This year, I missed the October 2008 General Conference Priesthood session because I was on vacation in San Luis Obispo, CA and had trouble finding a Stake Center. I knew I should have waved down the missionaries on the bikes one of the many times I saw them but I was concentrating on driving in unfamiliar territory.
I had the Saturday and Sunday sessions Tivo’d while I was away at least. I’m not sure why the General Conference Priesthood session is not available in video on the lds.org General Conference Gospel Library, but I assume it is for a good reason.
I finally got to sit down with my November 2008 Ensign magazine and I went straight to the Priesthood Session talks. The first one was by Elder Richard G. Scott Of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.
His talk was entitled “Honor the Priesthood and Use It Well.” I’ve heard the saying “Honor the Priesthood” before and this pertains to setting standards for ones self and making sure that we, as Priesthood Holders, are worthy to exercise our privileged authority at any given moment.
I love how he implores us to give ourselves a personal worthiness interview and ask ourselves the following questions:
- Are your private, personal thoughts conducive to the guidance of the Holy Spirit, or would they benefit from a thorough housecleaning?
- Do you nourish your mind with elevating material, or have you succumbed to the enticement of pornographic literature or Web sites?
- Do you scrupulously avoid the use of stimulants and substances that conflict with the intent of the Word of Wisdom, or have you made some personally rationalized exceptions?
- Are you most careful to control what enters your mind through your eyes and ears to ensure that it is wholesome and elevating?
- If you are divorced, do you provide for the real financial need of the children you have fathered, not just the minimum legal requirement?
- If you are married, are you faithful to your wife mentally as well as physically?
- Are you loyal to your marriage covenants by never engaging in conversation with another woman that you wouldn’t want your wife to overhear?
- Are you kind and supportive of your own wife and children?
- Do you assist your wife by doing some of the household chores?
- Do you lead out in family activities such as scripture study, family prayer, and family home evening, or does your wife fill in the gap your lack of attention leaves in the home?
- Do you tell her you love her?
Now hopefully we can all answer yes to these questions. But before we can do so, we should take these questions and turn them into directives for our lives. Just as in the Boy Scout’s Slogan “Do a good turn daily,” we should turn these questions into our slogan or motto for our daily lives.
I feel that if we ask these questions to ourselves every night and strive from the moment we wake up every morning to answer “yes” to these questions we will become better in our role and responsibility to serving the families that we love so dearly.
Elder Scott’s talk speaks more about treating the daughters (mothers, sisters and daughters) of Heavenly Father with love and kindness. And that:
God will hold us accountable for how we treat His precious daughters.
I’d like to take this a step further and apply this to our Fathers, brothers and sons as well. We are charged by Heavenly Father to take care of one another. We must gauge ourselves with these personal worthiness interview questions often and keep in mind that we are all children of Heavenly Father. Doing so will bring us closer to emulating the perfect role model, Jesus Christ.
Click here to read Elder Richard G. Scott’s Talk in the November 2008 Ensign online.