02/14/2025
From "Lasting Discipleship"
Steven J. Lund
October 2022 General Conference
The stalwart youth of Zion are voyaging through stunning times. Finding joy in this world of prophesied disruption without becoming part of that world, with its blind spot toward holiness, is their particular charge.
About a hundred years ago, G. K. Chesterton spoke almost as though he saw this quest as being home centered and Church supported when he said, “We have to feel the universe at once as an ogre’s castle, to be stormed, and yet as our own cottage, to which we can return at evening” (Orthodoxy [1909], 130).
Thankfully, they do not have to go out into battle alone. They have each other. And they have you. And they follow a living prophet, President Russell M. Nelson, who leads with the knowing optimism of a seer in proclaiming that the great endeavor of these times—the gathering of Israel—will be both grand and majestic (see “Hope of Israel” [worldwide youth devotional, June 3, 2018], HopeofIsrael.ChurchofJesusChrist.org).
This summer, my wife, Kalleen, and I were changing planes in Amsterdam where, many years earlier, I was a new missionary. After I had spent months struggling to learn Dutch, our KLM flight was landing, and the captain made an incoherent announcement over the PA system. After a moment of silence, my companion mumbled, “I think that was Dutch.” We glanced up, reading each other’s thoughts: All was lost. But all was not lost.
As I marveled over the leaps of faith we had then taken as we walked through this airport on our way to the miracles that would rain down upon us as missionaries, I was abruptly brought back to the present by a living, breathing missionary who was boarding a plane home.
He introduced himself and asked, “President Lund, what do I do now? What do I do to remain strong?” Well, this is the same question that is on the minds of our youth when they leave FSY conferences, youth camps, and temple trips and anytime they feel the powers of heaven: “How can loving God turn into lasting discipleship?”
I felt an upwelling of love for this clear-eyed missionary serving the last hours of his mission, and in that momentary stillness of the Spirit, I heard my voice crack as I said simply, “You don’t have to wear the badge to bear His name.”
I wanted to put my hands on his shoulders and say, “Here’s what you do. You go home, and you just be this. You are so good you almost glow in the dark. Your mission discipline and sacrifices have made you a magnificent son of God. Keep doing at home what has worked so powerfully for you here. You have learned to pray and to whom you pray and the language of prayer. You have studied His words and come to love the Savior by trying to be like Him. You have loved Heavenly Father like He loved His Father, served others like He served others, and lived the commandments like He lived them—and when you didn’t, you have repented. 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.”
I know that through trusting in the Lord Jesus Christ and His covenant path, we can find spiritual confidence and peace as we nurture holy habits and righteous routines that can sustain and fuel the fires of our faith. May we each move ever closer to those warming fires and, come what may, remain.
