger or vengeance or
self-pity. Those are all antithetical to the Spirit of the Lord. On the
other hand, the Spirit finds instant access to a heart striving to be
charitable and forgiving, long-suffering and kind—principles of true
discipleship. What a testimony that gospel principles are to apply at
all times and in all situations and that if we strive to remain
faithful, the triumph of a Christian life can never be vanquished, no
matter how grim the circumstance might be. How I love the majesty of
these elegant, celestial teachings taught, ironically, in such a
despicable setting and time.
Blessing and Testimony
My beloved young friends, as part of my concluding testimony to you
tonight, I wish to give you a blessing. It seems to me that as our
apostolic witnesses are taken into the world, we have two opportunities
and, indeed, perhaps obligations. One is to testify and bear witness, as
I have been trying to do and will conclude in doing. The other is to
bless—as the ancient Apostles did when the Savior invited them to do as
He had done, except that it would be in all the world.
So for every one of you in attendance tonight—here in this vast
auditorium or in other locations around the world—I bless every one of
you, each one of you in your individual circumstances, as if my hands
were on your head. I offer that to you as honestly as I offer my
testimony. I bless you in the name of the Lord that
God does love you,
does hear your prayers, is at your side, and will never leave you.
I bless the brethren that you—that we—will be worthy of the
priesthood we bear, that we will live true to the discipleship to which
we have been called, in that great order, the Holy Priesthood, after the
Order of the Son of God. I bless you that we will really be like the
Master—that we will think more like He thinks, that we will talk more
like He talks, and that we will do more of what He did. I bless you
brethren as you strive to be faithful that you will have all the
blessings of the priesthood, many of which we have quoted tonight from
these very sections from the Doctrine and Covenants.
I bless the sisters within this audience and within the sound of my
voice. I would have you know how much we cherish you, how much God
cherishes you, and how much the flag of faith has been flown by the
sisters of this Church from the beginning. In every generation, it would
seem, from the beginning of time down to the present hour and beyond,
so often it has been the women in our lives—our grandmothers, our
mothers, our wives, our daughters, our sisters, our granddaughters—who
have taken that torch of faith and that banner of beautiful living and
have carried gospel principles wherever it would take them, against
whatever hardship, into their own little equivalent of Liberty Jails and
difficult times. Sisters, we love you and honor you and bless you. We
ask that every righteous desire of your heart, tonight and forever, be
answered upon your head and that you will walk away from this devotional
with the understanding and the knowledge firmly in your heart as to how
much God and heaven and the presiding Brethren of this Church love you
and honor you.
I salute you young adults of this Church in this great CES
congregation and say that the future is in your hands. Those of us of my
generation have to, in the very near future, pass the baton to you. God
bless you to face those times with the valor, the honesty, and the
integrity we have spoken of here tonight.
In closing,
I testify that the Father and the Son do live. And I
testify that They are close, perhaps even closest via the Holy Spirit,
when we are experiencing difficult times. I testify (and as our closing
musical number, “My Kindness Shall Not Depart from Thee,” will testify,
quoting the prophet Isaiah) that heaven’s kindness will
never depart from you, regardless of what happens (see
Isaiah 54:7–10; see also
3 Nephi 22:7–10).
I testify that bad days come to an end, that faith always triumphs, and
that heavenly promises are always kept. I testify that God is our
Father, that Jesus is the Christ, that this is the true and living
gospel—found in this, the true and living Church. I testify that
President Thomas S. Monson is a prophet of God, our prophet for this
hour and this day. I love him and sustain him as I know you do. In the
words of the Liberty Jail prison-temple experience, my young friends,
“Hold on thy way. . . . Fear not . . . , for God shall be with you
forever and ever” (
D&C 122:9). In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.
