Thank you so much for allowing me to be here.

Those of you who are used to hearing me speak probably wonder how is he going to get anything done in 40 minutes?

I do hope that we can squeeze in as much as we possibly can. And more than anything, I just want to begin by thanking you for being here, not just here in this room, but here on this earth,

having been sent to the kingdom for such a time as this.

I am grateful for chaplains. My father was in the Marine Corps.

I was born at Camp Pendleton. My uncle was a Marine.

Both of my grandfathers were in World War II.

One in the infantry in the Philippines and another flying B-25s.

My wife is an addiction recovery counselor and my son on his service mission is working among populations that need the help of chaplains. And to be perfectly honest, it was a few conferences ago, but right at the end of General Conference, I turned to my wife and I said to her what seemed out of the blue for her:

“The church needs more chaplains.” And I felt that deeply. And so to be here with you today is in some ways an answer to my prayers.

And we need more of you. And I mean chaplains of every kind of form.

As I think of you, the statement from Captain Moroni to Pahoran comes to mind that we know that there are more numerous than that which they have sent.

We know there are more people out there. I feel it keenly because of the work that I do.

I have a strange specialization in terms of anti-religion, and so I study anti-Mormonism and anti-Catholicism and anti-Judaism and anti-Shakerism and anti- Methodism and all the wonderfully uplifting things people say to shred one another's faith.

And as a result, I spend an amazing amount of time each week working with people around the world that are in faith crisis, and

there’s just not enough hours in the day to meet the need.

I think I have—I think I just got under 200 on the number of emails that are—I’m still waiting to have time to respond to.

Of people out there that need our help.

And so to be able to meet a roomful of people,

you really are an answer to my prayers and an answer to so many others’ prayers as well. Whether that happens in the battlefield, in the military, whether that happens in prisons or in hospitals, hospice care, addiction recovery centers, education or civic organizations, wherever you are serving,

I honor you. And I feel less alone. Being in your presence.

One of my favorite writers on religion is Huston Smith, and in a book that I would recommend to all of you, Why Religion Matters,

he said, Wherever people live, whenever they live,

they find themselves faced with three inescapable problems: how to win food and shelter from their natural environment, the problem nature poses; how to get along with one another,

the social problem; and how to relate themselves to the total scheme of things, the religious problem.

If this third issue seems less important than the other two,

we should remind ourselves that religious artifacts are the oldest that archeologists have discovered.

To think of the work that you do on a daily basis in so many ways, you are there to meet the needs of all three problems,

but to do so from the perspective of the third.

But that can be difficult, especially in today’s environment.

My wife, as I said, is an addiction recovery counselor, and as she works with people, she almost invariably brings them back to this concept that the problems that they are dealing with are bio-psycho-social-spiritual.

And because the problems relate to all of those areas in life, their only hope for solutions will be bio-psycho-social-spiritual solutions as well. I had an interesting conversation this week with Captain Scott Lovejoy, a chaplain serving now in South Carolina.

We went to divinity school together at Vanderbilt and it was just fun to catch up. And he talked about—I asked him, what’s it like on the front lines? What are you up against? Especially from an increasingly secular world?

And he talked about multi-domain operations.

And the challenge that military will face, particularly when the opposition will come from land and sea and air and space and cyber. And how do we prepare ourselves for all of those kinds of things. And the— the level of spiritual strength that will be required of people to be able to navigate the last days.

I think about the multi domain as far as solutions are concerned. And most people, at least judging from the people my wife works with on a daily basis, are completely convinced of the need for biological help, for a biological problem.

They are very well familiar with the psychological aspect of their challenges

and have no problem seeking psychological responses to them.

The social, they’re understanding that they fell into addiction largely because of lack of social structures to support them. And so they are seeing the value of social structures to help benefit their recovery. It's the spiritual that they have the hardest time wrapping their hearts around.

