There is great power in music and it is amazing how it calms the soul. I am truly humbled to be here in front of you today. President Clark makes it look way too easy when he stands behind this podium. I pray for the Spirit to accompany us today.
Elder Jeffrey R. Holland of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles once stated:
May I be bold enough to suggest that it is impossible for anyone who really knows God to doubt his willingness to receive us with open arms in a divine embrace if we will but "come unto Him."[1]
When I was 10 or 11 years old, I had an experience that helped me see the reality of Elder Holland's statement that God truly is there to receive us with open arms if we will come unto Him. It was nearing Christmas time and my older brother Matt and I were trying to find the Christmas presents that our parents had hidden. It had become a kind of unwritten challenge to find the presents and see what we were getting before Christmas morning. Whenever our parents were gone or otherwise occupied, we would search the house, but this particular year, Mom and Dad had done a great job of hiding the gifts and they were nowhere to be found.
One afternoon, however, I was in our garage and I happened to look up. There in the ceiling was an access hole to the attic space above the garage and as I peered into that hole, I could see some boxes. I realized that Mom and Dad had hidden the presents up there. I ran into the house and told Matt what I had discovered. We checked to make sure Mom was busy in the kitchen and then we snuck into the upstairs bedroom of our house where there was an attic access. We crawled into the attic making sure to step on the wooden joists so we wouldn't fall through the ceiling. We worked our way over to the space above the garage and there we found all of the Christmas presents carefully stacked on a piece of plywood that spanned across several joists.
As we were looking at the presents, Matt stepped to the other side of the gifts and missed stepping on a joist. Instead he stepped directly onto the sheetrock that made up the ceiling of the garage.As he stepped down, the sheetrock gave way and Matt fell through the ceiling. Luckily, he caught himself on the joists and I was able to help pull him back up. We hurriedly worked our way out of the attic and ran outside. We grabbed a ladder, a hammer, and some nails, and between the two of us, we were able to put the sheetrock back up before anyone saw what had happened. We convinced ourselves that our Dad wouldn't notice that the sheetrock was broken and we promised one another that we wouldn't say anything about what had happened.
A few days after the ceiling incident, it was Christmas Eve and our entire family was over at my Aunt's house here in Rexburg for a family Christmas party. Toward the end of the party, Santa Claus showed up and he gave every one of us kids a bag of treats. The treat bags had one or two pieces of candy, an orange, and a whole bunch of unshelled peanuts. Matt and I weren't terribly thrilled with the peanuts so we, along with a couple of our cousins, went outside and we started throwing the peanuts at the cars driving by, an activity that I would not recommend! This was great fun until one of the cars stopped. We all ran and hid, but a woman got out of the car just as my mom came out of the house. From our hiding spot we could hear the woman give our mom an earful about what was taking place and how dangerous it was and how irresponsible those boys were and she went on and on. Our Mom apologized profusely and said she would take care of the situation.
After the woman left, my mom started crying. She had been yelled at, was deeply embarrassed, and now she had to deal with her delinquent sons. When we finally came out of our hiding spot, all Mom said was, "Get in the car." We knew we were in serious trouble. That short drive home of just a few miles was the longest drive of my life. Mom didn't say a word. When we finally got home, we were sent directly to our room and mom told us that Dad would be coming to talk to us because she was too upset to deal with us. Dad came in and calmly talked to us about what we had done and why it was wrong. When he finished talking, Matt looked over at me and said, "We had better tell him everything." I wanted to scream "No," but we told him everything about looking at Christmas presents and falling through the ceiling in the garage. When we finished our confession, Dad just slowly shook his head and told us to go bed. It was the first Christmas Eve where I went straight to bed because I figured there was no point in getting up the next morning because surely, there wouldn't be anything to celebrate.
But morning came, and when I went out into our living room, there sat my Mom with outstretched arms. I walked over to her and told her I was sorry. She gave me a hug and told me that she still loved me. For all the mistakes I had made over the past few days, my Mom was still there waiting with outstretched arms. Just as my mom was there waiting for me to come to her, our Heavenly Father is waiting to do the same thing. He is patiently waiting for us to come to Him where He can embrace us and tell us that He loves us.
As Elder Holland stated, God is there to receive us with open arms if we will but come unto Him. The question then arises, how do we truly come unto Him? There are many things, such as being humble and repenting, that we must do but may I offer one simple suggestion that we can do now and continually: we can pray. Through prayer, we turn our thoughts, our actions, and our hearts toward the Lord. It is through prayer that we can feel our Savior's love and as we learn to listen for answers to our prayers, we will see the hand of the Lord in our lives.
