Josh Figueira has prepared for years to give a talk at BYU-Idaho's devotional. While commuting to work at BYU-Idaho, he would listen to the devotional archives and write down impressions from the Holy Spirit. Over seven years, he took 59 pages of notes, which is where he went for inspiration when he was asked to give a devotional talk.
Now as the university’s legal counsel, he tries his best in his role, but he’s saddened when people don’t take the gospel of Jesus Christ seriously.
“I want you to take another good look around,” he said during his devotional talk. “Do you see how many empty chairs there are, especially on the periphery? Each chair represents someone who is missed, and is missing out, because they are not here. And, by ‘not here’ I don’t mean not here at devotional today. I mean those that are not as present, and engaged, and active in the restored gospel of Jesus Christ as they ought to be.”
He said that even though the Lord has called his people to do the work of sharing the gospel, He doesn’t want his people to be uniformed. He aspires for people to be unique because no person is the exact same as another.
“I chose to focus in my address on the fact that Heavenly Father needs those differences and that they're valuable and that they contribute to the gospel because I think that's a feeling that we all have, right? And I want the students and anyone else who's listening to the address to understand that there's a place in the gospel of Jesus Christ for you, in all of your individuality, in all of your uniqueness,” Figueira said in an interview with BYU-Idaho Radio.
Find this and other devotionals at BYU-Idaho Devotionals and Speeches.