CC #16 (Humble to Accept & Follow)

The transcription is about the importance of humility and the dangers of pride. The speaker discusses the definition of humility and how it is often misunderstood in the world. They share personal experiences and insights from scripture and church teachings about the benefits of humility and the negative consequences of pride. Overall, the message emphasizes the need to be humble and dependent on the Lord for true strength and happiness. 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 mine 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. Hey friends, welcome on in to this week's episode of Conference Chronicles. I'm excited to cover this topic. I had a lot of fun studying this throughout the week. It's entitled Humble to Accept and Follow by Elder Joni L. Koch of the Seventy. Just a reminder to also tune in to the Wednesday episodes discussed with friends and any and all scriptures or conference talks or websites that I reference to throughout the episodes, I link them in the episode notes on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. So if you ever wanted to read from the talks that I'm referencing to, just go click on the link down there. So as for this week's talk, I wanted to give a quick overview of what I'll cover in this. So I just wanted to talk first about humility, discuss what it is and what it isn't, and that will include kind of a discussion on pride as well. And then I just wanted to tell a couple of stories that I think might illustrate these points. So as Elder Koch opens his address, he quotes from Alma chapter 5 and it says, Could you say, if you are called to die at this time within yourselves, that ye have been sufficiently humble? He points out that that question implies that humility is a mandatory requirement for us to be ready to return to the presence of God. And I think that would make a lot of sense, that humility is a mandatory requirement for us to be ready. So it kind of begs the question, what is humility? I think that humility is probably a misunderstood virtue in the world today. We as church members use it in our vernacular a lot, but I don't hear it being used or talked about a lot in the world. On the news, in the media, you don't really hear a lot of discussions about humility. In fact, you might hear the opposite. And so if you were to survey a list of 100 people, like they say on Family Feud, for them to give their definition of humility, we might get a whole host of different types of responses, and my guess would be they might not be completely accurate. Oftentimes, I think people think humility means that you're weak, or you're passive, or you're a pushover. I looked up a definition online, and the first definition that it gives says, humility, a modest or low view of one's own importance. I immediately thought, yeah, that confirms to me that the world has an improper view of humility. Saying a low view of one's own importance, of course that's not true. Our importance is of eternal worth, and our value is immeasurable to God. After discussing this with Cassidy, she pointed out that she can kind of see the point, though, that if we're measuring our importance the way the world measures it, and we are elevating ourselves above someone else, thinking that we are more important than them, then she can see how this definition is accurate, and I see that point. I guess I hadn't thought about it in that way, and so this definition isn't all wrong, but generally speaking, I do think that humility is misunderstood. So with that being said, what does it really mean to be humble? I had a conversation with my mission president that, quite frankly, changed my mission and my life. We were having a conversation in his office, and I asked him, President Jenkins, do you have any feedback for me? What do you think I can improve on? And he said, Elder Lithgow, the apostles and prophets are among the most humble men on the earth, yet they are also the happiest people on the earth, and the most confident. So humility then breeds happiness, and it breeds confidence. And I pondered on that a lot, and recognized that he was teaching me that I ought to be more humble, or more happy, or more confident, or maybe a little bit of all of them, because they all feed into each other. In fact, they're all synonyms. And that changed my perspective, and so every morning, as a missionary, I would pray that Heavenly Father helped me to be humble, and happy, and confident. And in fact, I still pray for that often today. In fact, I would say that almost once a day, I'll pray to be humble, happy, and confident. In the gospel library, under topics and questions, it gives some insight on humility. It says, to be humble is to recognize gratefully our dependence on the Lord, to understand that we have constant need for His support. Humility is an acknowledgment that our talents and abilities are gifts from God. It is not a sign of weakness, timidity, or fear. It is an indication that we know where our true strength lies. We can be both humble and fearless. We can be both humble and courageous. Jesus Christ is our greatest example of humility. During His mortal ministry, He always acknowledged that His strength came because of His dependence on His Father. He said, I can of my own self do nothing. I seek not my own will, but the will of the Father which hath sent me. And then, in Preach My Gospel, it gives additional insights. It says, He helps those who are humble. Humility is a sign of spiritual strength, not of weakness. Humility is a vital catalyst for spiritual growth. Okay, I wanted to pause and point out