It's difficult for many to admit that there was a spiritual problem,

and it's even harder for them to open themselves to the possibility of spiritual solutions.

And so, to be honest, I’m amazed and frankly, a little bit envious—of the holy envy variety—when I see those of you in uniform with a cross on your chest.

Announcing unapologetically to the world

what you represent and who you represent.

But when there's a target or a crosshairs.

At the center of crosshairs is the cross. And to live in an age

that has a hard time making room for you ...

I remember walking into— I was invited by the University of Utah to come speak to their master's students in social work, and they asked me, Would you come and explain your church's perspective on traditional marriage? And I said I’d be happy to, and I must have seemed too eager because he paused and said, You will be in the minority, you realize. People won’t agree with you. I said, I’m used to that. I study anti-religion. That’s fine. And I walked into the room in my white shirt and tie and suit screaming institutional religion.

And as I walked in, one of my institute students was there, turned around and saw me. She was in the program, and she immediately burst into tears.

And I sat down next to her and said, “Are you okay?” And she said, “I’m just so relieved you’re here.

I knew what we'd be speaking about today, and I knew all eyes would be on me as a member of the Church. And I'm just glad that you're here so they’ll be mad at you instead of mad at me.”

Happy to offer that service to you.

But to be, again, the personification, the embodiment of something that the world either sees as irrelevant or unwelcome. How do we navigate?

How do we offer spiritual solutions when those aren't very welcome?

You are probably well familiar with the sad statistics of people leaving religion.

The worst to me is the one on the far right that shows how many who have left religion are interested in learning more about it or giving it a second chance. And that is a tiny sliver.

It's not just that they don't believe, it's that they don't care to find out if it's worth believing,

But more than the statistical, I’m interested in the anecdotal.

I care more about quality than quantity. And so to see what people feel and think, if you go back a century and a half, Matthew Arnold put it so powerfully.

The Sea of Faith/Was once, too, at the full,

and round earth’s shore/Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled./

But now I only hear/Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar./

Retreating, to the breath/Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear/And naked shingles of the world.

I hope we can be forgiven

a shudder of the soul when we see the ebb tide of the sea of faith.

Fast forward a hundred years and Anne Morrow Lindbergh said,

“We are aware of our hunger and our needs, but still ignorant of what will satisfy them ... Not knowing how to feed the spirit,

we try to muffle its demands in distractions. Instead of stilling the center, the axis of the wheel, we add more centrifugal activities to our lives —which tend to throw us off balance.” And it’s getting worse.

I was fascinated by a man, a skeptic and agnostic at best, atheist at worst,

who was trying to write a paper or an article, an essay about the Hill Cumorah pageant.

He said this: “All that summer I had been sleepwalking.

Mornings I woke and with a glazed-over slowness, a boredom, slouched through my workaday round.

Long after work, I slouched down streets, familiar streets, which in darkness came to seem projections of my own neural pathways— a circuitry I was sick of ... It wasn’t ‘depression,’ exactly; it was spiritual, a staleness that, as an irreligious person, I’d fought with all my life. Except this time was different.

I was glimpsing it all around me—in my students especially, college kids to whom I taught writing. The boy with the 142 IQ who went full Brian Wilson and stopped getting out of bed one day. The girl who confessed to me, and chillingly dispassionate tones, that she saw no point in living out the rest of her days. Something was afoot:

Some gathering despondency, strongest in the young, that had no shortage of worldly causes—planetary, economic—and yet exceeded these. It was a ghostly deficiency. All the Christian faiths in America were hemorrhaging members— and panicking. Fewer than half of millennials now identified as Christians, while Zoomers had just been declared ‘the Least Religious Generation.’

‘Nones’ outnumbered Catholics and equaled evangelicals.

I pictured Mormons—a pair of missionaries clacking their way down the street in those white short-sleeved shirts, black pants, and dress shoes ... —and it struck me that they were the antithesis of what afflicted me and those I knew. Something in their door-to-door deportment, their earnestness and brio, seemed a soft rebuke to my own disenchantment ...

