Brothers and Sisters, aloha!
I have pondered and prayed diligently to know what to say to you today. What can I possibly offer you—the elite forces of heaven reserved for these last days here training to become leaders?
You are surrounded by bright faculty and staff who not only know well their fields but also seek to teach you truth by the Spirit of Truth. What can I offer you that they do not already?
You are surrounded by senior missionaries—men and women with a wealth of experience to offer you. They love you and stand ready to help you in any way. Most of you are here without your families, and they are without their children and, perhaps more importantly, their grandchildren. It’s an inspired match. What wisdom can I offer you that they do not already?
Well as I have prayed earnestly to know what to say to you today, it has become clear to me exactly what my message should be.
I want to share with you my absolute, total and complete conviction that your Father in Heaven will guide you if you want to be guided!
Perhaps some of you already know this to be true—for you, I speak today as another witness.
For those who are not quite as convinced or may not be feeling it at this moment, I say again, your Father in Heaven WILL guide you if you want to be guided!
I am not sure I know why this is or really even how this could be, but it IS true.
Why would the creator of worlds without number, the Father of the King of all Kings, the One to whom billions pray be at all concerned about me or you individually? My understanding of why is incomplete, but I do know He is our Father and that He loves us.
I don’t know how He can even hear us all talking to Him at the same time. I can’t understand when just two of my children talk to me at the same time. What must billions be like? Does He use angels who return and report? How exactly is the Spirit involved? I don’t know.
Just 200 years ago, my cell phone would have been utterly incomprehensible and considered some sort of dark magic. I am perfectly willing to believe there are methods beyond my current comprehension, but the method is almost irrelevant to me because the outcome is very real. When I pick up that metaphorical phone to heaven, there is someone on the other end of the line, someone who I am getting to know better. Someone who quite often sends me packages when I ask for them. What is in those packages may not always be what I asked for, but I know they are always what I need.
I know you students are facing many forked roads these days.
What should you study? Should you serve a mission, and if so, when? Who will you marry? Will you be “all in” the Gospel or just partially? Will you avoid or devour things that destroy your body, mind, and soul?
So many decisions to make. So many roads to choose from.
You need divine guidance and you WILL get it, if you want it.
Divine guidance comes in many ways. I want to discuss just a few of those today:
First, there are times we get exactly what we pray for.
Second, we already have the guidance we need; we just need to accept it.
Third, we get guidance we did not ask for—course-correcting guidance.
I hope you will not mind if I share with you a few personal experiences.
1. Sometimes we get exactly what we pray for.
On the first day I entered the mission field in Akron Ohio, the mission president made it clear to my eager new senior companion that he was to get me out tracting, knocking on doors, before the end of the day. I assumed it was because tracting was such a horrible thing, they wanted to get the initial shock over with quickly. In that mission, only half the missionaries that came out were able to baptize even one person during their entire two years of service.
After a long drive to our area, my companion informed me that we had only 20 minutes before our dinner appointment with a member family, so we could only knock on a few doors. I prayed in the car with my companion to be directed to someone who wanted to hear the Gospel. Then we got out and started walking. We walked to the end of the street, passing several houses that just did not seem right to my companion. He said he felt impressed to turn left at the corner. We walked up to the first or second house on the left. It was a weathered, old, turn-of-the-century home. We knocked. No answer. We knocked again and waited. Finally, a tiny lady who looked to be in her 80s slowly opened the door and greeted us through the screen. We told her we represented Jesus Christ, and she readily welcomed us in. We talked for some time. We were late for our dinner appointment, but Winifred Schaefer was baptized about three weeks later.
The first door of the first street on the first day of my mission. Our prayer had been answered. Exactly what I had ordered. And the package came with a message: “I am here. I hear you. I will guide you if you will be led, and it may not be the best way to find people, but it is a way YOU will be directed to people.” And I was, to many people over the next two years.
Moses prayed for deliverance for his people and told them that the Lord would fight for them. Plagues descended, the Red Sea was divided, and Pharaoh’s army decimated. I would say his prayer was answered.
