Our family is so blessed to be permitted to be at BYU-Idaho. It is truly a gift. I love this university and its mission. I love the spirit that is here. I hope each of you can feel of that special spirit that is here on campus. I love the people with whom I have worked, both in the business department, where I began teaching, as well as the many people all across campus in my current role. I love the many students whom I have taught. My family and I have had many of the students in our home for family home evening, dinner, general conference, homework sessions, preparing for job interviews, and carving a pumpkin for the first time. I even have a former student who is now a daughter-in-law.
Today I would like to talk with each of you about the importance of being a finisher. I have thought about the topic of finishing for a long time. I even gave a devotional address here at BYU-Idaho last year on this topic. I will share many of those same thoughts with each of you today. Even though I will not be able to share all of my thoughts with you today, I am reassured knowing that for those who have ears to hear and eyes to see and hearts to feel, the Spirit will help each of you to hear, see, and feel what the Lord wants you to hear, see, and feel, regardless of what I may or may not say.
In the April 1972 General Conference, then Elder Thomas S. Monson shared the following:
On sunlit days during the noon hour, the streets of Salt Lake City abound with men and women who for a moment leave the confines of the tall office buildings and engage in that universal delight called window shopping. On occasion I, too, am a participant.
One Wednesday I paused before the elegant show window of a prestigious furniture store. That which caught and held my attention was not the beautifully designed sofa nor the comfortable-appearing chair that stood at its side. Neither was it the beautiful chandelier positioned overhead. Rather, my eyes rested upon a small sign that had been placed at the bottom right-hand corner of the window. Its message was brief: “Finishers Wanted.”
President Monson continues:
The store had need of those persons who possessed the talent and the skill to make ready for final sale the expensive furniture that the firm manufactured and sold. “Finishers Wanted.” The words remained with me as I returned to the pressing activities of the day.
In life, as in business, there has always been a need for those persons who could be called finishers. Their ranks are few, their opportunities many, their contributions great.[1]
I suspect that even at this very moment, there are some of you who are contemplating whether or not you are going to be a finisher. You may be considering whether or not you are going to finish something as seemingly insignificant as that project at home you’ve been procrastinating for the past few months. You may even be facing a decision of whether or not you are going to honor baptismal or temple covenants in spite of temptations and trials that confront you. You may feel as though you have been tossed to and fro in the storms of life that oftentimes come unannounced—storms which seem to relentlessly come down upon you, causing you to desperately seek for breath in between the crashing waves as you strive to press forward amidst the dark and gloomy nights with no immediate end in sight. Whatever you may be facing, some of you have made that determination to press forward, while others may have already prematurely admitted defeat.
I would like to share with you a few quotes that, for me, help define finishing. These quotes may describe it as grit, endurance, perseverance, or finishing, but all describe the same concept of being a finisher.
Angela Duckworth, in her book Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance, stated, “Grit specifies having a passion to accomplish a particular top-level goal and the perseverance to follow through. Enthusiasm is common. Endurance is rare.”[2] Let me repeat the last part: “Enthusiasm is common. Endurance is rare.” How often are we initially enthusiastic about finishing something or following through with a commitment, but lack the endurance to finish?
Angela Duckworth also wrote in the same book, “[G]rit grows as we figure out our life philosophy, learn to dust ourselves off after rejection and disappointment, and learn to tell the difference between low-level goals that should be abandoned quickly and higher-level goals that demand more tenacity.”[3] This quote would fit in nicely with President Oaks’ talk, “Good, Better, Best,” that he gave during the October 2007 General Conference.
Concerning those who fall short, John Greenleaf Whittier’s words seem particularly fitting: “For of all sad words of tongue or pen, The saddest are these: ‘It might have been!’”[4]
Lastly, Elder Joseph B. Wirthlin shared the following from the Second Encyclopedia in his October 1987 General Conference talk:
Genius is only the power of making continuous efforts. The line between failure and success is so fine that we scarcely know when we pass it; so fine that we are often on the line and do not know it. How many a man has thrown up his hands at a time when a little more effort, a little more patience would have achieved success? A little more persistence, a little more effort, and what seemed a hopeless failure may turn into a glorious success. . . . There is no defeat except within, no really insurmountable barrier save one’s own inherent weakness of purpose.[5]
Which side of the line are you on? Will you even recognize when you are on that fine line between success and failure? Will you be a finisher?
There may be several different reasons why we don’t finish. These could include discouragement, distraction, procrastination, lack of importance, fear of failure, lack of interest, or lack of organization.
I would like to focus briefly on just two of these reasons. First, discouragement. Elder John H. Groberg said:
Satan and his forces (the world) will do everything in their power to have you lose hope—to be constantly down on yourself, always discouraged, despondent, etc. . . . Satan wants to discourage you, for he knows discouragement and hope cannot exist together. So if he gets you discouraged enough, out goes hope.