I would go and walk among them, discover what they were plugged into and even absorb something of their radiance.

In the process, I would return to where I was from—and where, I should explain, I first knew the jolt of something higher.” You are the antithesis

of what afflicts the world.

And that does put you in the crosshairs.

But it also aligns you with the cross,

with all the source of strength that it provides to a weary world.

It’s your presence and your work. The spirit that you bring and personify

that will allow people to be reminded of that jolt of something higher.

I wish I had the time to explain how we got into this mess.

Those are my three bookshelves of the History of Doubt.

A lot of uplifting reading.

But I want to say just briefly, an experience I had in the South where the religion of choice is football.

And I remember talking to a group of students that knew the game and I said, “Imagine for a moment that they changed only one thing about the sport, and that was the definition of victory. We're not going to change a single rule. We're just going to redefine success.

It's no longer going to be about the number of points scored.

It's going to be about the time of possession. And as long as you held the ball 30 minutes and one second and the other team had 29:59, you win no matter what the scoreboard says.

It's the only statistic that now matters.

Now we're not going to change a single rule of the game.

But how will the game change?”

And for those that knew the sport well enough, it was fascinating to see that that would—that would completely reverse

most of the strategies on the field.

You would not throw the ball anymore because an incomplete pass stops the clock. You would run and run and run, but you wouldn't want to run very far.

2.5 yards per carry with a lot of lateral movement.

You don't want to get to the end zone because then you have to give the ball back, but you have to get first downs.

It would completely change the game. But I didn't change a single rule.

I simply redefined victory.

And imagine what would happen in a society whose focus was faith and family, if all the adversary did was redefine success.

And then let it play out. He doesn't have to change a single rule.

He doesn't have to change a single tactic. He can simply redefine victory.

And it's been redefined in our day. How has it been done? Let me just show you a few possibilities, because I'd like to spend more time on some possible solutions.

Let me show you something you probably see every day.

And I hope that the next time you see it, you’ll realize—you’ll hold on to it as a mental anchor for what I'm about to explain, because I study rhetoric.

There's plenty of times in the past that forces have tried to enforce secularism. We live in a kinder, gentler day. And so it's not the kind of persecution that the ancient Christians faced.

We've got it easy compared to them physically,

but psychologically and rhetorically— again, if it’s a matter of religion,

the core of religion lies outside the realm of proof and disproof. And so what are we left with? We're left with words.

And if I can say things in such a way that convinces you that you're wrong and that you'll step away from your beliefs, then I win because I have an understanding of what to say.

Well, so often anti-religious rhetoric is a matter of minimizing religion or maximizing its perceived threats in order either way, to close down the conversation.

In the minimizing side, they often use ridicule to delegitimize religion: that you have no business being here. That’s the irrelevance side of religion. Whereas to maximize their perceived affronts,

that's the demonization of religion.

And the irony is these two approaches couldn't be more opposite, but they both have the same goal, which is to close down the possibility of religion being a source of strength and assistance. When you minimize religion,

you make it look like it's beneath your consideration. What does that have to do with anything? And when you maximize religion’s perceived problems, you turn it into something that needs to be seriously opposed.

On the first side, it’s a joke to be laughed at, and on the second, it's an enemy to be feared.

In our own religious experience, you either see the “Book of Mormon” musical and you walk out of the— the theater laughing at at organized religion,

or you go read or watch “Under the Banner of Heaven” and you’re horrified that there might be Latter-day Saints living nearby.

Ironically, in racist propaganda

it’s the same issue, and they typically will make the same target both seem both too stupid as well as too cunning. Make up your mind.

Either way, it'll fire on different cylinders depending on the audience.

If, for example, you see the problems to the mind,

that's usually the delegitimization of religion. And if the problems are aimed at the heart, that's more of the demonization of religion. Are they playing upon your thoughts that belief is beneath you, or are they playing upon your emotions, that this is something to be concerned about?

