This post is part of the General Conference Odyssey. This week covers the Saturday afternoon session of the April 2002 conference.
Two members of the Quorum of the Seventy spoke in this session whom I have no recollection of. However, I thought their talks were instructive.
Elder R. Conrad Schultz said, "Faith obedience is a matter of trust. The question is simple: Do we trust our Heavenly Father? Do we trust our prophets?" That is what I tried to get across to our children, that obedience is trust in me as their mother, that I have their safety and best interests in mind; and that we can trust Heavenly Father in the same way. He went on to explain, "Sometimes it is necessary to be obedient even when we do not understand the reason for the law. It takes faith to be obedient."
When our children were young, I think the oldest was about 12, they wanted to watch the movie Sixth Sense. We advised them that it would be better if they waited until they were older because it was a scary movie. No, they insisted they wouldn't be scared! My husband and I talked it over and decided that this would be a good teaching moment, so we let them watch it. Afterward, they were so nervous they couldn't go to sleep without priesthood blessings to calm them down. The next day we talked about how in the future they could trust us to know what we were talking about. For years it worked. Whenever they wanted to do something and we wouldn't let them we would remind them of the movie and that we knew what was best for them.
At the beginning of the talk, Elder Schultz told a story of their family vacation fishing when a large "sneaker wave" swamped their boat and a cousin was washed overboard. Fortunately, they were all wearing life-jackets and no one was lost. He ended his talk with this poignant prayer, ". . . that we will continue to wear our life jackets of obedience in order to avoid the tragedy that will surely come if we are deceived and follow the enticings of the adversary." I thought of our beloved James, mired in bad choices, who succumbed to the whisperings of Satan that there was no hope for him. Obedience in his teens and early twenties would have changed the course of his life.
Elder Robert R. Steuer gave a great talk on being teachable. "When our desire to receive instructions is a greater force than our comfort in remaining as we are, we become teachable." He gave three conditions to being teachable. "First, we need to start with a willingness to be instructed." I used to call our children 'recalcitrant' when they were refusing to receive instruction. It's such a good, old-fashioned word. A child, student, or adult really does need to be humble and willing to be instructed before any learning can take place.
"Second, we need to put ourselves into a proper frame of mind and heart." I think this includes clearing our minds and hearts of preconceived notions, past experiences, excuses, and such, so we can be open to correction and new knowledge.
"Third, we must be obedient to the instruction we receive." It doesn't do us any good to ask for instruction if we aren't going to follow it. "Becoming teachable is a process of learning line upon line. In this process we convert thoughts and feelings into actions." I love that! And finally, ". . . we shall discover that the things we value and appreciate most are those that we personally learned from the Lord." Amen to that. What I've remembered the longest is what I learned while studying the scriptures myself.
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