some of the fruits of humility that were mentioned in the gospel library under topics and questions and from Preach My Gospel. And I wanted each of us to ponder and do a little mental inventory on how we might be doing on each of these things. If we are being humble, we recognize our dependence on the Lord. We acknowledge our talents and abilities are gifts from Him. Humility is not a sign of weakness, timidity, or fear. Humility causes us to acknowledge where our true strength comes from. It engenders a willingness to submit. It helps us be teachable, grateful. Humility is a sign of spiritual strength, and it is a catalyst for spiritual growth. As Preach My Gospel continues, it points out the antithesis of humility. It says, The opposite of humility is pride. To be prideful means to put greater trust in oneself than in God. It also means to put the things of the world above the things of God. Pride is competitive. Those who are prideful seek to have more and presume they are better than others. Pride is a great stumbling block. When seeking to understand a word or the meaning of a word, I have found that it's really helpful for me to look up synonyms and antonyms for that word and then look up their associated definitions. It just helps deepen my understanding of that word. So, as is pointed out here in Preach My Gospel, the greatest antonym of humility is pride. I wanted to talk about pride for a little bit because, like I said, I think if we understand what humility is not, it will help us understand humility better. There is no better talk on this earth to help us understand pride than the one given by Ezra Taft Benson entitled Beware of Pride, and I would recommend that everyone reads it. I read it, and I grabbed a few pieces as I read. I'm going to start reading from these, and at any point if you wanted to pause and ponder one of them deeper, please do, but I'll get started. Elder Benson said, All of these are elements of the sin, but the heart, or core, is still missing. The central feature of pride is enmity, enmity towards God and enmity towards our fellow men. Enmity means hatred toward, hostility to, or a state of opposition. It is the power by which Satan wishes to reign over us. Pride is essentially competitive in nature. We pit our will against God's. When we direct our pride towards God, it is in the spirit of my will and not thine be done. Our enmity towards God takes on many labels, such as rebellion, hard-heartedness, stiff-neckedness, unrepentant, puffed up, easily offended, and sign-seekers. The proud wish God would agree with them. They aren't interested in changing their opinions to agree with God's. Another major portion of this very prevalent sin of pride is enmity towards our fellow men. We are tempted daily to elevate ourselves above others and diminish them. The proud make every man their adversary by pitting their intellects, opinions, works, wealth, talents, or any other worldly measuring device against others. In the words of C.S. Lewis, Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man. It is the comparison that makes you proud, the pleasure of being above the rest. He later goes on to say, The proud stand more in fear of men's judgment than God's judgment. What will men think of me weighs heavier than what will God think of me. When pride has hold of our hearts, we lose our independence of the world and deliver our freedoms to the bondage of men's judgment. I like that. When pride has a hold of our hearts, we lose our independence and we deliver our freedom into the bondage of men's judgment. We're totally dependent on what others think of us. He says, Pride is a sin that can readily be seen in others, but is rarely admitted in ourselves. Most of us consider pride to be a sin of those on the top end, such as the rich and the learned, looking down at the rest of us. There is, however, a far more common ailment among us, and that is the pride from the bottom looking up. It is manifest in so many ways, such as fault-finding, gossiping, backbiting, murmuring, living beyond our means, envying, coveting, withholding gratitude and praise that might lift another, and being unforgiving and jealous. How often do we withhold praise that might lift another because we're so worried that it might diminish the way we are viewed? Elder Benson then says, Disobedience is essentially a prideful power struggle against someone in authority over us. A proud person hates the fact that someone is above him. He thinks this lowers his position. Selfishness is one of the most common faces of pride. How everything affects me is the center of all that matters. Self-conceit, self-pity, worldly self-fulfillment, self-gratification, and self-seeking. Another face of pride is contention. Arguments, fights, unrighteous dominion, spouse abuse, riots, and disturbances all fall into this category of pride. The scriptures testify that the proud are easily offended and hold grudges. They withhold forgiveness to keep another in their debt and to justify their injured feelings. The proud do not receive counsel or correction easily. Defensiveness is used by them to justify and rationalize their frailties and failures. The proud depend upon the world to tell them whether they have value or not. Their self-esteem is determined by where they are judged to be on the ladders of worldly success. They feel worthwhile as individuals if the numbers beneath them in achievement, talent, beauty, or intellect are large enough. Pride is ugly. It says, if you succeed, I am a failure. I'm going to pause there. Elder Benson says a lot more about pride. And, again, I invite you all to go read