One side will deal in information, the other in experience.

And typically the minimization of religion makes it look irrational

and the demonization of religion makes it seem immoral.

On the one hand, there will be those that say your church isn't true and on the other there will be those that say your church isn't good.

And you see these side by side everywhere. In Joseph Smith’s experience, this Methodist minister he shared the story of the First Vision with, he treated it lightly— that’s the minimization— but also with great contempt— that’s the maximization. He spoke of Paul. Some thought he was dishonest. That’s something to be up in arms about. Others: He’s crazy. Just walk away.

He was ridiculed. That's the minimize. He was reviled. That’s the maximize. And that’s the issue throughout religious history,

whenever you see the people being mocked but also physically assaulted, mocked and scourged, mocked and persecuted,

mocked and cast stones at, reviled and mocked, mocked and crucified

depending on which approach they want. It's the same goal either way.

One other thing to think of here, and this is from a rhetorical standpoint, I stumbled across this in my graduate work and I was fascinated by this reality. An ideograph is a rhetorical term and the technical definition, a culturally biased abstract word or phrase drawn from ordinary language which serves as a constitutional value for a historically situated collectivity.

Don't you love definitions that don't help you at all?

A wiser and simpler scholar of rhetoric simply redefined Ideographs as God terms. An ideograph is a word that’s so vaguely defined, but has such cultural capital, that if you can claim that word to your side, it will do all the heavy lifting of your arguments. In fact, they'll usually take the place of arguments and you won’t even need any. If that word applies to me and my side and I've been able to wrest it away from yours to the point that no one thinks that it describes you at all, and if society values that— so we’re playing to their aspirations, their strengths rather than their weaknesses—

then you lose in the zero-sum game and by default I win.

These God words have changed over time.

In the 18th century, common sense was one of the reigning God words. Reason was another, in the height of the Enlightenment.

In the 19th century, it shifted to words like liberty and democracy,

and both sides of any issue—think Civil War—are fighting over ownership of these words. 20th century words like progress or American. What a cut down.

“That’s just un-American.” What do you mean by that? But that’s the thing. You don't want to have to explain what any of this means. Keep it vague.

And that way, if I can make it seem that you don't have claim to that term, then it falls to me and I win. As vague as it is. The 21st century, think of words like equality or tolerance

or my favorite, love, which is so vaguely defined.

But if I can make you and your religious views seem unloving,

then you lose. #LoveWins from a rhetorical standpoint is correct. It does. There's nothing you can say against it.

My dissertation was on Thomas Paine’s anti-biblical attacks, and he was a master of this. So not to bore you with 400 pages of writing, but simply his titles of two of his most important books. The fact he could take centuries of commonly accepted received wisdom that monarchy is the way to go. And in 60 pages, he could turn it on its head by claiming common sense to his side.

If he could mock the monarchy to the point that it seemed nonsensical and then claim that democracy is more commonsensical, then he wins. Because when Scottish common-sense realism is the reigning paradigm of the day, then anything that— “common sense” has the Midas touch, and whatever it touches turns to gold.

Now, from a political standpoint, I'm grateful for Paine's gifts when it came to common sense. But when he tried to do to revealed religion what he had done to monarchy when he wrote “The Age of Reason”— do you catch the title again?

Because that again is a reigning ideograph

and better, more true, would have been if he titled it like this.

This is Common Sense, registered trademark.

This belongs to me and my side. And I say this is common sense and if I can make the other side seem less commonsensical, then you'll find yourself agreeing with me. The age of reason. If I can absurdify religion,

If I can make it seem like a laughing stock, which was his great gift.

It's the great and spacious building and pointing fingers and mocking.

And so it's his version of reason.

But if he can make the other side seem irreasonable or irrational,

unreasonable, then he wins. This becomes a battle over Ideographic identification,

and who can trademark it first. In our day, again, you see this in terms of love. So I just want to say this. How do we reinsert religion into places where you're irrelevant or unwelcome?

