President Wheelwright, distinguished Faculty and students, thank you for the honor of being invited to speak at this institution for which I hold such great affection.
My first visit to BYU Hawaii and the Polynesian Cultural Center took place in early 1967, long before most of you in this audience were born. The University was still in its adolescence and the PCC was more like an idea in process. Families still remained who had been called on service missions from various Polynesian islands to build the villages. The luau more closely resembled a ward potluck dinner, with folding serving tables and sisters opening Tupperware containers from which the various dishes were served.
However, what existed then, and continues to exist today, is the incredible spirit of this place. The PCC regularly receives letters and emails from appreciative guests who invariably cite the unique atmosphere and the peace that they have felt during their visits. They say it in a variety of ways, but we know that what they’re really trying to describe is the presence of the Spirit that exists here.
This unique place is truly a sanctuary, blessed by God, to serve a multitude of important purposes. Those of you privileged to be here should savor and cherish your time here because, if or when you leave, you are unlikely to enjoy such a special environment anywhere else in the world.
I once heard a story of a husband who came home from home teaching in a very agitated state. His wife asked him what the problem was. He said emphatically, “I’m not going home teaching with Joe anymore!”
Concerned, his wife asked, “Why not? You and Joe have been companions for a long time.”
“Well, would you go home teaching with someone who will never make our appointments…or cancels going at the last minute?”
“Probably not,” she answered.
“Would you go with someone who talks through the whole visit and never lets the family speak?”
“Well, no,” she replied.
“Would you go home teaching with someone who never prepares a message nor shows up when a family needs help?” her husband growled.
“Certainly not!” his wife declared.
He paused and said, “Well, neither will Joe!”
There is a message in this story. We belong to a faith where we must be able to depend upon each other. When the Savior said, “As I have loved ye, love one another,” he was using “love” as an action verb, not a passive noun.
Prior to moving to Florida a decade ago, we lived in Dallas, Texas for a number of years. Many churches of other faiths there have unusually large congregations, often with five or ten thousand members, or more.
We had some good friends who faithfully attended one such church. I once asked my friend, Bob, if they didn’t feel lost among so many people.
He replied that was what they liked about the church. They could attend without being called upon to do anything. They could place an offering in the collection plate but not have any other duties or obligations. In essence, they could be good and faithful but anonymous members.
Once, while serving on our Stake High Council, I conducted a Personal Priesthood interview with the High Priest Group Leader of the ward to which I was assigned. I asked him about a very active High Priest who was not doing his home teaching.
“Oh,” he said, “he doesn’t want to home teach and simply refuses to do so.”
He went on to say that this brother asked why he couldn’t just come to the meetings and enjoy church without doing all the “other stuff.”
I suspect many of us may have had that desire from time to time. Unfortunately for those who feel that way, the Lord’s plan is one that demands our commitment, responsibility, reliability, and action.
For example, virtually all of the Saviors commandments involve action words: “come, follow me,” “feed my sheep,” or “love one another.”
In Luke 6:46 Jesus asks, “…why call ye me, Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I say?”
Note, he didn’t question whether people thought, or studied, or believed what he said; he challenged their sincerity in calling him “Lord” when, in fact, they didn’t do what he asked.
The scriptures repeatedly tell us that we learn and grow in the gospel “precept upon precept.” In fact, Isaiah emphasized that “precept must be upon precept” and “line upon line” (Isaiah 28:10). Modern day prophets repeat this point frequently.
Many of us nod in agreement, after all, this seems intuitively to make sense. Yet, when we try to incorporate this concept into our spiritual lives, it often seems far more confusing and complicated.
What are the specific precepts we’re supposed to build upon? Isaiah’s words imply a sequence or order in the process of working out our salvation, but what exactly is that order? Where do we find it?
The Apostle Peter, in his Second General Epistle, provided us with just such a roadmap to our exaltation. He laid out nine steps to achieve the goal of having our “calling and election sure.”
One of the blessings of having another testament of Jesus Christ and of having latter-day revelation is that we can recognize the emphasis that our Lord places upon particular doctrines or commandments by the fact that they are repeated in multiple scriptures. In this case, in D&C 4, we see many of the words of Peter repeated.
In 2 Peter 1:4, he tells us that by pursuing the following steps we can become “partakers of the divine nature,” in other words, become one with Heavenly Father.