it. But I wanted to pause and let some of those words sink in. Think about them for a minute. How do we recognize these things in ourselves? I did want to point out that the language that is used here seems kind of absolute in some ways. You know, it will say, the proud do this, or a prideful person will do this. And I know that Elder Benson wasn't saying this, but we might be tempted to think it's black and white. I'm either prideful or I'm humble, which is the furthest thing from the truth. Elder Benson even says that it is the universal sin. All of us are guilty of it. All of us have good and evil in us. All of us have moments of pride that we are not pleased about. And all of us probably have moments where we've demonstrated humility before God and our fellow men. But with that being said, let's do a quick recap on the fruits of pride. We did that with the humility portion. We looked at the fruits of humility after we studied those definitions from Preach My Gospel and the topics and questions portion. So after reading some of these excerpts from Elder Benson, let's kind of recap some of the fruits of pride. Here's what I wrote down. Enmity, self-centeredness, conceit, boastfulness, arrogance, haughtiness, rebellion, hard-heartedness, unrepentant, easily offended, being competitive, a.k.a. needing more than the next man to feel satisfied, fearing man more than fearing God, fault-finding, gossiping, backbiting, murmuring, living beyond our means, envying, coveting, withholding gratitude, withholding praise that might lift another, being unforgiving and jealous, being disobedient, being contentious, and not receiving counsel well. I can probably think of moments in my life where I have demonstrated all of these fruits of pride. Some of them I suffer from more frequently than others. And it's a constant journey and battle to resist the temptation to be like this. I did want to share a couple of stories. One from Elder Hubie Brown and then a few from myself and my own personal life that have altered my course and my trajectory. Here's the first story by Elder Hubie Brown. This talk that he gave is titled, God is the Gardener. So Elder Brown tells a story of how he purchased a farm in Canada. He said that, I went out one morning and found a current bush that was at least six feet high. There was no sign of blossom or fruit. I had some experience in pruning trees before we left Salt Lake to go to Canada as my father had a fruit farm. So I got my pruning shears and went to work on that current bush. And I clipped it and cut it and cut it down until there was nothing left but a little clump of stumps. As I looked at them, I yielded to an impulse, which I often have, to talk with inanimate things and to have them talk with me. It's a ridiculous habit. It's one I can't overcome. As I looked at this little clump of stumps, there seemed to be a tear on each one. And I said, What's the matter, current bush? What are you crying about? And I thought I heard that current bush speak. It seemed to say, How could you do this to me? I was making such wonderful growth. I was almost as large as the fruit tree and the shade tree. And now you have cut me down. And all in the garden will look upon me with contempt and pity. How could you do it? I thought you were the gardener here. I thought I heard that from the current bush. I thought it so much that I answered it. I said, Look, little current bush, I am the gardener here. And I know what I want you to be. If I let you go the way you want to go, you will never amount to anything. But someday, when you are laden with fruit, you're going to think back and say, Thank you, Mr. Gardner, for cutting me down, for loving me enough to hurt me. He goes on to say that ten years had passed by since this experience with his current bush, and he was in Europe as a field officer in the Canadian Army, and there was only one man between him and the rank of general, which he had cherished in his heart for many years. Then the current general became a casualty. He died. And the day after, he received a telegram from London from General Turner, who was in charge of all Canadian officers. The telegram told him to be in his office the next morning at ten o'clock. So Elder Brown was super excited. He couldn't wait to go in the next morning and find out that his long-desired dream to be a general would be fulfilled. So he went in and sat down at his desk, and this is what General Turner said. Brown, you are entitled to this promotion, but I cannot make it. You have qualified and passed the regulations. You have had the experience, and you are entitled to it in every way, but I cannot make this appointment. Then Elder Brown says, just then he went into the other room to answer a phone call, and I did what most every officer and man in the Army would do under those circumstances. I looked over his desk to see what my personal history sheet showed, and I saw written on the bottom of that history sheet in large capital letters, quote, this man is a Mormon. He went on to say that General Turner came back into his office and dismissed him, and so Elder Brown left, and he explains, bitterness rose in my heart until I arrived finally in my tent, and I rather vigorously threw my cap on the cot. I clenched my fist, and I shook it at heaven, and I said, how could you do this to me, God? I've done everything I knew how to do to uphold the standards of the church. I was making such wonderful growth, and now you've cut me down. How could you do it? And then I heard a voice. It sounded like my own voice, and the voice said, I'm the gardener here. I know what I want you to