Elder Groberg continued:
On the other hand, the Savior will do just the opposite. He will do all in his power to encourage you, lift you up, give you hope, help you in every way possible, so that with a “steadfastness in Christ” we may attain to that “perfect brightness of hope” and then discouragement and despair are gone.[6]
Next, distraction. Elder Richard G. Scott said the following in the April 2001 General Conference:
When things of the world crowd in, all too often the wrong things take highest priority. Then it is easy to forget the fundamental purpose of life. Satan has a powerful tool to use against good people. It is distraction. He would have good people fill life with “good things” so there is no room for the essential ones. Have you unconsciously been caught in that trap?[7]
I ask each of you a similar question: have you allowed the distraction of good things in your life to crowd out the essential?
Next, let’s focus on situations when people were finishers. Several months ago, I asked some of my students to answer some questions about a time when they had to be a finisher. I asked them the following four questions about their experience:
- As it relates to finishing, what was the situation?
- What did you do to endure or persevere during this situation?
- What was the outcome of the situation?
- What did you learn about the importance of "finishing" in this situation?
Let’s now watch as each student tells about his or her experience with finishing.
Each of you will be faced with situations, some quite difficult and others insignificant, that will require you to choose whether or not you will be a finisher. I would like to share with you a few other examples of individuals who were finishers in various aspects of life.
Jenny’s Experience
First, I’d like to share with you an experience of one of my former students. I’ll call this student Jenny (not her real name). I share this experience with her permission.
Jenny had a hard year with family and school. She was a convert to the Church of a few years and the only member in her family. She didn’t feel much support from home. Also, she struggled with roommates and began to question if she should even be at BYU-Idaho. Life was hard.
One particular week, Jenny was struggling from lack of sleep due to many hours of studying. As a result, she fell asleep early Friday evening and then woke up briefly, only to fall asleep again until later Saturday morning. At this point, she realized that she missed submitting her homework for my class.
Jenny soon emailed me the following: “Hi, Brother Morrin, I woke up this morning and realized that I completely forgot to do the two assignments due last night. I was wondering if there is any way that I can make these up? I’m sorry about forgetting about them! [Jenny]”
I replied: “[Jenny], I was sorry to see your email. Once an assignment is past due you are not able to submit it.” I then gave her some advice on future assignments and then wrote, “Please let me know if you have any other questions.”
Our communication continued on Monday, as Jenny wrote: “Hi Brother Morrin, I was looking into my grade and I have noticed that from missing these assignments my grade has dropped 17%. I am debating whether or not I should stay in the course. Thanks for your help, [Jenny].”
Jenny felt she was in a bad place spiritually and was insecure about herself and her future.
Jenny and I soon met, and I could tell she was distraught. I told her that even though she wouldn’t be able to fully recover her grade, she could still do well in the class and learn what she was supposed to learn. I strongly encouraged her to stick it out. Jenny did stay in the course and did learn what she was supposed to learn. She was a very diligent student. She even ended up earning a decent grade, considering her original dilemma.
Later, after the semester, I spoke with Jenny more about her experience. She said, “I knew deep down I wasn’t going to drop [the class] and get a ‘W’. . . . [I knew] if I just put everything into the course, it would be okay.” She also gave me her philosophy on finishing. She said, “I never want someone to think [that I] gave up.” No matter what happens, you are better off if you apply yourself and trust in the Lord and do the best you can.”
Since that time, Jenny has now graduated from BYU-Idaho, is about to begin her graduate studies at another university, and has a job at a large accounting firm waiting for her after graduate school.
Not only does being a finisher make a difference in school, but it also makes a big difference in the workplace; in fact, the ability to be disciplined in finishing tasks is something that many companies look for in potential job candidates.
In his book There is Life After College, Jeffrey J. Selingo writes:
Call it ‘grit’ - a term used by Angela Duckworth, a psychology professor at the University of Pennsylvania. Her research has found that the most successful people are those not only with self-discipline but also with a singular determination to accomplish a task, no matter the obstacles. It's the deep passion Adam Ward at Pinterest told me his company looks for in employees.[8]
Many of the best employees who worked for me in the business world were people who I would consider finishers. When given an assignment, I knew they would always finish it, oftentimes better than I imagined. They would usually come back to clarify things or to counsel on the best approach to take in finishing the assignment, but they would almost always finish the assignment as expected and rarely used excuses for not completing the assignment.
Next, I would like to ask my wife, Laura, to join me here at the podium. She can express this next experience much better than I could.
Laura’s Dad
I share a personal story of finishing in my life, but bear in mind that we are never finished and we have never arrived. However, we are sent here to earth to obtain a body and make and keep covenants. My story is about making and keeping those covenants.