Well, as Jesus said to His disciples, who He was sending to be sheep in the midst of wolves.

You have to be wise as serpents and harmless as doves.

You’ll have to hold on to that harmlessness.

But we have to have wisdom in ways that we might not have needed in less secular times. He even goes on to say, and don’t think too hard about this in advance,

You need to have the Spirit with you so that in the very moment, the Spirit of God, the Spirit of your Father, can speak through you. Because the challenge is, there’s not a one-size-fits-all solution to this challenge.

I love this talk from Elder Hales, “Christian Courage.” I reread it every time I'm about to do something hard in terms of interfaith dialog or anti-faith dialog because it puts me in my place in terms of needing courage, but also needing to be Christian about it. And that describes each of you. The skill set of chaplains astounds me

because you have to be hard enough and tough enough to be able to handle the hardest things that people will face in life. But you have to be able to be soft enough to be able to help them navigate.

You are true men and women of velvet and steel.

You have Christian courage, and that’s hard to come by.

Most people err on one side or the other and you can’t err.

So as Elder Hales described this, there's not one size fits all. There's not one approach to this.

But as we respond to others, each circumstance will be different.

Fortunately, the Lord knows the hearts of our accusers and how we can most effectively respond to them.

As true disciples seek guidance from the Spirit, they receive inspiration tailored to each encounter and in every encounter, true disciples respond in ways that invite the Spirit of the Lord. I just want to add to your arsenal some possibilities here. And so becoming wise as serpents and harmless as doves, I would suggest, first of all, you’ll have to learn to be bilingual.

There will be times that if you even mention a word that smacks of spirituality,

they'll immediately shut down and not want to hear it. And so you may have to translate spiritual truths into secular terms.

My wife does it every day and it's amazing to see the impact as people open themselves to truths that only later will they discover are revealed from heaven. To think of— Ammon does this with King Lamoni.

Aaron does the same thing with Lamoni’s father. This great spirit— that’s your language—who is God— that’s mine. I can help translate.

Or when Paul is on Mars Hill in Athens, and rather than quoting scripture, which the Athenians won’t care about, “Well, let me quote some of your own poets.” Close enough.

They had truth in their souls as well. Or how about this one? Defend Faith's function rather than its specific forms, because typically it's the forms of faith that a secular world finds objectionable. But the functions of faith can make a huge difference that they'll be grateful for.

In thinking of that, I realized that the shield of faith needs a shield of its own, and we can shield that shield.

We can have faith in a generalizable faith,

knowing how it’s informed for us isn’t necessarily how it’s informed for them.

If you ask Webster what faith is,

only two of these eight definitions are religious,

which means we need to carve out space for faith in general to the point that the world realizes that they have it, even if they don't want to admit it.

I think part of the problem is we have in the ebbing of the sea of faith is that we have lost not just belief and trust and loyalty to God, definition 4, or belief in the traditional doctrines of a religion, definition 5, but we no longer have allegiance to duty or a person. We've lost loyalty. We've lost fidelity to our promises.

We don't trust the sincerity of one another's intentions.

We don't believe in things that we can't prove.

And love takes a hit when that's the case.

We don't trust each other, and we've lost some of our conviction.

And that's not just a religious problem. That's a life problem.

There's a difference between testimony meeting faith, which the world does not want to hear, and hospital room faith,

which the world is desperately crying for.

So give them the kind of faith that they need. What does it do?

Think of Moroni’s words. “Whoso believeth in God might with surety hope for a better world.” And I don’t know anyone who doesn’t want that.

Even at a place at the right hand of God. I know a lot of people that don't want that.

So let's skip that part and keep going. This hope comes of faith.

It makes an anchor to the souls of men and women, and it makes them sure and steadfast, always abounding in good works being led to glorify God. Now you’ll glorify God. They might not. That’s okay.

