An Evening with a General Authority

Last Friday we watched an annual CES broadcast online called "An Evening with a General Authority" for all church seminary and institute teachers, CES employees, CES missionaries, and their spouses.  Elder Holland was the speaker, and his topic was "Be Not Afraid, Only Believe." He wants the youth to be taught that the future is not to be feared and to have good cheer.

Elder Holland never gives a talk that is not outstanding, and this was no exception.  Before his message, he expressed heartfelt gratitude for specific groups including early-morning seminary teachers.  We couldn't agree more with what he said of them.  Here is excerpt about his overall message:

"I ask you and your students to “be not afraid, only believe.” ⁴With uncompromised confidence in God, I ask you to summon full confidence in yourselves and build full confidence in your students by teaching with conviction and optimism that the gospel of Jesus Christ is the most certain, the most secure, the most reliable, and the most rewarding truth on earth and in heaven, in time and in eternity. I ask you to teach that nothing—not anything, not anyone, not any influence—will keep this Church from fulfilling its mission and realizing its destiny set from before the foundation of the world. Ours is that fail-safe, inexorable, indestructible dispensation of the fulness of the gospel. Our youth have no need to be afraid or tentative about themselves or about their future. What they do need to do is believe and to rise up to make the most of the remarkable day in which we live."

His entire message can be viewed at this link:

https://www.lds.org/broadcasts/archive/evening-with-a-general-authority/2015/02?lang=eng

Elder Paul V. Johnson, director over church education, introduced Elder Holland and gave a few remarks of his own about feelings of inadequacy.  It resonated with me because of a recent lesson that I felt didn't go well from my perspective which led to me feeling my weakness as a teacher.

"In light of the powerful writing of the brother of Jared, Moroni was concerned his offering, his writing, wasn’t good enough—that it would be mocked. Have you ever felt that way about your teaching in comparison with other teachers around you? Have you felt your teaching wasn’t good enough—that it might even be mocked?

Some of the Lord’s words in answer to Moroni are very familiar to us. They have even been chosen as a scripture mastery passage: “If men come unto me I will show unto them their weakness. I give unto men weakness that they may be humble; and my grace is sufficient for all men that humble themselves before me; for if they humble themselves before me, and have faith in me, then will I make weak things become strong unto them” ( Ether 12:27 ).

Each of us has been inspired by the Lord’s words to Moroni. I am grateful that Moroni was also strengthened by these words and didn’t abort his task because of his feelings of weakness or awkwardness. What if, when he was exposed to the writings of the brother of Jared, he had just given up? What if we didn’t have his writings in the Book of Mormon? No conclusion to his father’s book, chronicling the final destruction of his people? No book of Ether? No book of Moroni? For someone who viewed himself as weak in writing, the Lord’s grace was sufficient, and then some. I don’t know if Moroni’s writing soared to the heights of the writings of the brother of Jared, but I do know that with the Spirit, Moroni’s words have had a powerful effect on me and on millions of others who have read them. I just saw a report on the digital versions of the scriptures, and three of the top five highlighted verses in all the standard works are from Moroni’s writings—including Ether 12:27 .

When we feel our teaching efforts are weak and don’t measure up to others’ abilities, we can look inward and upward, and not sideways or over our shoulders. We don’t need to spend our energies worrying about how we compare with others. We can spend our energies humbling ourselves and focusing on our students. The Lord’s grace is sufficient for us, too—sufficient for our efforts in teaching and sufficient for our efforts in gaining eternal life."

In our area, these yearly broadcasts are recorded and shown at a later date combined with a dinner and sometimes with additional inservice training.  Our stake's broadcast is scheduled for February 27th. We'll be helping with the dinner and will have the opportunity to view this message again.