The steps he describes in verses 5 thru 7 comprise a path of progression as we learn and grow in the gospel. As you study them you realize that they do not happen concurrently, rather, each is predicated upon the previous one.
In verse 5 he instructs, “…besides this, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue; and to virtue knowledge…”
Notably, the first step is not faith, but diligence. This word appears over and over in the scriptures. I have always presumed it to mean conscientiousness or attentiveness, in fact, the definition is “persistent application.” Faith will come if we are willing to try to live the gospel.
Some people approach the gospel from the opposite direction. They seek to be given the faith or testimony of a principle or law before practicing it.
A few years ago I interviewed a good sister for a calling. When inquiring of her worthiness, I asked if she was a full tithe payer. Since she was a very active member, knowledgeable of the scriptures, reliable, and whom I had heard bear her testimony on many occasions, I was surprised when she said she did not.
She explained that she had never gained a testimony of tithing. She also acknowledged that she had never tried being a full tithe payer.
Diligence, in other words, persistent application of the gospel is essential to knowing that it is true. Diligence leads to faith and the steps that follow.
As important as the first six of these steps are – diligence, faith, virtue, knowledge, temperance and patience – they are not likely to bring about our exaltation. Through these attributes alone we may not come any closer to our Heavenly Father than will any other honest, good, well acting person who is without the gospel.
This is because these steps are preparatory to those that follow, which distinguish a person as a true disciple of Christ. The last three steps are fundamentally different than those that go before.
The first six are about improving ourselves. We can achieve each of them with very little involvement of others. They may make us better people but, if we go no further, we will not have fulfilled our baptism, priesthood or temple covenants.
In short, we will have served ourselves but we will not have served our Lord.
In verses 6 & 7 we are instructed to add to patience “godliness; and to godliness brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness charity.”
Unlike the first six steps, these actions are not inwardly focused but, rather, require us to reach out to others.
D&C 84:18-21 describes “godliness” as the power and ordinances of the priesthood. President David O. McKay has defined the priesthood in one word, “service.”
The priesthood can only be used in service. A priesthood holder cannot lay his hands upon his own head and bless himself. He may only use priesthood authority to serve God or his fellow man.
In the parable of the Good Samaritan, Christ did not tell us whether the Samaritan studied the scriptures, prayed daily, paid tithing, or had other personal virtues. His message was quite the opposite (Luke 10). He made examples of the priest and the Levite, both men who undoubtedly practiced the law with precision, but who passed by and did not act.
His direction to his largely Jewish disciples was to emulate the Samaritan, a sect that was normally singled out for disdain.
King Benjamin eloquently repeated this in his great farewell sermon when he said, “…when ye are in the service of your fellow beings, ye are…in the service of your God” (Mosiah 2:17).
As Peter points out, “godliness,” manifested in service, leads to brotherly kindness. You might intuitively think it would be the opposite, i.e. affection for someone would lead to a desire to serve them. It might seem logical that serving someone for whom you have no affection, or for whom you may have contempt, would leave you without feeling or, perhaps, even feelings of impatience or frustration at the imposition upon your time and resources.
Yet, as I’m sure almost every return missionary would testify, when we serve others, we truly come to love them.
My wife, Brenda, and I have had the privilege of living in foreign lands for more than eleven years, including London, Tokyo and Hong Kong. While living in Tokyo we came to know Ted and Ramona Price. Brenda was particularly drawn to them, as her mother was a Price and thought they might be distant cousins.
Brother Price was born in 1925 in Idaho and, when he was only nine, lost his father to a mining accident. His family struggled and in 1943, at age seventeen, Ted joined the Marine Corp. He was immediately thrown into several of the most bloody and intense battles in the Pacific theater of World War II. He fought through Tarawa, Saipan and was severely wounded on Tinian Island in the Marianas.
He returned home, a decorated war veteran, and put in his papers to go on a mission. To his shock and dismay, he was called to be one of the first nine missionaries assigned to Japan after the war. Bitterness from his war experiences resulted in his rejection of the mission call. Put simply, he hated the Japanese.
However, as with Jonah in the Bible, God was not to be denied. He had a reason for having Ted go to Japan and it went far beyond the goal of proselyting, the bigger purpose was to change Ted’s bitter heart.
