CC #12 "Do You Want to Be Happy?"

The transcription is about the importance of making and keeping covenants with the Savior. It emphasizes the idea that by yoking ourselves to Christ, we can do things we couldn't do on our own, just like two animals pulling a heavy load together. The speaker shares personal stories and quotes from Elder Choi's talk to illustrate how covenants bring happiness and lighten burdens. The message is that by staying on the covenant path and relying on the Savior, we can find rest for our souls and experience the power of synergy, where the combined effect is greater than the sum of its parts. Surely, the Lord God will do nothing, but He revealeth His secret unto His servants the prophets. How blessed we are to have a living prophet today. Brothers and sisters, the Savior declared, whether by my own voice or by the voice of my servants, it is the same. Welcome to Conference Chronicles, where we systematically take one conference talk per week from the previous conference and dissect it and learn from it. I'm your host, Taylor Lithgow, and I firmly believe that as we listen to and apply the Lord's teachings through His living prophets, we will fulfill the full measure of our creation and we will be prepared for the Lord at His second coming. So please join with me each week as we take this quest called Conference Chronicles. Hello friends, welcome, welcome this week to this episode of Conference Chronicles. I hope you had a great week. I have been loving life. I had a really nice week, so I can't wait to talk with you about this talk by Elder Yoon Won Choi of the Seventy, entitled, Do You Want to Be Happy? I love his delivery. He's very cute in some of the stories he shares as well, so please listen to it in his voice. It kind of magnifies the message for sure. And so he kind of starts the talk by asking the question, do you want to be happy? What makes you unhappy? And Russell M. Nelson said, if you want to be miserable, break the commandments and never repent. If you want joy, stay on the covenant path. Isn't it simple to be happy? Just make covenants and keep them in your lives. He then goes on to ask what is the covenant path and quotes from Elder Renlund. He says, according to Elder Dale G. Renlund, the term covenant path refers to a series of covenants whereby we come to Christ and connect to Him. Through this covenant bond, we have access to His eternal power. The path begins with faith in Jesus Christ and repentance, followed by baptism and receiving the Holy Ghost. We renew these covenants every time we partake of the sacrament. So when I think of making and keeping covenants, I always think of these verses in Matthew 11, 28 through 30. The Savior says, Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me, for I am meek and lowly in heart, and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. I have often heard the brethren invite us to replace the word yoke with the word covenant here, so let's try it again with that in mind. Verse 29. Take my covenant upon you, and learn of me, for I am meek and lowly in heart, and ye shall find rest unto your souls. So how does making and keeping covenants bring us happiness, as Elder Choi invites us to do, and how does it bring rest unto our souls, and how does it lighten our burdens? Maybe we've kind of learned about a yoke before and kind of what it's used for. I'm sure many of us do and have learned about a yoke and kind of can understand why the Savior used this as an example in terms of covenants, but I wanted to point out a few things that I learned about yokes and how they work. So a yoke is a wooden frame by which two animals, such as oxen, are coupled at the neck for the purpose of pulling a heavy load. So the two animals work side by side in order to carry a load that one cannot do alone. If the load is not heavy, a yoke is not needed. A yoke makes independence impossible. You can't go your own way. Typically a young, untrained ox is yoked with an older, trained ox. The younger learns from the older, naturally. If a trained ox can pull 5,000 pounds and an untrained ox can pull 2,000 pounds, together they can pull 10,000 pounds, much more than the sum of the two, and over time the untrained ox becomes trained and the two begin to walk step by step with each other. Then they can pull 15,000 pounds. So with this in mind, you would think naturally, you know, if the trained ox can pull 5,000 and the other ox can pull 2,000, then they would pull 7,000 together, right? Or if they're both trained, they can both pull 5,000, then together they would pull 10,000. But that's not how it works. Together they can pull more than what they could each pull individually. And how beautifully does that relate to covenants, right? Take the Savior's covenant upon us and we will be able to do so much more than we could do on our own. I also like the other parallel in that oftentimes a trained or an experienced oxen will be paired with an inexperienced one to help train it and bring it up to its level. And this is almost trivial when you really think of that in comparison with the Savior. It's not like a 5,000 pound versus a 2,000 pound difference, you know, between us and the Savior. It's like infinity on His end and very minimal on our end. But the beautiful part is, is that what the Savior and our Heavenly Father have in mind for us is to become like them so we can also have an infinite capacity. But for the meantime, what an amazing person to be yoked to, right? To be covenanted with, to make promises with, is someone who has infinite love for us and an infinite capacity to help us. It reminds me, though, of the definition of synergy. I found this online. Synergy is the interaction or cooperation of two or more organizations, substances, or other agents, to produce a combined effect greater than the sum of their separate effects. In short, it's when the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. It's when 1 plus 1 doesn't equal 2, it equals 3. Or in this case, 4 or 5 or infinity, you know, if you're yoked with Christ, if you have synergy with Christ. This kind of leads well into a story that Elder Choi tells in his talk. He says, My wife