REXBURG—Today's BYU-Idaho devotional speaker taught how each person can develop Christlike resilience.
General Authority Seventy for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Elder Mark A. Bragg, was raised in Los Angeles where he learned about the Church through a friend when they were teenagers playing baseball together.
Elder Bragg calls Christlike resilience “the holy capacity, through Jesus Christ and His Atonement, not only to survive our trials but to be sanctified by them.”
When Elder Bragg received the assignment to speak at BYU-Idaho, he said this topic came to mind immediately and stayed with him. The Lord not only prepared him but helped him apply the very teachings he taught.
“I hope that everyone finds peace and comfort in contemplating the glorious atoning sacrifice of the Son of God on our behalf and how that changes our perspective completely and allows us to get through these challenging times,” Elder Bragg said in a BYU-Idaho Radio interview.
In his devotional talk, Elder Bragg presented five principles that help develop resilience: hope in Christ, faithfully making and keeping covenants, praying with importunity, finding strength in your ancestors and turning outward in adversity.
Elder Bragg shared how the Savior, in His agony of performing the Atonement, comforted those around Him. Christ also showed the need to reach outward even when suffering through His ministry as the Resurrected Christ.
“The Risen Lord, with palpable wounds in His hands and feet, used those very hands to lift and bless,” Elder Bragg said in the devotional.
Elder Bragg shared that during the pain and loss of losing his mother, he was able to comfort a family who was experiencing a similar loss.
Elder Bragg also said too often in prayer, people pray once for something and then move on. God is really asking each person to spend time with Him and show the desires of their heart.
“I just think there are times we have to really plead with the Lord and plead again and again and see where that takes us,” Elder Bragg said in his interview.
Recently, Elder Bragg was able to experience the power of Christlike resilience with the loss of his dear friend Elder W. Mark Bassett.
“I testify the heavens did not remain silent. There came peace. There came comfort,” Elder Bragg said.
Elder Bragg invites students to apply these five principles to their lives and see how it changes them.