In Alma 9:26, we learn that the Son of God is quick to hear the cries of His people and to answer their prayers. I have found this to be true.
Conversely, in D&C 101:7, we learn “God is also slow to answer the prayers of those who are slow to hearken to him.” So be quick to hearken, desire to listen, and do what He asks above all else, and you can be sure to have your prayers answered, but those answers may not come as you expect.
2. At times we have already received the answers we need, we just need to accept them.
Like packages we received months or years before, we opened them and left them sitting in the corner because we did not have use for the contents at the time.
From Nephi, we learned that we should “feast upon the words of Christ; for behold, the words of Christ will tell you all things what ye should do” (2 Nephi 32:3). The words of Christ are found in scripture, but they also often come through the lips and pens of His modern prophets.
Before serving a mission, I worked for Domino’s Pizza in California. It was a young, fast-moving company back in the early growth days of the chain. The owner of our particular franchise, Steve, was only 27 and already a multi-millionaire from his five new stores. Though the youngest on staff, I moved up in management quickly. To most of the other managers I was an odd ball—“no smoking, no drinking or no drugs, and he refuses to work on Sundays—a real stick in the mud.” But Steve seemed to see the value of leaving his stores in the hands of someone with such values.
He tried to convince me not to leave to serve a mission, but of course, I was not swayed. The more difficult decision was what to do when I returned after the mission. My family had moved back to Laie while I was gone. I stopped off in California on the way to Hawaii to give my homecoming talk and thank those that supported me. While there, I visited Steve. He offered me a job immediately and promised a store manager position and large bonus within a year. He also promised to help me get my own territory and franchise in three years if I would stay. I could do what he had done and have what he had. With the offer came the entrepreneur’s lecture: “You don’t need a college education to be successful and make a lot of money.” He was living proof. He handed me the keys to his Porche 928S with Blaupunkt stereo and told me to take it for a drive to think things over. And if I started soon, he would also throw in the car. He’d get a new one.
I took the drive—a very fast drive—lots of country roads in that area. When I brought him back his keys, I told him I needed to see my family first, and I would call him from Hawaii with a decision by the end of the week. He accepted the delay but once again was perplexed by my peculiar ways.
The trip home and the next few days in Hawaii were long and torturous. Having grown up on welfare much of my childhood, I was determined to be financially successful, and I wanted to eventually have my own business, so why not now? Why wait?
In the corner of my mind sat the answer to my prayers that I had received long before. I heard the words of the prophets urging me to “get as much education as possible.” I knew this was what I needed to do, but I fought it.
I will always remember the horrible bus ride to Kaneohe at the end of that week. I had procrastinated making the decision as long as possible. I received no confirmation or guidance to my pleading prayers, only the ringing in my ears of the prophets’ counsel: “Get all the education you can.” I got off the bus at Windward Mall and entered a telephone booth on the street (yes, this was before the days of cell phones). Steve answered the phone, and I told him I would not be returning. I would be attending BYU–Hawaii. I could hear the disgust in his voice. I hung up because I did not want to agonize any longer. I felt I had made the right choice, but it was not what I wanted at that moment.
At that time, I had no comprehension of how a liberal arts education would open my understanding, how a business degree or two would allow me to travel all around the globe and work with many of the largest, most influential companies in the world.
And more importantly, at that time, I had no idea that I had already met, a few days prior, at the Yoshimura Shop at PCC, the shave ice girl of my dreams—the wonderful woman that would, in two years, become my wife and in time the mother of our seven children.
I shudder to think how things would have been different if I had not heeded the words of the prophets and the answer to my prayers, received long before I ever asked.
This brings me to my last point.
3. We get guidance we did not ask for—course-correcting guidance.
Sometimes, we get divine guidance we did not even know we needed. It’s my opinion that this type of guidance most often comes only when you are well off a path you need to be on, and the divine course correction that comes is proportional to the severity of the change in direction needed. This is what Joseph Smith learned in his first uttered prayer.
In no way was that young boy expecting the guidance he received. The thought that all other churches “were wrong” had not entered his heart, but the answer he received and the way it was delivered were necessary to change the course of his life and ours.