says that our marriage yokes us together, and because of that, she can do things she couldn't do before. For example, ever since she was young, she had a hard time going out in the dark, but it's not hard anymore because I go with her. She is short and cannot reach to the high shelves unless she uses a chair or ladder, but I can reach the things from high shelves for her because I'm taller than her. Making our Savior's yoke upon us is like that. As we yoke ourselves to Him, we can do things we couldn't do on our own because He can do the things we cannot do for ourselves. This does, you know, remind me of my relationship with Cassidy, my wife, as well. You know, it's amazing. She's a very capable girl. She's a very capable person, but somehow she just becomes far less capable when I'm around. There's all of a sudden chores that she could do easily on her own. It's a little bit too hard for her now. I need to take care of them, and of course I'm happy to help and make her life a little bit easier. But in all seriousness, you know, that's kind of a trivial example. We both do that for each other in so many ways. Isn't marriage a beautiful example of being equally yoked, or at least yoked in the first place? Sometimes it's not always equal. Sometimes one needs to carry a little bit more of a load than the other, and vice versa. And isn't it also amazing that both bring specific and unique strengths and weaknesses to a relationship that you can kind of help complement and complete, you know, with each other? I also wanted to read Stephen Covey's definition of synergy. He says, Synergy is what happens when one plus one equals ten, or a hundred, or even a thousand. It's the profound result when two or more respectful human beings determine to go beyond their preconceived ideas to meet a great challenge. This kind of leads into another story that Elder Choi tells in his talk. He says, When I was called to be a bishop, it was during the most difficult time in my life. I was a young father in my early thirties, but I was in trouble financially because of the family challenges. I couldn't find any solution, and I thought the challenges would never end. I was exhausted financially and emotionally. I started doubting my spiritual strength as well. It was at that difficult time that my stake president extended the calling to me. I accepted the call anyway, although it was hard. My wife also had an interview with the stake president, but she could not say yes. And she did not say no either, but she kept shedding tears. She cried for the whole week, asking Heavenly Father, why now? And do you really know each individual? She didn't get an answer, but I was sustained as bishop on the following Sunday. She did not ask Heavenly Father those questions anymore, but supported me in my calling for six years. On the Sunday when I was released, my wife heard a voice while she was receiving the sacrament. The voice whispered to her, because it was too hard for you to walk, I called him as a bishop in order to hold you and walk for you. Looking back at the past six years, she realized that all of the many challenges that seemed to be endless had now been resolved along the way. What a beautiful and intimate story that he shared with us. It kind of reminds me of my own experience I had. I think I've said in the past, during high school my parents got divorced, my mom was struggling with an addiction, and this was kind of leading up to the time of me going on a mission. My mom had recently recovered, but our family was very, very fragile at the time. My dad was trying to not let the house go into foreclosure, and my mom was really new in this recovery. I had four younger siblings between the ages of six to sixteen, and there were a few reasons in my mind why I could have or should have stayed home, right, and not gone on a mission and helped out with my family. But I went anyway, and the Lord taught me so clearly and profoundly that, as I do as will, He can take care of my family way better than I could even imagine. As Elder Choi's wife heard the voice of the Spirit whisper to her, because it was too hard for you to walk, I called him as a bishop in order to hold you and walk for you. I felt the same way, that my family was being caressed in the arms of the Lord, and He was taking such good care of them. My mom got remarried to an amazing man. My father was able to sell the home, right, and get out from under all of that financial stress and pressure, and he got into a lot healthier situation for himself. My mom went to the temple for the first time and received her temple endowment, and now years and years later, her husband has since been baptized, received the priesthood. There's been so many miracles that have occurred in my family, and I'm not saying it's because of me, right, it's not because of what I did, but I do strongly believe that when we sacrifice and do something that the Lord has asked us to do, even if we don't feel that we can, we then allow Him to take care of us in those moments. Another little example of how the Lord can help us be and amount to something far greater than we ever even thought for ourselves is I remember the day that I gave my farewell talk to leave on my mission, I had a lot of friends and family that came and attended and listened, and one of my good friends who's not a member of the church came up afterwards to me and was like, that was an amazing talk, Taylor, I'm so excited for you and the experiences you're going to have, and we were chatting, and the full-time missionaries were there. I kid you not, I'm not just saying this, I had never seen full-time missionaries in my ward in my whole life until this day, it was the first time I had ever seen elders, I'm not joking, but they came up, and I was like, hey, it's the missionaries, hey guys, and they're like, hey, you know, great talk, you know, I hope you have a great time on your mission, do you have any friends that we could teach? And I just so happened to be standing next to my friend who was not a member, but I was filled with fear. It was the first time that I had like formally shared the gospel with a non-member, you know, I hate to admit