Elder Timothy Dyches, General Authority for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was the devotional speaker on May 8.
The title of his talk was Developing Spiritual Resilience.
Elder Dyches spoke about how the choices and actions one makes will show the kind of person we really are.
He said that although we do not know how our futures will look like, “What we do know, however, is that you can recover from life’s setbacks, adapt well to change around you, and keep going in the face of adversity, if you learn to have faith in Christ and follow Him.”
Elder Dyches shared a story about Florence Chadwick who wanted to be the first female to swim the California Catalina Channel. He said after being tired and not being able to see the shore through the fog, and after almost 16 hours of swimming she gave up. Elder Dyches continued the story by saying after Florence was pulled out she had realized she only needed less than half a mile to reach the coast.
Florence tried once more to swim the channel, after reaching a point where she wanted to give up because she could not see her end goal, she decided to keep going.
“Resilience and grit make it possible to not only survive misfortune or tragedy but, in some individuals, to thrive both during and after these trials,” Elder Dyches said in his devotional talk. “The resilient humbly adapt and learn from their mistakes; they maintain a positive attitude and courageously see a failure as a form of helpful feedback. The resilient accept that losing may precede winning. “
Elder Dyches shared some ways people can become resilient:
The first way is to develop doctrines and principles and set them as our personal code of conduct. He also said we need to learn to adapt and cope with challenges.
Another way, he said, we can become resilient is to never lose sight of your purpose and your divine destiny, working out, and the last way he shared is to choose happiness.
Elder Dyches closed his talk by saying how we need to have a Christ centered life, and if we center our life in Christ then He will help us overcome challenges and trials.
“In the Christ centered life, yours is not the option of doubting and fearing,” Elder Dyches said. “Trust God and believe in good things to come.”