In Proverbs we read: "Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths."[2]
President Spencer W. Kimball taught about the power of prayer. He said, and I quote:
After a lifetime of prayers, I know of the love and power and strength that comes from honest and heartfelt prayer. I know of the readiness of our Father to assist us in our mortal experience, to teach us, to lead us, to guide us. Thus, with great love, our Savior has said, "What I say unto one I say unto all; pray always."[3]
A great and powerful example of what President Kimball said is found in the scriptures in the first book of Nephi. In Chapter 7 we read about how Nephi's brothers are angry with him so they tie him up and are going to leave him to die, but in verses 17-18 we read what happened:
But it came to pass that I prayed unto the Lord, saying: O Lord, according to my faith which is in thee, wilt thou deliver me from the hands of my brethren; yea, even give me strength that I may burst these bands with which I am bound. 18 And it came to pass that when I had said these words, behold, the bands were loosed from off my hands and feet, and I stood before my brethren, and I spake unto them.[4]
In that very instance, Nephi's prayer was answered and the bands were loosed.
Just a few chapters later, however, Nephi's experience and the way his prayer was answered proved to be very different. In Chapter 18 of First Nephi, Lehi and his family have all boarded the ship that Nephi built and they are sailing across the ocean. Once again Nephi's brothers become angry with Nephi and they tie him up. I can only imagine that Nephi prayed with the same fervor with which he prayed in Chapter 7 and I know that his faith had not decreased. In fact, I would bet that his faith was even stronger and yet, this time, the bands were not loosed and Nephi suffered for several days. The weather turned horrible, and their compass, the Liahona, stopped working. Finally, after four days of this, Nephi's brothers were so scared about dying that they finally untied Nephi. After he was freed, Nephi prayed unto the Lord and the seas calmed and the compass once again began to work. I love that Nephi takes the opportunity to teach us and explains why his prayer was answered in a different manner. In verse 11 of Chapter 18 we read:
And it came to pass that Laman and Lemuel did take me and bind me with cords, and they did treat me with much harshness; nevertheless, the Lord did suffer it that he might show forth his power, unto the fulfilling of his word which he had spoken concerning the wicked.[5]
The Lord heard and answered Nephi's prayer, but the answer was probably not what Nephi had hoped for at that time. What is powerful here is that Nephi knew that the Lord had heard him and as he reflected back on the experience, he was able to see how the Lord used that experience to direct his life.
A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to witness, as Nephi had, direct and not so direct answers to my own prayers. Back in January of this year, my brother-in-law, who had just turned 50, set the goal for himself to climb to the top of the Grand Teton, a mountain peak just across the Idaho border in Wyoming that stands at 13,775 feet in elevation. Two of my brothers and I had climbed the mountain before and agreed to help him reach his goal. This adventure quickly turned into a family affair and when we left on the trip at the end of August there were 7 of us total--4 brothers, 2 brothers-in-law, and my brother's climbing partner. Our plan had been to hit the trail at about 3 a.m. on a Tuesday morning, summit, and come all the way back down but due to some concerns about the weather on Tuesday, we made a last minute decision to leave Monday night and hike through the night so that we could summit as early as possible before the weather hit. We were not able to move as fast as we had hoped, but the weather held and we were all able to summit late Tuesday morning.
Storm clouds were moving in so we only spent a few minutes on the top of the mountain. Because of our later summit, by the time we started down, we were the only group still on the mountain. As part of our descent, we had two significant rappels that we had to do. A rappel is a way to move down a steep section of rock using a rope that passes through a device that provides friction. We navigated the first rappel without incident, but the second rappel proved to be a different story. This particular rappel consisted of dropping vertically 10 or 15 feet to a ledge and then backing off that ledge and dropping vertically for over 100 feet. We got our ropes set up and then carefully stacked the ropes so that they would unravel properly as we threw them over the edge.
My brother Matt was the first one to rappel down. He went over the edge and disappeared from sight. We waited for him to reach the bottom and for the tension to come off the rope. We kept waiting and waiting. A few minutes passed and we started yelling to Matt to see if he was o.k. The wind was blowing which made it difficult to hear, but finally in a lull in the wind, Matt was able to tell us that there was a knot in the rope. Two knots had actually formed in the rope as it twisted and unraveled when we threw it over. Matt had been able to work the first knot out, but the second knot got into his rappelling device and he was completely stuck on the knot. Matt had been trying everything to get the knot out. He had tied what is called a prussic to the line to try and ascend back up the rope, but had been unsuccessful in doing so. We couldn't see Matt, but we knew he had to be exhausted. At this point we called 911 and were patched through to the ranger station. The ranger told us they could get a helicopter, but with the weather rolling in as it was, we didn't have time for that to happen.
