Eyring - A Voice of Warning - October 1998

President Eyring speaks about the obligation each of us have to be a warning voice when we sense danger in the path of those that we love and are acquainted with.  Those warnings are given to children as parents sense that the decisions that are being made will lead their children to unsafe and unwise decisions.  These unwise decision lead to unhappy consequences.

• Those of us who have been parents have felt the anxiety of sensing danger our children cannot yet see. Few prayers are so fervent as those of a parent asking to know how to touch a child to move away from danger. Most of us have felt the blessing of hearing and heeding the warning voice of a parent.

That warning voice extends to those that we are acquainted with.  Our neighbors, coworkers, friends, etc. all have the need to know about the Savior and His love for them.  They all need to know about the saving ordinances found in the Church of Jesus Christ.  One day, they will know the truth and they will know that we had the truth and wonder why we didn't share it with them.

• At some moment in the world to come, everyone you will ever meet will know what you know now. They will know that the only way to live forever in association with our families and in the presence of our Heavenly Father and His Son, Jesus Christ, was to choose to enter into the gate by baptism at the hands of those with authority from God. They will know that the only way families can be together forever is to accept and keep sacred covenants offered in the temples of God on this earth. And they will know that you knew. And they will remember whether you offered them what someone had offered you.

President Eyring speaks of what his heart says to him about sharing the gospel with others.

• I want to do better. I want to increase my power to invite people to be taught. With that desire and with faith that God will help us, we will do better. It isn’t hard to see how.

He then offers three tips on what we can do to invite those around us to hear the gospel message.

• Love always comes first. A single act of kindness will seldom be enough.
  
• Second, we will need to be better examples of what we invite others to do.
  
• The third thing we must do better is to invite with testimony.
  

He reminds us,

• Love and example will open the way. But we still have to open our mouths and bear testimony. We are helped by a simple fact. Truth and choice are inseparably connected.
  
• We must have the faith that we can love enough and that the gospel has touched our lives enough that our invitation to choose can be heard as coming from the Master whose invitation it is.

He ends with his testimony that it is only through the ordinances found in the Church of Jesus Christ that we can gain eternal life.

• Only accepting and living the restored gospel of Jesus Christ brings the peace the Lord promised in this life and the hope of eternal life in the world to come.
  
• We have been given the privilege and the obligation to offer the truth and the choices which lead to those blessings to our Heavenly Father’s children, who are our brothers and our sisters.

Our examples are the being watched wherever we go.  Last week I had one of my employees come into my office and start asking me questions about the gospel.  She sees the happiness in my life.  She sees the way I treat others.  She sees the genuine concern for others that I have.  She asked if that was because of my belief in God.  I assured her that my faith in Christ motivated all my actions.  We talked about the simple ways that we feel God's love in our lives.  It was a great discussion and one that I need to follow up on.  Although we have faith in common, she needs to know that God's presence can be with her always through the ordinances for admission into His church and great blessings are ahead as we prepare for the temple.  How grateful I am to have a loving Heavenly Father that allows me to help His children find their way to Him.