My personal example is much less dramatic but perhaps still relevant.
I was beginning my second year here at BYU–Hawaii, and I was fortunate enough to have a job with ASBYU. One day, I entered the Aloha Center and was walking to my office. A ways off, I saw this very cute girl reading on one of the couches outside the offices. Uncharacteristic for me, I instantly recalled having met her just once, about a year before, at the Yoshimura Store at PCC. She was a friend of my sister and was dating someone, etc. As I was about to open the door of the office, I heard a voice in my mind say, “Go talk with that girl.” I brushed it off, telling myself I had too much to do to be taking time for that stuff right now—studying, important ASBYU things. So I unlocked the door and entered the ASBYU offices. Once inside, I again heard a voice say, “Go talk with her.” Again I brushed it off. I was busy. I unlocked my inner office door and started to sit down when I heard the voice in my mind again tell me to go out now and talk with her. And this time, there was also a foreboding feeling that this was the third and final time I would hear that guidance, and it would be my great loss if I did not do as directed. So I reluctantly left the office and went to speak with this girl. Having no idea what I was going to say, I simply started by reminding her that we had met long ago. Fortunately, she remembered the occasion. and it had been a positive experience! I probed to learn about her dating status and fortunately found she was free. I was struck by her beauty, quick wit, intelligence, and, well, pretty much everything about her. We found ways to run into each other and eventually be together nearly every day after for the next eight months.
Even so, eight months later, I found myself praying earnestly for an answer to my prayers: “Should I marry Anne?” Up to the night before our wedding, I was in panic. I had NOT yet receive the answer I was looking for to confirm that it was the right thing to do. Strangely, the promptings I experienced that brought us together had been pushed aside in my mind. I wanted more, but I was already on the right course. I did not need further guidance to get on the right track. Fortunately, we were married as planned, and I have never, not one single moment since, regretted that decision—it is the single best decision I have ever made.
I have come to understand how much our Father in Heaven values our agency—perhaps above all else. I do not know completely why it is of such critical importance to Him, but obviously it is.
If you remember nothing else from what I have said today and assuming you are living so as to be able to hear the still small promptings of the Spirit, I hope you remember this one principle:
In the absence of divine guidance, keep moving forward with faith and the confidence that you will receive the guidance you need when you need it.
You are supposed to do many things of your own free will (D&C 58:27), but your Father in Heaven will not let you get too far off course without giving you the gentle course-correcting guidance you need. You must be willing to accept it when it does come, but it will come.
I have shared with you just a few of the many experiences I have had. I could have shared with you experiences from my corporate career, church service, or family, but I felt impressed to share with you these particular experiences—likely because of who you are and where we are. Again, these are just a few of the answers to prayer and guidance I have received. Each is like a brush stoke of a priceless painting.
At the Muse Dorsey in Paris, France, Anne and I once saw, up close, a painting that has stuck with me. It was a piece entitled Poppies by Claude Monet (arguably the father of French Impressionism), which he painted in 1873. The painting was made up of thousands of tiny little brush strokes—some just blobs of paint.
No single stroke, on its own, was of much significance.
No small group of strokes added up to much either, but as you moved out
You could see that all those small strokes were integral parts of one masterpiece—one of the most recognized pieces of art in the world by one of the world’s greatest artists.
So it is with our lives. All the little answers to prayers we receive may not appear to be much. Many could even be explained away as coincidence, but when you step back, you can see in your life the undeniable work of the Master Artist. And when you become a parent or serve in the Church or elsewhere, you also begin to see the brushstrokes in others’ lives, all blending together in one miraculous masterwork.
You WILL receive the divine guidance you need.
Sometimes, it will come exactly as you expect.
At other times, you will realize that you have already received the guidance you need, if you will just accept it.
And you may even receive course-correcting guidance you didn’t know you needed.
And for those times when you feel an absence of guidance, keep moving forward with faith and the confidence that your Father in Heaven hears you, knows you, loves you, and will guide you when you really need it.
You are HIS masterwork.
This is my firm and absolute conviction.
In the name of Jesus Christ, our advocate and exemplar in all these things, amen.