We decided our best bet was to try to pull Matt back up to the ledge so that he could stand and get the knot out of his rappelling device. Through the wind we asked Matt how far he was from the ledge. We thought we heard "six feet." There was only space for 4 of us to grab hold of the rope, but we figured we could pull Matt up six feet. We pulled and pulled and pulled with everything we had and then tied the rope off. We had pulled at least 6 feet but the rope was still taut. We yelled again to Matt to see how close he was to the ledge and this time we clearly heard that he was 60 feet from the ledge. I couldn't believe it. My arms were burning and I remember thinking to myself that there was no way we would be able to pull him up 60 more feet. Just as I had that thought, my brother Kyle said that we needed to say a prayer. We bowed our heads and Kyle prayed that we would have the strength to save our brother and then we started pulling and strength truly came that was not our own. For every foot of progress, we would lose several inches due to the give in the rope and having to reposition our hands, but slowly and surely we were finally able to pull Matt to the ledge where he was able to stand and get the knot out of his rappelling device and then rappel down safely.
In the very instance of need, our prayer was answered as we were given the strength to pull our brother to safety.
Several hours later however, our sincere prayers were answered in a very different manner. After getting everyone down off the rappel, it started to rain. The rain made the rocks very slick which made the descent event more difficult, but the greater challenge was that the steep descent had taken its toll on my brother-in-law's knees and he was struggling with every step. He was a real trooper and never complained, but he was in a lot of pain and it really slowed our progress as we descended down off the mountain. The rain finally stopped, but the sun quickly set and we once again found ourselves hiking in the dark. We had made it through the technical parts of the mountain, but we still had several miles to hike and by this time we had been awake for over 40 hours straight. As we continued down, we came to a meadow and then a large boulder field and once in the boulder field, we lost the trail. We searched and searched, but could not find the trail to take us out of the boulder field. We worked our way back to the meadow because we knew there was a sign there that would indicate we were in the right spot but we could not find the sign. We all prayed that we would find our way out and we had great faith that we would be guided to know what to do, but as hard as we tried, we could not find the trail or the sign indicating where we were.
We began to think that we had possibly missed a turn so while the others rested, my other brother-in-law and I hiked back up the mountain to try to find a fork in the trail and to also see if we could get cell phone reception to let our families know that we were o.k. We were not successful in either endeavor. We were finally so exhausted that we turned around and went back down to the meadow where our brothers were sleeping. When we reached them, we happened to look across the creek and in the faint light of our headlamps we saw something. We walked over to it and there, not 50 ft. from where our brothers were resting, was the metal sign indicating the trail and verifying that we were going the right way. We had walked past that spot at least a dozen times and had not seen the sign. We were elated to know that we were in the right spot, but we made the conscious decision to rest for a bit to clear the fog from our sleep deprived minds. We slept for a couple of hours on the side of the trail and when we awoke, our minds were clear. We re-entered the boulder field, found the trail through it and were able to safely hike out the rest of the way. Our prayers were answered, but in a different way than we had anticipated.
Elder Richard G. Scott once stated:
Sometimes answers to prayers are not recognized because we are too intent on wanting confirmation of our own desires. We fail to see that the Lord would have us do something else. Be careful to seek His will.[6]
Our desire had been to find that trail and make it out that night. We didn't want our families to worry and frankly, we really didn't want to have them send Search and Rescue in to find us. We really just wanted to get off that mountain, but we failed to see the Lord's will. He not only wanted us to get off the mountain, but He wanted us to make it all the way home safely. I also firmly believe that He wanted us to learn something from this experience.
The lesson that was learned was quite simple: the sign and the trail, the very answers to our prayers that we had been seeking, had been there the entire time but due to exhaustion and sleep deprivation, we had not been able to see those answers. The actual answer to our prayer was that we needed to sleep and then the way would be shown. Too often, Heavenly Father answers our prayers, but because of our own physical, emotional, or spiritual fatigue, we are not in a condition to hear or see the answers He has placed before us. Often times, we need to just stop for a minute, let our minds clear, and then look for the answers that have been provided.
It is my testimony that our Father in Heaven is waiting to receive us with open arms if we will but "come unto Him." As we draw ourselves near to Him through prayer, He will hear and answer us. As we seek His will in our lives, we will be guided and strengthened in all that we do and this I say in the sacred name of Jesus Christ, amen.
Notes
[1] Jeffrey R. Holland, "Come Unto Me," Ensign, Apr. 1998, 19
[2] Proverbs 3:5-6
[3] Spencer W. Kimball, "Pray Always" Ensign, October 1981, 10
[4] 1 Nephi 7: 17-18
[5] 1 Nephi 18:11
[6] Richard G. Scott, "Learning to Recognize Answers to Prayers," Ensign, November 1989, 11