be. If I let you go the way you want to go, you will never amount to anything, and someday when you are ripened in life, we're going to shout back across time and say, thank you, Mr. Gardner, for cutting me down, for loving me enough to hurt me. This story is so moving to me for some reason. I just feel like it illustrates that point of accepting God's will and timing and accepting His loving corrections and course corrections along the way so well. The Lord did not want Hugh B. Brown to be a general in the army. He wanted him to be an apostle of the Lord Jesus Christ, and in that moment, Elder Brown couldn't think of anything good that could possibly come from him not getting that promotion because he was, as his sheet said, a Mormon. But the Lord knew better. He knew what He wanted him to become, and He loved him enough to hurt him in that moment. It made me think of a few examples in my own life that might not be quite so dramatic as this, but I remember when I received my patriarchal blessing when I was 14 years old. This goes to show my immaturity and naivety, but as I was preparing to receive my patriarchal blessing, I was hoping so bad that the patriarch would at some point tell me that I was going to go to the NBA, I was going to be a professional basketball player. I just had my fingers crossed. My heart was set on that. And go figure, you guys. He never said that in my patriarchal blessing. What the heck? So in that moment, and after I received the blessing, I had to humble myself a bit as a 14-year-old boy and try to receive the blessing and understand what the Lord wanted me to understand from it. Fast forward three or four years later. I'm in my senior year in high school, and I'm actually having a good season playing on the high school team. Throughout the first five or six games of the season, I was leading the state of Utah in three pointers made per game, and I was feeling pretty good about myself, thinking, Hey, you know what? I might get some interest in some colleges around the area. Maybe some of the smaller ones might be interested. And it was within the next game or two, I suffered a really bad ankle injury that pretty much kept me out for the rest of the season. I ended up coming back towards the end of the season before the playoffs, but it wasn't quite the same. My ankle was, I just felt kind of gun shy, and I didn't produce the way that I was at the beginning of the season. I do want to point out that my situation is definitely a lot different than Elder Brown's situation. As he pointed out, he was fully entitled to the promotion of general. He passed every qualification. He had the experience. He was entitled to it in every way. For me, I didn't quite measure up as much, you know, when it came to my basketball career, quote, unquote. But to me at the time as a teenager, it was so important to me. It almost felt like everything to me was succeeding in sports and trying to go somewhere with it. And so suffering this terrible injury was heartbreaking for me. But I think what it did do for me is help me have a bit of an eternal perspective and help me course correct a little bit. You know, any hopes that I had of possibly playing college basketball went away a little bit, but it shifted my focus more on preparing to serve a mission. And now looking back years later, I think it could perhaps be the Lord's way of saying, look, I don't want you to be a basketball player. Also, if I wanted you to be a basketball player, I might have made you like a foot taller, by the way, but that's neither here nor there. Him saying, look, I don't want you to be a basketball player. I want you to be a missionary. I want you to bring my words to my children. So with that in mind, fast-forwarding a little bit on my mission, I have two stories and examples that I wanted to share. I had been on my mission for maybe four or five months, and I was giving a talk in sacrament meeting. My companion and I were both giving talks, and we delivered our messages, and I felt really good about the message. And as I was coming down from the stand, we went to greet this lady that came up to shake our hands, and she said to my companion, Elder Vete, she said, Elder Vete, that was such a beautiful talk. It touched me. I loved your words. Thank you so much for delivering that. And then she turned to me, and she said, Elder Lithgow, you said, um, a lot. And in that moment, my heart sunk. I honestly felt like I got punched in the stomach. I felt deflated and sad, and I probably felt that way for 30 minutes or so. And then I forced myself to pray about it and think about it and humble myself and realized, hey, if this lady went out of her way to tell me that I said, um, a lot, I must have really said, um, a lot. And I ought to think about this and change this. If I want to be good at public speaking, if I want to be a good communicator with humans in general, I need to cut, um, out of my vernacular. And I think I did a decent job of that throughout my mission, being aware of that. Every time I said, um, I thought, hey, stop saying that. And I got better and better and better at it. The other experience I wanted to share was I had been on my mission for about six or seven months at this point, and I was on exchanges with another missionary that wasn't my normal companion. It was just for the day. We swapped companions for the day, and I was out with this elder. Towards the end of the day, he said to me, you know, Elder Lithgow, you really need to smile more. And when he said that to me, I kind of, like, scoffed a little bit and thought, I'm not going to just change who I am, okay? I'm not just