Because as long as you're abounding in good works,

Your faith, despite their lack thereof, will give them hope for a better world.

It's like Paul on this boat that is being shipwrecked.

As he says to a group of unbelievers, “Wherefore, sirs, be of good cheer: for I believe God.”

You don’t have to. I do.

And that will be enough for all of us for now.

Think of the fourth article of faith, if you will. I've often asked my students, Give me the five most important words, and they’ll think hard and say, “Faith, repentance, baptism, Holy Ghost.” And I say, “Fine, but how about these five words instead? In the Lord Jesus Christ.” I didn’t ask for the five summary words. I asked for the five most important.

And the reason that “in the Lord Jesus Christ” is the most important is that’s the source of our faith. The reason I don't put the other five on that same level is because guess what? Everyone believes in the fourth article of faith. There's no avoiding it.

The world functions through faith, repentance, baptism, and the Holy Ghost.

It's just the difference of what do they place in the pole position as the object of their faith.

You see, everyone has to have some kind of ultimate concern by which they navigate life. That's the center of themselves.

For us, it's the Lord Jesus Christ. And as a result, we then change our behaviors to come into line with what the teachings of Jesus Christ entail.

In fact, we change so much that we immerse ourselves in that lifestyle and commit ourselves to it wholeheartedly. And the Spirit comes to confirm the righteousness of our choice.

However, as we go down the fourth article of Faith,

the people I work with who have left religion have simply reversed the process and typically they're no longer doing the things that invite

the Holy Ghost’s confirmation. And so that peels away and what’s left?

A pretty bare commitment that no longer is quite so deeply immersed.

But as they’re less involved in that, their behaviors begin to change, and as a result, I no longer care quite so much about the thing that used to ground me. But we as human beings can't handle existence without something at the center of the soul. And so we'll simply replace it and put something else as the object of our faith. Some other “ism.”

And it can be sports fanaticism or athleticism or nationalism or environmentalism. It can be consumerism or capitalism or whatever it might be. Humanism, secularism. There's all kinds of options. Take your choice, and they'll put that at the center of their concern and then begin to change their behavior to fall into line with that ultimate belief. They'll get immersed in that lifestyle and commit themselves to it, and then they'll spend the rest of their time looking around for confirmation that what I chose was the best possible choice. Until that starts to wane and you work your way back up and then back down and you just keep going up and down through the fourth article of faith throughout your life.

The challenge for us is holding on to the Lord Jesus Christ as the grounding principle in our faith.

And allowing them to take whatever object of faith they're holding to push them towards the best possible version because it will open doors for that object to improve with time. I'll explain what I mean.

We can act in faith and we can credit faith for our actions, even if people don't want to accept it. That's the reason we're doing what we're doing.

I love the symbol that you bear, you military chaplains.

I know we don't use it in our church, and there's good reason for that, as we just heard over the weekend.

But when I think of taking up the cross daily,

there is a vertical component of my discipleship. It is loving God with all my heart, might, mind, and strength. That is the centering truth of my existence and it binds me to heaven.

But with a cross—with a post in the ground I have now. I now have something I can attach a cross beam to

that lifts my service of others, loving neighbor as self, above ground level.

The cross describes my daily discipleship and then my love of other people.

But to think about the distinguishing between the vertical and the horizontal, I do what I do because of the first great commandment.

I do what I do in terms of the second great commandment because of my connection to the first great commandment.

But to other people, which of the two is the least objectionable dimension?

They will accept the horizontal gratefully and gladly.

Whether or not they admit that the reason my service is above ground level is because of my faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. They might not share my religious beliefs, but they'll appreciate my religious acts as long as they’re not overtly religious. Okay, fine. Then will you accept my religious motives?

Because that’s why I do what I do. They’ll accept the “what.”

I’ll hold on to the “why.” They’ll accept my actions. I will hold on to my attitudes.