I was born of goodly parents. Very good parents. However, I was born into a home where the gospel of Jesus Christ did not have a place. My mom had been hurt and walked away from the Church as a teenager, and my dad was not a member. Through some sweet experiences, I was introduced to the Church as a child, and I brought my parents along. My dad joined the Church in 1976. He was a Vietnam veteran and a police officer. Life was hard in many ways, as it is for everyone, and the stresses of work and life along with some offenses taken found my dad and my mom outside the Church for many years. I couldn’t walk away. I kept going and kept striving to keep my covenants, and I told my parents how important it was to me and my plans to marry in the temple. I prayed and prayed and tried to encourage, very imperfectly, their hearts to change. I did my best to set an example and wondered if I would ever see their hearts change. I was so close to my dad and wanted him to want to make and keep covenants so we could all be together. I did get married in the temple. My mom received her endowment the night before I got married. My dad waited outside the temple. It was hard. Very hard. We would work together to raise our family and strive to be an example. The Savior has been the center of our family.
One Sunday morning in the beginning of November 2016, my phone rang. My dad, who I have only seen cry once before, was emotional. He told me that in his hand he was holding a temple recommend. My parents live in another state; I didn’t even know that he had been attending church. A few weeks later, we drove to see my parents with all of our children, except one son who was serving a mission. The day after Thanksgiving, I was able to witness my parents being sealed and to kneel at the alter and be sealed to them. I wish I could share all the feelings of that day. I wish I had time to tell you of the years of prayers and almost the hope lost. I asked my dad what made the difference. Why now? He replied that the bishop asked him to prepare, and my dad responded, “It is time.” No one is ever finished, but in a sense my dad had made it to a finish point of his conversion. His story is still progressing, as is mine. It was wonderful to have him witness two of our children marry in the temple. It was a most incredible day when I witnessed him being sealed to his parents and serving as proxy for his father as his parents were sealed together just a few months ago. My dad is understanding the Atonement of Jesus Christ in remarkable ways. He is daily making different choices that he might keep the covenants he has made. We are both striving to endure to the end. I have seen the Atonement of Jesus Christ work in him and literally make him a new man as it has made me a new woman. As a follow up note, my parents are serving a service mission right now. I used to pray that my dad would simply desire to be a home teacher. Now he spends hours ministering to others.
I testify to you the reality of the Atonement of Jesus Christ in each of our lives and the reality of change. I have witnessed it first-hand in myself and the miracle of my dad. As much as I wanted my dad to be there with me when I was married, I see how it needed timing that was beyond me, and how much different it was when it was his choice. I see the blessings of finishing a step in mortality by making covenants in the temple of our God.
How I love my dad. I witness to you that I know our Father has a plan for each of us here on the earth and Christ is at the center of the plan, and we are to make and keep covenants. I so testify in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.
Thank you, Laura. I am also very grateful that you and several others never gave up and that we were all able to be in the temple with your parents.
Oftentimes, we fail to recognize that it isn’t simply the big things in life that matter. It is also the cumulative effect of consistently finishing the small things that leads to our eternal destiny—who we eventually become.
Charles A. Hall described the following: “We sow our thoughts, and we reap our actions; we sow our actions, and we reap our habits; we sow our habits, and we reap our characters; we sow our characters, and we reap our destiny.”[9]
So it is with finishing. As we decide whether or not we will finish something great or small, and as we act upon those thoughts, and as we develop a habit of finishing, it will ultimately determine our character—one known as a finisher, which will help lead us to our destiny of life eternal.
These patterns of finishing, similar to other patterns that we establish in our lives such as daily prayer, scripture study, family home evening, temple attendance, and weekly date night with our spouse, will help protect us from the influence of the adversary and help secure eternal life with those we love.
In 2 Nephi chapter 31, Nephi writes about the doctrine of Christ, including the importance of enduring to the end:
Wherefore, ye must press forward with a steadfastness in Christ, having a perfect brightness of hope, and a love of God and of all men. Wherefore, if ye shall press forward, feasting upon the word of Christ, and endure to the end, behold, thus saith the Father: Ye shall have eternal life.[10]
That is part of the doctrine of Christ: to endure to the end, to persevere, to finish.
Christ is the Ultimate Example of a Finisher
Let’s discuss briefly about the ultimate finisher: Christ. There are many times when Christ chose to be a finisher during His earthly mission. Here are a few of those instances.
