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Elder
John H. Groberg, a member of the First Quorum of
the Seventy of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, spoke on
the importance of being happy and joyful during his devotional address
Tuesday at BYU-Idaho.
The
Idaho Falls native began by
saying if joy is absent in our lives “we are
falling short of what God created us for and what He expects us to achieve.
He wants us to be happy.”
“But
He is not talking of worldly happiness or pleasure,” he continued. “He
is talking of eternal happiness and joy and that takes time and comes ‘line upon line.’ We must be patient,
but we must keep working at it.”
Elder
Groberg then gave several examples of sources of
joy, focusing first on the joy that comes from feeling and expressing
gratitude.
Showing
a clip from “The Other Side of Heaven,” a movie based on
experiences from his service as a missionary to the Tongan islands, Elder Groberg used Feki, his first
missionary companion, as an example of one who showed true gratitude and
joy.
“I
still see and feel his contagious smile, his happy spirit, his confident
character, and his sincere expressions of gratitude. They live forever. All
of us should smile more, laugh more, express more gratitude and have more
confidence. Fake smiles won’t do, but true smiles that come from deep
within work wonders,” he said.
Speaking
next on the “joy that comes from doing what you know is right,”
Elder Groberg next showed a clip from the movie
that portrayed a conversation he had with a Tongan mother in which he told
her of the importance of chastity and remaining faithful to the Lord. Elder
Groberg’s wife, Jean, spoke next on the
memories she had as a college student when he was serving as a missionary.
She talked of receiving letters from him at exactly the right time when she
needed the counsel or help he wrote.
“When
we strive to learn the Lord’s will and do our very best to follow it,
the Lord will work with us where we are to help us get where we should be.
He uses daily events and people in our lives to give us opportunities to
keep our promises to Him. As we do all we can, He directs events, and magnifies
our humble efforts until His purposes and promises are realized –
both in our lives and in the lives of those we touch. That is how we
experience true joy,” she said.
Elder
Groberg concluded by speaking on the joy that
comes from love, saying, “Life is not all roses. We learn more from
rough seas than we do from smooth ones. Jean has saved my life both
spiritually and physically many times. We all need each other.”
He
used a clip from the movie that showed the young missionary getting thrown
from his ship into the sea during a fierce storm. He said that as he
struggled to shore he thought of different experiences in his life.
“But
when the final moment of truth came, when my energy was gone, when I could
have exited this life,” he said, “the Lord infused into my soul
a picture of Jean. I saw her pure smile and determined I must live to see
her again. Thus, she literally, as well as figuratively pulled me from the
depths of despair and death, to the promise of love and life.”
“I
know the Savior as a warm, loving, joyful person whose deep eyes sparkle in
goodness and love and encouragement. He wants us to be happy and have deep
joy here and now and then receive a fullness of joy hereafter. He has made
this possible through His love,” he said.
Next
week’s speaker will be Elder J. Richard Clarke, an emeritus member of
the First Quorum of the Seventy. He will speak at 2 p.m. in the Hart Auditorium. Devotionals are
carried live on KBYI, 100.5 FM and rebroadcast again at 9 p.m.
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