I've learned over the years that a river's reach is not confined to its source. And that's a good thing.

You don't have to believe where I got this water from for it to nourish you.

Or, another way to say the same thing,

if you can get them where they’re going, they won't care where you filled up with gas.

I have high-octane spirituality through my faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.

You don't need to know that if you're uncomfortable with it. But where can I take you with my full tank?

I don't have time for all of this. Let me say this, though.

Please appeal to the light of Christ in them

in the least objectionable way because that will open their souls and soften their heart to ultimately and eventually change the object in pole position, faith.

This passage I wish I understood as a missionary.

I wish I understood it better when I was at divinity school. I’m grateful I understand it better now.

For the Word of the Lord is truth, and whatsoever is truth is light, and whatsoever is light is Spirit, even the Spirit of Jesus Christ. That verse is full of synonyms as far as the Lord is concerned,

and you get to pick which one you focus on in the presence of other people.

For some, coming straight out with Capital T Truth, they’ll be open to.

For some of them, boldly declaring Jesus Christ is speaking their language.

For others, those are deal breakers from the very beginning.

And so what else can you do? Can you appeal to Spirit?

And anything you do that invites the Spirit of God into their lives or into your conversation with them,

is it simply light, and allowing them to see that, pick

the least objectionable synonym,

and you're still functioning with all of them in your mind?

The next verse, The spirit giveth light to every man that cometh into the world; and the spirit enlighteneth every man through the world that hearkeneth to the voice of the Spirit. That should give us hope.

That truth or spirit or light or word or Christ is a resonant frequency that every child of God is inherently attuned to.

And if you will simply strike the chord of any of those synonyms, it will begin to resonate in the soul of the person that you're speaking with. Bank on that. Choose whichever one they’re most open to and least hostile about. But let the resonant frequency begin to vibrate within their souls. Then the next verse, every one that hearkeneth to the voice of the Spirit cometh unto God, even the Father. because that resonant frequency then becomes

a homing beacon that if they'll simply respond to whatever it is that they're feeling, the light of Christ grows brighter and brighter unto the perfect day. And if they'll respond to it, it will draw them closer to God. And only then does religion come in.

Only then the Father teacheth him of the covenant that he’s renewed and confirmed upon you not just for your sake, but for the sake of the whole world.

Only then does he bring them slowly, gently, according to his omniscience, his perfect patience, to invite them to come home through covenant.

The covenant he made in premortality to send a Messiah.

That's where our Christianity comes in.

The covenant he made with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob that all the families of the earth could be blessed. That’s where the House of Israel comes in. The new and everlasting covenant

He renewed upon Joseph Smith in this, the dispensation of the fullness of times. But it's only then, and God has the patience and the time to be able to wait on us and

on them if we'll simply sound the note. And allow people to respond to it.

Lean in to the better angels of their natures.

I’m out of time, so if I can conclude with this thought: Please, more than anything, follow the Spirit and trust its power.

Exemplify its fruits. A world that is growing more and more hostile to religion.

The verse that popped into my head was Galatians 5:22 and 23,

which lists the fruits of the spirit.

It's an incredible list, but it concludes with this interesting line

as it speaks of faith and love and joy and meekness and temperance,

against which there is no law.

Those are things no one can get offended by and no one can outlaw, no one can forbid, even in a secular world that’s hostile to religion.

The world needs your joy, your hope. Your goodness.

Your velvet as well as your steel. Brothers and sisters.

In Luke 18, the Lord asked a very vulnerable question.

When the Son of Man returns. Will he find faith on the earth?

I’m eager to spend the rest of my life wearing and wasting it

so that the answer to that question is a resounding yes.

I am grateful for your willingness to do the same.

Thank you for being who you are.

Thank you for wearing the crosshairs on your chest.

Thank you for standing for what is right.

And may the Lord bless us all to be wise as serpents and harmless as doves in his service. I pray in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.