that, you know, here I am 19 years old, and I had never really formally shared the gospel, I mean, I think that I had probably by default, you know, shared my testimony in a simple way, maybe through my actions or my words, but it wasn't like ever, hey, do you want to meet with the missionaries, or, you know, I bear my testimony about this, you know, and so I got filled with fear, I didn't know what to do, but I just kind of like turned to my friend, and I was like, well, you can talk to him, you know, and it felt so awkward to me, and it was kind of a wake-up call thinking, man, how am I going to do this full-time, if I'm having a hard time doing it right now? Fast forward towards the end of my mission, this was like within the last six months of my mission, words cannot describe the amount of spiritual and profound experiences I'd had between that day of my farewell and now, where I have about six months left of my mission, but this is just a small little story that kind of highlights, you know, maybe where I'm going with this. It was sacrament meeting in one of the wards that I was serving in, and somebody got up to bear their testimony, it was fast and testimony meeting, and this person essentially was just bearing false witness, like he was just, he was claiming to be a prophet, he was saying so many things that were untrue and not doctrinally sound, he was just kind of a crazy guy, he wasn't even really a member of our ward, he just kind of got up and started saying a bunch of things over the pulpit, and it was really awkward, and I remember I made eye contact with the first counselor in the bishopric, and he kind of motioned for me to come up and sit next to him on the stand, so I was in the congregation, I get up, I go and sit next to him on the stand, when I sit down, he just leans over to me and says, fix it, and then I realized what he was asking me to do, he wanted me, after this guy sat down, to get up and correct what was shared, he wanted me to fix it, he wanted me to bring the spirit back into the room. Now this is in Mesa, Arizona, the church is very strong in Mesa, the leadership is very strong, the wards are very big, and so the fact that the bishopric of the ward trusted me implicitly to fix it, as he said, to teach correct doctrine and principles, and bring the spirit back into the room, filled me with a feeling of confidence that the Lord trusted me, and it also helped me realize that I had grown so much, that my capacity had been enlarged, I was not really afraid of much of anything at that point, I felt that the Lord could ask me to do almost anything, and I would be up for the task and up for the challenge, so with that being said, again, I have no desire to point any attention towards me or my own abilities, because it honestly has nothing to do with my own abilities, I can fully recognize my lack of ability, but the point is, is that because I had been faithful in staying on the covenant path, keeping my covenants, and allowing the Lord to guide me, He had made so much of me, and expanded my capacity and my abilities. So with all that being said, let's get back to the question, do you want to be happy? And President Nelson's quote, if you want to be miserable, break the commandments and never repent, if you want joy, stay on the covenant path. So why is this the case, why is staying on the covenant path the true way to bring happiness and lasting joy and fulfillment in our lives, why is this the case? And I think the answer largely comes back to what I was just explaining, when you really think about it, happiness comes from progression, when we're progressing, when we're improving, when our soul is being enlarged and being stretched, that is when we feel fulfilled, and that's when we feel truly happy, I mean ultimately that's what eternal life is, right, it's eternal increase, it's eternal joy and eternal progression, and so when we start doing things that will stymie or stop our progression, we are not happy, of course we aren't, and as we make and keep covenants with the Savior, He loves us so much that He won't allow us to stay where we are now, right, He requires us to get better and progress, and so I think that is a large reason why being on the covenant path is the true way to lasting happiness, that principle applies to any area of our lives, when it comes to work or athletics or relationships with our spouses or children or parents or siblings, any area of our life that we think of, aren't we really happy when we're progressing, when things are moving forward, and being on the covenant path allows us to do that. I would like to read two excerpts of scripture, one ancient and one modern. In Mosiah 2 41 it says, and moreover I would desire that you should consider on the blessed and happy state of those that keep the commandments of God, for behold they are blessed in all things both temporal and spiritual, and if they hold out faithful to the end, they are received into heaven, that thereby they may dwell with God in a state of never-ending happiness. And then President Monson says, the greatest lesson we can learn in mortality, okay let me read that again, the greatest lesson we can learn in mortality is that when God speaks and we obey, we will always be right. When we keep His commandments our lives will be happier, more fulfilling, and less complicated. Our challenges and problems will be easier to bear, and we will receive God's promised blessings. So my testimony is that if we want to be happy, we ought to keep the commandments of God, we ought to make covenants with our Heavenly Father and keep them. That is the way that brings lasting happiness and eternal life. And I testify of these things in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen. Thank you for joining with me again. I love doing these each week and I hope you all love listening and consuming the content. Feel free to provide any feedback you'd like through the podcasting apps or social media platforms. Please share these episodes if you can, and I look forward to talking with you next week. The talk for next week is God Knows and Loves You by Elder Alan T. Phillips of the Seventy. Okay, we'll see you then.