More than 40 years after finishing their service leading Ricks College, Elder Bruce C. Hafen and his wife, Sister Marie Hafen, returned to speak in a BYU-Idaho devotional. Elder Hafen is an emeritus General Authority Seventy of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and was the president of Ricks College from 1978 to 1985. The Hafens spoke to BYU-Idaho students about the importance of sacrifice and how they can come to know God in their lives. The Hafens’ address is titled, “’Severe Mercy’: Love and Sacrifice.”
Elder Hafen spoke about his lifelong friendship with the late President Jeffery R. Holland. Elder Hafen saw firsthand the trial that a young President Holland experienced when faced with the choice of serving a mission or staying at college with Pat, the woman he would eventually marry.
“Knowing how very hard it was for Jeff to dig deep enough to find the faith, the courage, and especially the sacrifice, that’s what it was, to go on that mission makes me feel absolute admiration for him,” Elder Hafen said in his devotional. “At his youthful age of 19, I believe he wanted Pat more than he wanted that mission—because he deeply feared losing her. He had no idea how the mission would profoundly change his whole life. But in pure trust, he finally bowed before the Lord and said, ‘Yes, I’ll go.’ Could he have sensed the magnitude of the Lord’s promises, even then?”
Through President Holland’s sacrifice, the course of his life was forever changed. It was through that trial that the Lord formed him into the faithful servant He needed him to be. President Holland was called into the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles in 1994. President Holland’s story is not an isolated occurrence; it is a reoccurring pattern Elder Hafen said is seen in all prophets and servants of the Lord in the scriptures. They all must endure trials that push them to be who the Lord expects them to be.
“We live in a world where people want things to be easy,” Elder Hafen said in an interview with BYU-Idaho Radio. “And sacrifice by its nature is not always easy.”
Elder and Sister Hafen taught in their devotional address that it is through this suffering that one can come to know the Lord. Elder Hafen was once asked about apostles being called “special witnesses of Christ” and if that means they had seen the Savior.
“I once heard President Harold B. Lee say: ‘I know by a witness more powerful than sight that Jesus is the Christ,’” Elder Hafen said. “That witness applies especially to the role of actual, demanding experiences in developing a witness that one knows the Savior. It is one thing to know about Him, even to see Him—but quite another to know Him. And that higher degree of knowing usually comes after complexity in life.”
Elder Hafen shared the story of Paul on the road to Damascus. When the resurrected Lord appeared to Paul, he did not know Him. It was not until after many trials and much longsuffering while spreading the gospel that Paul came to know the Lord. And that through sacrifices disciples of Jesus Christ can also come to know the Lord.
Find live devotional addresses and see past ones on the BYU-Idaho devotional website.