going to force some cheesy smile. People will be able to see that. They'll be able to recognize if I'm truly smiling or not or if I'm just faking it. So thanks for that feedback, Elder, but no thanks. I was prideful, right? I definitely took a prideful approach and did not accept his feedback extremely well. Now fast forward maybe a month later, I was talking with my missionary mom, the mission president's wife, Sister Ellsworth, and she was a powerhouse, quite frankly. We all looked forward to her talks so much when she would speak to the mission. But she said to me, hey, Elder Lithgow, I think you should work on smiling more. It struck me. It penetrated me. I thought, oh my goodness, this is the second person now telling me this. The scriptures say in the mouth of two or three witnesses, you know, and so I thought there might be some truth behind this. But how do I do it? Again, I don't want to be this cheese ball faking a smile. How do I do it? So I prayed about it. And the answer that I received is that when I was on my own in my apartment with my companion, I was going to fake a smile. I was just going to force myself to do a cheesy grin. So when we were driving in the car together, I just had this big cheesy grin on my face. And if I did it long enough, it kind of made me laugh, right? And then I started smiling for real. And I prayed about it every day. Help me to smile more. And I would force myself to smile. And I did this day after day. And now fast forward like a year later, okay? So I'm probably 18, 19 months into my mission at this point. And we're sitting down teaching a family. And the mom of the family said to me, Elder Lithgow, I love being around you because you're always so happy. You're always smiling. And it makes me happy. And it makes me want to smile more. And when she said that, I was overcome with the spirit washing over me, almost whispering to me, I'm glad you listened to the feedback. And I'm glad you did something with it. And it was a testimony builder to me that we can change. Something that we think might not be natural or we might not be good at can become a strength to us if we put in some effort. So in closing, I wanted to ask the question, how do we diminish pride? And how do we strengthen our humility? In Elder Benson's talk, Beware of Pride, he says this, the antidote for pride is humility, meekness, submissiveness. It is the broken heart and a contrite spirit. We can choose to humble ourselves by conquering enmity towards our brothers and sisters, esteeming them as ourselves. And lifting them as high as we are. We can choose to humble ourselves by receiving counsel and chastisement. Kind of like my stories illustrated. He says we can choose to humble ourselves by forgiving those who have offended us. We can choose to humble ourselves by rendering selfless service. We can choose to humble ourselves by going on missions and preaching the word that can humble others. We can choose to humble ourselves by getting to the temple more frequently. We can choose to humble ourselves by confessing and forsaking our sins and being born of God. We can choose to humble ourselves by loving God, submitting our will to His and putting Him first in our lives. Let us choose to humble ourselves. We can do it. I know we can. So in recap, as we receive counsel and chastisement, humbly, as we choose to forgive others, as we give selfless service, as we go on missions and share the gospel, as we serve in the temple more frequently, as we repent and forsake our sins, all of these things will invite a spirit of humility into our minds and into our hearts. And as Elder Benson said, let us choose to be humble. We can do it. I know we can. I'd like to close with a promise and a testimony. In Ether, chapter 12, verse 27, the classic verse, it reads, And if men come unto Me, I will show unto them their weakness. I give unto men weakness that they may be humble, and My grace is sufficient for all men that humble themselves before Me. For if they humble themselves before Me and have faith in Me, then will I make weak things become strong unto them. And then the lyrics from this beautiful hymn, Be Thou Humble. For me, when I sing hymns, by the way, I think of them as a promise. When I sing them out loud, I think, This is my praise and my profession of commitment to You, Lord. And oftentimes the hymn will also give promise blessings back. So let me read these lyrics from Be Thou Humble. It says, Be thou humble in thy weakness, and the Lord thy God shall lead thee, shall lead thee by the hand, and give thee answer to thy prayers. Be thou humble in thy pleading, and the Lord thy God shall bless thee, shall bless thee with a sweet and calm assurance that He cares. Be thou humble in thy calling, and the Lord thy God shall teach thee to serve His children gladly with a pure and gentle love. Be thou humble in thy longing, and the Lord thy God shall take thee, shall take thee home at last to ever dwell with Him above. I testify that these promises from the Lord are sure as we choose to humbly submit our will to His. And I close that in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen. Thank you everyone for tuning in. I hope you enjoyed this episode. I sure did. I felt the Spirit. I learned a lot. Just a reminder to tune in to the Wednesday episodes Discuss with Friends, and also to check out the links that are listed below on your podcasting platform. Next week's talk is entitled Seeing God's Family Through the Overview Lens by Sister Tamara W. Runia. She's the first counselor in the Young Women's General Presidency. I look forward to next week. See you guys then.