Never Stop Preparing

In his conference address Embrace the Future with Faith, President Nelson remarked, “How are we to deal with both the somber prophecies and the glorious pronouncements about our day? The Lord told us how with simple, but stunning, reassurance: ‘If ye are prepared ye shall not fear.’” With that key to our future in these latter days, he offered this scriptural commentary and invitation: “Even when things went well, Captain Moroni continued to prepare his people. He never stopped. He never became complacent. The adversary never stops attacking. So, we can never stop preparing! The more self-reliant we are—temporally, emotionally, and spiritually—the more prepared we are to thwart Satan’s relentless assaults.” Normally we think of “self-reliance” only in terms of the physical preparations we need to make for hard times and being able to provide the necessities of life for our families. President Nelson suggested here that we should likewise be concerned about becoming emotionally and spiritually self-reliant to be ready for the days ahead.

                As I ponder what it means to be self-reliant spiritually, I realize that one of my most important roles as a parent is to help my children to obtain their own independent spiritual foundation. One day I will have to send them into the world to live on their own and make decisions without the close supervision of my wife and me. Joseph Smith famously remarked about the Saints: “I teach them correct principles, and they govern themselves.” As a parents I must learn to teach our children correct principles and help them grow up so that they can one day govern themselves. The first time I took my two oldest skiing, I attempted to go down the hill the first couple times with them holding on to my poles, and that ended up with us often on top of each other with tangled skis in a pile in the snow. I quickly realized that the more I could let go of them, letting them be forced to ski totally on their own (but with me close at hand), the better it went. In skiing and in parenting in general it can be difficult to “let go” knowing that they will likely fall and even get a few bumps and bruises, but surely that is the only way to help prepare them for the day they will need to stand on their own completely. I know that I need to be less concerned with outcomes and more concerned with personal development—it may be much more valuable, for example, for a child to read a few verses on her own during our attempt at family scripture study than for me to plow through the chapter myself just to get it done.   

In a moment of great stress and danger the stripling warriors declared, “We do not doubt our mothers knew it” (Alma 56:48). To me that phrase can be interpreted in two ways: (1) “We do not doubt that our mothers knew it” and (2) “We do not doubt because our mothers knew it.” The first suggests that they knew their mothers had faith whereas the second implies that the faith of their mothers had helped them develop their own independent faith. That is perhaps a spiritual progression that we must help take place in our own children—first we help them see and know that we have faith and trust in God, and then we work to help them develop that same faith in Him for themselves. The stripling warriors surely showed that the latter description applied to them, and our only hope for the spiritual survival of our children is to help them likewise develop their own independent faith in Christ. So, like Moroni, we must never stop working to prepare ourselves and them for the challenges ahead: we can never give up on encouraging the gospel basics in our home of prayer and fasting, scripture study and Sabbath day observance. President Nelson left us with this powerful promise: “I am not saying that the days ahead will be easy, but I promise you that the future will be glorious for those who are prepared and who continue to prepare to be instruments in the Lord’s hands…. I promise that as we create places of security, prepare our minds to be faithful to God, and never stop preparing, God will bless us. He will ‘deliver us; yea, insomuch that he [will] speak peace to our souls, and [will] grant unto us great faith, and … cause us that we [can] hope for our deliverance in him.’”