At the beginning of his earthly ministry, Jesus fasted for forty days and forty nights. Then came Satan tempting Him. First, he appealed to Jesus’ hunger by asking Him to transform stones into bread. Jesus responded, “It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.”[11] Next, Satan tempted Him to misuse His divine power by taking Him to a pinnacle of the temple. There, Satan told Jesus to cast himself down and, if he were the Son of God, angels would protect Him. Jesus responded, “It is written again, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.”[12] Finally, Satan took Jesus to an exceedingly high mountain, and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. Then Satan said, “All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me.”[13] Jesus responded, “Get thee hence, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve.”[14] In this encounter with Satan, Jesus was able to persevere in the face of temptation.
Toward the end of His mortal ministry, Jesus had to endure much in the Garden of Gethsemane as He faced the final acts of finishing our salvation.
Neal A. Maxwell provided insight into the Savior’s suffering in the Garden of Gethsemane when he said:
[I]n Gethsemane, the suffering Jesus began to be “sore amazed,”[15] or, in the Greek, “awestruck” and “astonished.”
Imagine, Jehovah, the Creator of this and other worlds, “astonished”! Jesus knew cognitively what He must do, but not experientially. He had never personally known the exquisite and exacting process of an atonement before. Thus, when the agony came in its fulness, it was so much, much worse than even He with his unique intellect had ever imagined! No wonder an angel appeared to strengthen him![16]
The cumulative weight of all mortal sins—past, present, and future—pressed upon that perfect, sinless, and sensitive Soul! All our infirmities and sicknesses were somehow, too, a part of the awful arithmetic of the Atonement.[17] The anguished Jesus not only pled with the Father that the hour and cup might pass from Him, but with this relevant citation. “And he said, Abba, Father, all things are possible unto thee; take away this cup from me. . . .”[18]
How easy it could have been for Jesus to have given up at this point and not have finished the work of His Father! However, He knew His mission, He loved us, and He carried on.
Jesus then endured unlawful trials before Jewish and Roman leaders. He was mocked. At Pilate’s direction, Jesus was flogged. Roman soldiers insulted Jesus as they placed the thorny crown upon His head. Still weary from all the floggings and injustice, Jesus carried His own cross to the place called Golgotha. It was there that they crucified him. During the intense agony of dying on the cross, it appears that God the Father left His Son’s presence. Jesus, sensing that His father had left, “cried with a loud voice, . . .My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”[19] Soon after that, Jesus said, “It is finished: and he bowed his head, and gave up the ghost.”[20] Even after His death, Jesus went to the spirit world and preached the gospel to those who were dead, “that they might be judged according to men in the flesh, but live according to God in the spirit.”[21] Through all that Jesus suffered and endured, He became “the author and finisher of our faith.”[22] Christ is our great exemplar. He finished the work of His father on this earth, and even now continues His father’s work, that we might have the opportunity to enjoy eternal life, or in other words, the life that our Father in Heaven enjoys.
Conclusion
Similar to President Monson’s story of the message in the furniture store window, the Lord needs each of us to be finishers. He needs us to be finishers in the seemingly routine activities of our daily lives. He needs us to be finishers when He asks us to do some really hard things. He especially needs us to be finishers as we progress through this life and endure to the end toward eternal life with Him and with those we love.
I hope that each of you has felt the immense love that our Heavenly Father has for you. “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”[23] Also, I hope you have felt the love that our Savior has for you in voluntarily giving His life as He became the author and finisher of our salvation. Heavenly Father and His Son Jesus Christ love each of you and want you to be finishers and become the people they know you can become. I invite each of you to become the finishers that God wants you to become and thus, through Christ, obtain eternal life. In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.
[1] Thomas S. Monson, “Finishers Wanted,” Ensign, May 1972.
[2] Angela Duckworth, Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance, 2016, 250.
[3] Angela Duckworth, Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance, 2016, 86.
[4] John Greenleaf Whittier, “Maud Muller.”
[5] Second Encyclopedia, ed. Jacob M. Brand, Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1957, 152.
[6] John H. Groberg, “There is Always Hope,” Brigham Young University devotional, June 3, 1984.
[7] Richard G. Scott, “First Things First,” Ensign, May 2001.
[8] Jeffrey J. Selingo, There is Life After College: What Parents and Students Should Know About Navigating School to Prepare for the Jobs of Tomorrow, 2016, 47.
[9] The Home Book of Quotations, sel. Burton Stevenson, 1934, 845.
[10] 2 Nephi 31:20.
[11] Matthew 4:4.
[12] Matthew 4:7.
[13] Matthew 4:9.
[14] Matthew 4:10.
[15] Mark 14:33.
[16] See Luke 22:43.
[17] See Alma 7:11–12; Isaiah 53:3–5; Matthew 8:17.
[18] Mark 14:35–36; Neal A. Maxwell, “Willing to Submit,” Ensign, May 1985.
[19] Mark 15:34.
[20] John 19:30.
[21] 1 Peter 4:6.
[22] Hebrews 12:2; see also Moroni 6:4.
[23] John 3:16.