Change My Heart Forever

One of the highlights of the most recent general conference was the incredible music. I especially loved the missionary choir on Saturday evening. The hymns they sang were a powerful witness of the Savior and their devotion to Him, and I really appreciated that the choir consisted of both young and older missionaries. Typically, when a missionary choir sings in conference it is only the 18–21-year-old missionaries, and I thought it was awesome to see them together as one set of missionaries with no distinction between old and young. The most poignant moment watching them for me was when the sang the new hymn I Will Walk with Jesus. The chorus of this beautiful song is as follows: 

As I walk with Jesus to my home above,

He will bless me with His Spirit and fill me with His love,

Change my heart forever and help me clearly see.

I will walk with Jesus, and He will walk with me. 

I was particularly moved during the final chorus when they sang the words “Change my heart forever and help me clearly see.” At that moment the camera zoomed in on one sister missionary whose eyes were glistening with tears and who had a single teardrop running down the side of her face (see 11:20 in the recording of the session). Her heart committed to Jesus was visible in her face, and her eyes blurred by tears had perhaps never seen more clearly.

As I read President Nelson’s message from this conference today, I thought about this missionary and how she was representative of what the prophet hopes for all of us in terms of a commitment to Jesus Christ. He said this, “I have learned that the most crucial question we each must answer is this: To whom or to what will I give my life? My decision to follow Jesus Christ is the most important decision I have ever made…. So today I call upon you to rededicate your lives to Jesus Christ. I call upon you to help gather scattered Israel and to prepare the world for the Second Coming of the Lord. I call upon you to talk of Christ, testify of Christ, have faith in Christ, and rejoice in Christ! Come unto Christ and ‘offer your whole [soul]’ to Him. This is the secret to a life of joy!” The verse that he quoted is one of my favorites in the Book of Mormon. Amaleki invited us with these words: “And now, my beloved brethren, I would that ye should come unto Christ, who is the Holy One of Israel, and partake of his salvation, and the power of his redemption. Yea, come unto him, and offer your whole souls as an offering unto him, and continue in fasting and praying, and endure to the end; and as the Lord liveth ye will be saved” (Omni 1:26). That sums up well the invitation that President Nelson was trying to give us—we need to offer our whole souls to the Savior. We cannot get by with halfhearted discipleship. The Lord wants our all, and never has that been needed more than now as the wickedness on the earth increases. One people who, at least for a time, gave their whole souls to the Savior were the Nephites and Lamanites who banded together under the threat of the Gadianton robbers. After their victory over their enemies through the strength of the Lord, “They did break forth, all as one, in singing, and praising their God for the great thing which he had done for them, in preserving them from falling into the hands of their enemies. Yea, they did cry: Hosanna to the Most High God. And they did cry: Blessed be the name of the Lord God Almighty, the Most High God.” Their hearts too had been forever changed, and the tears of joy showed how they had truly been able to see: “And their hearts were swollen with joy, unto the gushing out of many tears, because of the great goodness of God in delivering them out of the hands of their enemies” (3 Nephi 4:31-33). We too, like both this sister missionary and this ancient people, can have our hearts changed forever and be swollen with joy as we choose to rededicate our lives to Jesus Christ.