He was called to meet with an Apostle who admonished him, though perhaps with gentle words, that God wanted him to go to Japan and, as he put it, “learn to love those people.”
That’s exactly what he did. Through his service he came away with a deep and life-long love for the Japanese people. In 1976, he returned to Japan with Ramona to be the Tokyo Mission President.
In 1987, when we came to know them, he was again serving as Mission President of the Tokyo Missionary Training Center. Subsequently, they again served in the Tokyo Temple Presidency. They also served in the Manila, Philippines temple and in New Zealand.
Ted died two years ago at age eighty-four. Only God knows whose “calling and election” is sure, but I’d being willing to bet that Ted is among the select number.
The second great commandment is “Love thy neighbor as thyself.” In fact, those who serve others frequently go beyond that and deny themselves comforts in order to provide for others.
Great examples live all around us.
When we moved to Florida twelve years ago, our bishop was President of a multi-billion dollar company that was a major division of a larger conglomerate. He had spent twenty-nine years, almost his entire career, progressing through this organization to the top.
He had been a bishop and stake president, and was again serving as bishop. Having achieved great financial success, he and his wife lived, and still live in a beautiful home with every comfort imaginable. They were loved and respected by all with whom they came in contact.
Then the roof fell in, so to speak. The CEO and senior executives of the parent conglomerate were indicted for fraud and convicted in a major corporate scandal. A new board brought in a new CEO who replaced all of the subsidiary executives, including our bishop. Through no fault of his own, his admired career suddenly ended in a cloud of ignominy.
At first, he seemed a bit lost, like a great warhorse suddenly taken out of the battle. In conversations with him, you could detect some bewilderment and disappointment.
Then he and his wife turned their enormous talents to service. They went to Romania as service missionaries, serving two years in the most humble circumstances imaginable. They lived without conveniences, often went without electricity or heat, and shared the primitive conditions of the people they served.
A year after returning home they again answered the call, this time to Nigeria. The conditions they lived in there made Romania look like a first world country but, as their emails to us revealed, their thoughts were only on the people. They labored to share the gospel while elevating the lives of the native people through water purification and other infrastructure projects.
A year into their mission, he was called to be President of the Enugu Nigeria Mission. When they returned home three years later, they were transformed.
Before they left they were the role models we all wanted to emulate. Yet, when they returned there was a halo around them that eclipsed even that which we admired before. Their love for the Savior and their willingness to give unstintingly of their time and service to anyone at any time is a breathtaking example that continually motivates everyone around them.
Though they could be enjoying a leisurely retirement, their time and resources are devoted to bringing forth God’s kingdom. They seem to have achieved the final step Peter describes, charity, the pure love of Christ.
Charity, as used in the scriptures, is not about simply donating things to the needy, it is about donating ourselves to bring about God’s plan through unending service to others.
Elder Bruce R. McConkie has stated that, “above all attributes of perfection, charity is the one most devoutly to be desired…Charity is more than love, far more; it is everlasting love, perfect love, the pure love of Christ which endureth forever.”
How do we get to that point? How do we bridge the enormous gap from where many us are to that threshold of perfection?
Studying scriptures, attending meetings and praying, in and of themselves, will not bring us to “this pure love of Christ.”
We have some friends who are Evangelical Christians. Not too long ago we were discussing the gospel and I asked them what they thought Heaven would be like. Their reply was that “we will be at the Savior’s knee and he will teach us.”
I questioned, “For eternity?”
The answer was “yes.”
I then asked, “For what purpose? Shouldn’t we been taught before we came, or while we’re on this earth, for the trials that God has for us and the things he wishes us to do?”
Through later day revelation we know that great work and responsibility awaits us in the eternities. Our days of preparation for this begin during our earthly state.
There are many who believe that what we do on this earth is not necessary for our salvation. This, of course, may be true, but what we do is vital to our exaltation. Peter, in Verse 10, encourages us to “make our calling and election sure,” which means our exaltation, promising, “for if ye do these things, ye shall never fail.”
Now the scriptures make it clear that doing alone does not deliver us; it will never be enough to “earn” our salvation, much less exaltation. The shortfall will always need to be filled by the grace provided by the infinite sacrifice of our Savior.
Stephen Robinson, in his excellent book, “Believing Christ,” makes this point with what he calls “The Parable of the Bicycle.” I’m sure many of you are familiar with it.
