Everything We Need | Michael T. Ringwood

Описание: Heavenly Father has given us gifts to help us through our time on earth. From the Atonement to living prophets, we truly have been given everything we need.

This speech was given on January 14, 2020.

Read the speech here:
https://speeches.byu.edu/talks/michae...

Learn more about Michael T. Ringwood here:
https://speeches.byu.edu/speakers/mic...

Subscribe to BYU Speeches for the latest videos:
   / @byuspeeches  

Read and listen to more BYU Speeches here:
https://speeches.byu.edu/

Follow BYU Speeches:
Facebook:   / byuspeeches  
Twitter:   / byuspeeches  
Instagram:   / byuspeeches  
Pinterest:   / byuspeeches  

© Brigham Young University. All rights reserved.

I am honored to be with you today. Thank you for being here with us this morning. I entered BYU as a freshman in the fall of 1976. I remember vividly the first devotional of that semester, held on September 7, 1976. I cannot remember if I skipped my class before the devotional that morning, but I did arrive very early to make sure I had a good seat. The speaker was the prophet, President Spencer W. Kimball. I was excited to hear from him. I was beginning my first year at BYU, with a mission coming up for me sometime in 1977. I was anxious for the message that would bless me personally. I am positive that I prayed that his talk would touch me and provide needed guidance.

The university president was President Dallin H. Oaks. After he introduced the student body to President Kimball, he lowered the two microphones that were on the pulpit at that time, and President Kimball stood where—or very close to where—I am standing this morning. He had an additional microphone attached to his glasses because of the very soft voice he had after surgery on his vocal cords. President Kimball began speaking about marriage and divorce—not the topic I was expecting. His message was a landmark message at the time and was later published as a pamphlet for use throughout the Church.1 I still have my copy of that talk. I must admit, ­however, that, at the time, it was not the talk I wanted to hear. Marriage seemed so far into the future for me—and it was, by the way.

Looking back, I wish I had processed and reacted differently than I did. I should have been willing to receive whatever the prophet of God felt directed to teach me and applied that teaching in my life. This was the prophet of God, after all, and he was speaking to the world through the audience of BYU students.

Now, obviously, I am not the prophet, and I am not giving a message to the world. I am only speaking to you. Yet I have prayed and fasted to know what Heavenly Father would have you hear today. And because some of you may feel like I did back in 1976 at my first devotional, I pray for the Holy Ghost this morning to tailor this message to you personally, to meet your needs now and in the future.

What Would You Ask of the Prophet?
I would like to begin with a question I think you will find interesting: If President Russell M. Nelson was standing here this morning, and if he asked each of you what he could do for you, how would you respond? Would you have a list of favors? Would you ask him to put in a good word for you with some of your professors? Do you have questions that you would want him to answer? Or maybe you would just want a selfie with him. How would you respond?

In the Old Testament, a prophet of God asked that same question of a woman whose name we are not told. As the prophet Elisha went about fulfilling his prophetic duties, he often passed through a town called Shunem. Whenever Elisha passed by, this woman constrained him to stop and eat bread. After one of Elisha’s visits, the woman turned to her husband and said:

I perceive that this is an holy man of God, which ­passeth by us continually.

Let us make a little chamber, I pray thee, on the wall; and let us set for him there a bed, and a table, and a stool, and a candlestick: and it shall be, when he cometh to us, that he shall turn in thither.2

Now, just as this woman had envisioned, the next time Elisha came, he stayed in the room. The account reads: “And it fell on a day, that he came thither, and he turned into the chamber, and lay there.”3

The scriptures do not tell us how the woman felt as the prophet went into the little room that she had prepared just for him. But the scriptures do tell us how Elisha felt. He asked his servant to give the woman a message directly from him. It was, in effect, “What can I do for you?” Or, to be scripturally precise, “Thou hast been careful for us with all this care; what is to be done for thee?”4