Holland - "Abide in Me" - April 2004

It was customary for returning missionaries to give a report in General Conference during the early days of the church.  Elder Holland was returning from his service in Chile and used his General Conference talk as a time to report about his service for the past three years.  He speaks of many missionaries he met and the immense sacrifice that they made to get into the mission field.  She speaks of the commitment needed to leave family and home to serve in the Lord's Vineyard.  He uses these examples of faithful members to talk about our personal commitment to the Lord and how we need to search within ourselves to determine our commitment and love for the Savior.

He talks about the word "abide" and what meaning this word can have in our spiritual lives.

• “Abide in me” is an understandable and beautiful enough concept in the elegant English of the King James Bible, but “abide” is not a word we use much anymore. So I gained even more appreciation for this admonition from the Lord when I was introduced to the translation of this passage in another language. In Spanish that familiar phrase is rendered “permaneced en mi.” Like the English verb “abide,” permanecer means “to remain, to stay,” but even gringos like me can hear the root cognate there of “permanence.” The sense of this then is “stay—but stay forever.” That is the call of the gospel message to Chileans and everyone else in the world. Come, but come to remain. Come with conviction and endurance. Come permanently, for your sake and the sake of all the generations who must follow you, and we will help each other be strong to the very end.
  

He speaks of what the church brings into our lives.  He also speaks of what we need to do to be faithful to God to the end of our lives.

• This Church is the Lord’s vehicle for crucial doctrines, ordinances, covenants, and keys that are essential to exaltation, and one cannot be fully faithful to the gospel of Jesus Christ without striving to be faithful in the Church, which is its earthly institutional manifestation. To new convert and longtime member alike, we declare in the spirit of Nephi’s powerful valedictory exhortation: “Ye have entered in by the gate; … [but] now, … after ye have gotten into this strait and narrow path, I would ask if all is done? Behold, I say unto you, Nay; … press forward with a steadfastness in Christ, … and endure to the end, behold, thus … ye shall have eternal life.”
  

He concludes with these inspiring worlds.

• Christ is everything to us and we are to “abide” in Him permanently, unyieldingly, steadfastly, forever. For the fruit of the gospel to blossom and bless our lives, we must be firmly attached to Him, the Savior of us all, and to this His Church, which bears His holy name. He is the vine that is our true source of strength and the only source of eternal life. In Him we not only will endure but also will prevail and triumph in this holy cause that will never fail us. May we never fail it nor fail Him.
  

My favorite hymn in the hymn book is Abide with me.  This simple hymn speaks of the companionship of God we all desire.  Elder Holland provides deeper meaning of what the word "abide" means.  I love how he says it means to "stay forever."  What a great view of the relationship we need to have with the Savior.  We all want the spirit in our lives.  The desire to have the spirit in our lives permanently, without any separation, gives deeper meaning to me of what we are all striving for.  My desire to be a disciple of Jesus Christ is strengthened by the knowledge that if I plead to heaven for His spirit to always be with me, He can and will allow that to happen.