Look Unto Me In Every Thought

Thirty years ago, President Nelson spoke about “constancy amid change” and those Personages, plans, and principles which will never change. He declared, “Our Heavenly Father has a glorified body of flesh and bone, inseparably connected with His spirit. Scriptures state that He is ‘infinite and eternal, from everlasting to everlasting the same unchangeable God’ (D&C 20:17). His Beloved Son, Jesus Christ, is our Savior and the chief cornerstone of our religion. ‘He is the life and the light of the world’ (Alma 38:9) …. Another personage is the Holy Ghost, whose enduring influence transcends time. Scripture assures that ‘the Holy Ghost shall be thy constant companion, and thy scepter an unchanging scepter of righteousness and truth; and thy dominion shall be an everlasting dominion, and without compulsory means it shall flow unto thee forever and ever’ (D&C 121:46; emphasis added).” He then summarized these three members of the Godhead: “Brothers and sisters, these Heavenly Beings love you. Their love is as constant as is the greatest love of earthly parents.” We need to always remember that constant truth now in a world that is indeed ever changing and seeking to move us away from gospel truths. We can hold fast to the words of Paul which similarly declare the unchanging nature of God’s love for us: “If God be for us, who can prevail against us?... Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?... For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:31, 35, 38-39). No matter what happens around us, Paul’s witness is that we can always find the love of Jesus Christ for us. Nothing but ourselves can separate us from His love.

                Much has indeed changed in the world since President Nelson spoke those words three decades ago. Few would have predicted how much our daily interaction with technology and information would have changed in such a short space of time. But President Faust certainly came close to describing what our day today would be like. In a talk also given in 1993, just one month before President Nelson’s and not long before the explosion of the internet, President Faust prophesied, “In your generation you will be barraged by multitudes of voices telling you how to live, how to gratify your passions, how to have it all. You will have up to five hundred television channels at your fingertips. There will be all sorts of software, interactive computer modems, databases, and bulletin boards; there will be desktop publishing, satellite receivers, and communications networks that will suffocate you with information. Local cable news networks will cover only local news. Everyone will be under more scrutiny. There will be fewer places of refuge and serenity. You will be bombarded with evil and wickedness like no other generation.” How true his words have proven as we are indeed suffocating with information from screens and voices that surround us. President Faust’s message was that we need to seek first and foremost the voice of the Spirit if we want to survive spiritually. We must rely on that which is constant: the Holy Ghost and its testimony of the Father and the Son. As we go out in public and look around we see that most people have their heads looking down at their screens, but the words of President Monson call to us: “It is better to look up!” We have to learn to look up to heaven first for answers and help and strength and knowledge. The Savior invited us in this dispensation: “Look unto me in every thought; doubt not, fear not” (Doctrine and Covenants 6:36). That is where we must look first and foremost, even while the world looks down endlessly scrolling for something more. President Faust’s encouragement to us is just as important today as it was thirty years ago: “I have suggested a simple solution for selecting the channel to which you will attune yourselves: Listen to and follow the voice of the Spirit. This is an ancient solution, even eternal, and may not be popular in a society that is always looking for something new…. This solution is one unified, consistent, age-old message in a world that quickly becomes bored in the absence of intensity, variety, and novelty. This solution requires you to walk by faith in a world governed by sight (see 2 Corinthians 4:18, 5:7). You must see with the eye of faith eternal, unseen, spiritual verities, whereas the masses of mankind depend solely on temporal things, which can be known only through the physical senses…. Learn to ponder the things of the Spirit and to respond to its promptings; filter out the static generated by Satan. As you become attuned to the Spirit, ‘thine ears shall hear a word behind thee, saying, This is the way, walk ye in it’ (Isaiah 30:21)."