Bear His Name

President Steven J. Lund spoke in the most recent general conference about the youth and how we turn spiritual experiences into a lifetime of discipleship. He told how when he was in the Amsterdam airport a missionary who was returning home after faithful service asked him, “President Lund, what do I do now? What do I do to remain strong?” His response was this: “You don’t have to wear the badge to bear His name.” Ultimately for all of us, no matter what our spiritual experiences have been in the past, the key to staying faithful is to do just as we covenant each week in the Sacrament: seeking to take His name upon us, remembering Him always, and continuing to obey His commandments. As our focus remains on Him instead of on the world we can ignore the pull of the “spiritually corrosive environment” that we live in and “press forward with a steadfastness in Christ” (2 Nephi 31:20). President Lund added words he wanted to say to this young man: “Your discipleship isn’t just a slogan on a T-shirt—it has become a part of your life purposefully lived for others. So you go home, and you do that. Be that. Carry this spiritual momentum into the rest of your life.” We all must make our discipleship more than a slogan—it must be a foundational part of our life that defines who we are. Then as the “cacophony of a rambunctious world” seeks to make us deaf to the things of the Spirit, we will not be moved.

                I often hear in my house from one of my children the idea that we should be normal. I understand the feeling that we want to be accepted by others and fit in with our peers. But in the gospel of Jesus Christ, to be normal—as the world defines it—is not our goal. We didn’t come here to earth to fit in with the world and follow its masses wherever that takes us. Rather, we came here to earth to bear His name and stand as witnesses of the Savior as He invited us: “Therefore, hold up your light that it may shine unto the world. Behold I am the light which ye shall hold up—that which ye have seen me do” (3 Nephi 18:24). He also said of old to His disciples, “I the Lord have called thee in righteousness, and will hold thine hand, and will keep thee, and give thee for a covenant of the people, for a light of the Gentiles” (Isaiah 42:6). We must stand for the covenant and be a light to the Gentiles even amidst all the wickedness around us. I love this message of Sister Sheri Dew for all of us who call ourselves by His name: “You were recommended to help run the last leg of the relay that began with Adam and Eve because your premortal spiritual valor indicated you would have the courage and the determination to face the world at its worst, to do combat with the evil one during his heyday, and, in spite of it all, to be fearless in building the kingdom of God. You simply must understand this, because you were born to lead by virtue of who you are, the covenants you have made, and the fact that you are here now in the 11th hour.” She continued, “We have access to the greatest and grandest of all power. And when we have the power of God with us, we truly can do all things—including everything we were born to do. And we were born to lead. We were born for glory.” Ultimately we are here to wield the power of Jesus Christ to overcome all the obstacles of mortality and return in glory to our Father in Heaven. We are not here on earth to be normal and to “passively, comfortably live out [our] lives” but to stand up and stand out, to bear the standard of truth to the world and let the light of Jesus Christ shine as a heavenly banner. We can seek each day to indeed “bear His name” as President Lund encouraged and rise to the call of the Prophet Joseph Smith: “Brethren, shall we not go on in so great a cause? Go forward and not backward. Courage, brethren; and on, on to the victory!” (Doctrine and Covenants 128:22)