The Gospel of Jesus Christ Works

I appreciate what BYU’s football coach, Kilani Sitake, said recently. He bore witness this way in front of 3 million viewers last Saturday: “We are a faith-based institution. We represent The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It shows that the gospel of Jesus Christ works in many things. It works in business. It works at home. It definitely works in football. We’re making it happen.” In another setting this week he said this in response to a question about money in college sports: “Looking at sports today, it isn’t the rosters with the most money that win. Culture does still matter. Culture beats strategy every time. We’re going to work culture. We’re going to work education. We’re going to work knowledge. We definitely are going to work around what we feel is the right method, which is honoring God and having a connection to something bigger than yourself. When you do that, it creates an intrinsic motivation that will be a force in itself, and you can’t measure that on a sheet of paper or statistics.” These words remind me of President Benson’s famous statement: “The Lord works from the inside out. The world works from the outside in. The world would take people out of the slums. Christ takes the slums out of people, and then they take themselves out of the slums. The world would mold men by changing their environment. Christ changes men, who then change their environment. The world would shape human behavior, but Christ can change human nature.” For the world, money is the answer to just about every problem, even football. But Sitake’s statement suggests that there are forces more powerful than money, and what the world would change from the outside the Lord would change from the inside.

            John wrote these words to the Saints of his time: “Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world. And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth forever” (1 John 2:15-17). One of the great tests of mortality is to attach ourselves to God more firmly than we attach ourselves to the world. In the same message as the quote above, President Benson related the following: “President David O. McKay tells of a singular event that happened to him. After falling asleep, he said he ‘beheld in vision something infinitely sublime.’ He saw a beautiful city, a great concourse of people dressed in white, and the Savior. ‘The city, I understood, was his. It was the City Eternal; and the people following him were to abide there in peace and eternal happiness. But who were they? As if the Savior read my thoughts, he answered by pointing to a semicircle that then appeared above them, and on which were written in gold the words: These Are They Who Have Overcome the World—Who Have Truly Been Born Again!’” Like the Savior, we must overcome the world and learn to care more about His plan for us than the world’s opinion of us. He declared, “These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world” (John 16:33). He repeated again in our dispensation, “Fear not, little children, for you are mine, and I have overcome the world, and you are of them that my Father hath given me” (Doctrine and Covenants 50:41). And He wants the same for us: “For verily I say unto you, I will that ye should overcome the world; wherefore I will have compassion upon you” (Doctrine and Covenants 64:2). In the parable of the sower, the Savior warned about what too much focus on the world will do to us: “He also that received seed among the thorns is he that heareth the word; and the care of this world, and the deceitfulness of riches, choke the word, and he becometh unfruitful” (Matthew 13:22). The Lord was perhaps referring to this when he said of James Covel: “And he received the word with gladness, but straightway Satan tempted him; and the fear of persecution and the cares of the world caused him to reject the word” (Doctrine and Covenants 40:2). We must not let the cares of the world cause us to reject His word but trust that living the gospel of Jesus Christ is more powerful than living as the world would prescribe. President Benson’s invitation over forty years ago is just as valid today for each of us: “May we be convinced that Jesus is the Christ, choose to follow Him, be changed for Him, captained by Him, consumed in Him, and born again.”