For those who aren’t, I will briefly summarize it. His seven-year-old daughter, Sarah, was the only child in their neighborhood who did not have a bike, and she ardently wanted one.
Brother Robinson was not in a position to buy one for her so he suggested she conscientiously save her pennies and she would soon be able to buy it herself.
As time passed, she would regularly come to her father to show him the old fruit jar that held her money and ask if she had saved enough to get the bike. One day she said, “You promised if I saved all my pennies, pretty soon I’d have enough to get a bike. And Daddy, I’ve saved every single one.”
He realized she was doing everything in her power to follow his instructions, but her needs were still not being met. With a melting heart, he told her to gather what she had saved and they would go to the bike shop.
Sarah soon saw the bike of her dreams but it cost over $100, hopelessly beyond her means. With a heart full of love, he told her, “Let’s try a different arrangement. You give me everything you’ve got, the whole sixty-one cents, and a hug and a kiss, and the bike is all yours.”
With excitement and joy unique to children, Sarah rode the bike home while her father followed in the car. It then occurred to him that this was a parable for the atonement of Christ.
Let me read the analogy in his words:
“We all want something desperately, but it’s not a bicycle. We want the kingdom of God. We want to go home to our heavenly parents worthy and clean. But the price – perfect performance – is hopelessly beyond our means. At some point…we realize we cannot pay it. And then we despair.”
“At that point the Savior steps in and says, ‘So you’ve done all you can do, but it’s not enough. Well, don’t despair. Let’s try a different arrangement. How much do you have? You give me exactly that much and do all you can do, and I will provide the rest for now…Perfection will still be the ultimate goal, but until you can get it on your own, I’ll let you use mine.”
Like the examples I cited some people might have a great deal to give, while others of us less so. However, if we give what we have, doing all we can do, the Savior has infinite resources to make up the rest.
We must learn to reach out, to go outside of our comfort zone, to act to lighten the burden of others if we are to fully qualify for all of the extraordinary blessings of the atonement. As we consciously strive to live service-oriented lives, our actions will go from conscious to unconscious. Like being drawn from the gravity of one sphere to another that is larger and greater, we will cease to act from duty and be drawn to action by love.
We do not need to leave on a distant mission to do this. I’m sure most everyone here, like the early Church pioneers, would give their lives to defend the gospel. But God is not asking us to die for the gospel, he is asking us to live for it, right here, right now.
Christ’s service never went beyond Jerusalem and the Galilee. While the miracles are remembered, it was also marked by humble acts like washing the feet of the Apostles, or weeping in sympathy with Mary and Martha.
We must care enough to do, and to start by doing the simple, unglamorous forms of service: home teaching, helping a friend or neighbor in need, making a consoling call, contributing our fast offerings, or, most importantly, sharing the good tidings of the Lord’s plan through missionary work.
When I started my career as a salesman for IBM, I quickly realized that the most successful people were often the most innovative ones. I taped a piece of paper on the dashboard of my car that simply said, “What new idea have I had this month?”
At the end of each month, the company required us to compile all of our activity in a sales report. As I did this I would also assess my answer to the dashboard question. If I had not thought of some new approach to my job, even if it was kooky and off the wall, I would stop and focus on that goal until I came up with something.
I love the hymn “Have I Done Any Good?” It begins, “Have I done any good in the world today?” I suggest we might all consider that question to be our dashboard or refrigerator question.
We should regularly assess whether we are being “doers of the word.” We would be wise to fill out our own report card, before the day that we sit down and fill it out with the Savior.
Are we doing all that we’ve been called upon to do? Are we doing only what we’ve been called upon to do?
The Lord has given us a plan, specific, clear and progressive, for realizing the promise of being joint heirs with him and, together, heirs of God. We must labor in service until we reach that day when our service no longer is labor. Then we will know that “precept upon precept” we have become “partakers of the divine nature” and, at last, are becoming one with God.
If there is a path to perfection, Peter has laid it out in pure, simple and easily understood words.
By all means we should vigorously and consistently pursue the first six steps that Peter described. They are the fuel that will drive and motivate us toward our higher purpose. But it is that higher purpose, being doers of the Word, which will distinguish us as true disciples of Jesus Christ.
It is my prayer that we may all become lost in service, be it simple or grand, so in the great day of reckoning the Savior’s words to each of us will be, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”
In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.