The Lord Will Help Us to Build Up His Kingdom
Worldwide Devotional for Young Adults
January 12, 2020
Thank you, choir, for that beautiful number. That’s a favorite of ours. Thank you for singing so beautifully. My dear brothers and sisters, I’m so happy to be able to speak to you this evening. I have pondered a lot lately on those things that have strengthened my faith throughout my life. One thing I have come to know is that our Father in Heaven really does help us, especially when we are trying to do all we can to keep His commandments and build up His kingdom here on earth.
The prophet Nephi demonstrated this faith throughout his life. Although he suffered many afflictions and opposition, he always remained steadfast and always thanked God for His blessings. He said this after their eight years of wandering in a desolate desert:
“If … the children of men keep the commandments of God he doth nourish them, and strengthen them, and provide means whereby they can accomplish the thing which he has commanded them; wherefore, he did provide means for us while we did sojourn in the wilderness.”1
I know this principle is true. Let me share a story from Church history. In the late 1830s most of the members of the Church gathered to the state of Missouri, where they hoped to establish Zion. But in 1839 mobs forced them to leave the state. With their houses destroyed and livestock and household goods stolen, they traveled northeast to Illinois, where they settled on swampland on the banks of the Mississippi River. They drained the swamp and established a fine city they called Nauvoo. But negative sentiment against the Church persisted, and the Prophet Joseph Smith was martyred along with his brother Hyrum just five years later. With their temple barely completed, they were forced out again in February of 1846, fleeing across the Mississippi River in the dead of winter. Among them was a man named Benjamin F. Johnson, my great-great grandfather, with his family of young children. He described that time in his autobiography:
“Now here we were, starting in midwinter without a dollar, on a journey without any knowledge of its length or the time it would occupy … with only provisions enough to sustain us for a few weeks at most, and with poor health which for the last year or more had been exceedingly precarious. I often suffered with acute, cutting pain in my stomach, which at times would cause the sweat to start from every pore. … This along with other digestive problems made me unfit for such arduous labors. The duties alone of caring for the teams and other camp duties looked great indeed to me. …
“After being a few days in camp, some commenced to complain of hardship and poor fare, but President Brigham Young roared upon them like a lion, and told them that all who could not then commence to live upon boiled beans and corn, should trust in God and be grateful for what they did get, or they should start back at once, for the camp of the Saints would be a poor place for them. This came to me as the word of the Lord, but what was I to do? For a long time, I had been unable to eat cornbread or beans, as they gave me those unbearable stomach pains. How could I then go, for the most we had for food was corn and beans? I felt it was a subject of life or death to me.”
I break here from the story to say that not many years before, his 22-year-old sister had died of similar stomach problems, so he was probably not exaggerating his fears. He went on to say:
“I talked the matter over with my family. I told them I was there to trust in the Lord, and if He was not with us, He certainly was not behind us, and I should not go back. I was willing to eat such food as we had and be grateful for it. And if the Lord did not take care of us now, the sooner we were all dead, the better, for we would not be able to care for ourselves or protect our lives upon this journey.”
A month later he reported this in his journal:
“The beans and corn formerly inedible by me, I could eat with relish, and from that time the old effect did not return to me on the journey. I had told the Lord what His servant had said, that by His help I would fulfill every requirement, and if it was His will that I should live to be His servant, He must cause my food to assimilate to the condition of my stomach, which I know He did.”
The faith of my ancestors and the example of the prophets have strengthened me in my life and helped me to trust in the Lord, even in difficult times. I remember the time early in our marriage when our finances were especially tight. We had two small children during the three years Elder Christofferson was in graduate school. We had decided that after we started a family I would not work outside the home, so I tried to do what I could at home to earn a little money to help support us. My husband also had a couple of part-time jobs and summer employment, which provided the major portion of our income. Still, we didn’t have much. We had a saying that if it wasn’t food, rent, or gas for our old car, we didn’t need to buy it.
One Sunday just a couple of months before Elder Christofferson’s graduation, our bishop presented a building fund plan to renovate our aging chapel. It would require each family to pay an assessment to cover the costs. We no longer have building fund assessments, but in those days wards and stakes helped pay part of the costs of building or renovating chapels, above and beyond tithing donations, which we also paid.
As with the other ward members, we sat down with the bishop to discuss what we might donate based on our income. Our suggested assessment was not high, but then we had very little money left. Some graduate students who were in our situation and leaving soon didn’t think it was fair to have to pay into the building fund since they wouldn’t be around when the renovations were completed. Still, we decided to pay the donation to the building fund, even though we didn’t know how we would make it to the end of the school year. Now, you might think that we could just get out the credit card and charge our monthly expenses and pay those over time, but we came from a different era. In those days you couldn’t get a credit card unless you had proof of full-time employment, and your income had to be at a certain level. So we couldn’t qualify for a credit card. That may seem harsh, but a bit stricter policy on who can obtain a credit card today might save many people from the woes of debt they now experience.
Anyway, just a couple of weeks after that we were driving down a quiet road one night and stopped at a stop sign. Just then we heard behind us the squeal of brakes, and the rear of our old car was hit. Elder Christofferson got out to investigate while I stayed in the car. After some time, he got back in the car, and I asked him what happened. He said only the bumper was damaged. The man who hit us was a traveling salesman and lived in another city. He realized he had bad brakes but didn’t know they were that bad. He needed his car for work and hoped that he could settle with us privately so he wouldn’t incur any increase in his car insurance and would not be given a ticket that he would also have to pay. After all, no one was hurt. I think he was on a fairly strict budget himself. He said if we would get an estimate in writing on the repair cost and bring it to his motel room on the edge of town, he would pay us himself.
Now I wasn’t born yesterday. I thought my dear husband in whom I had fully trusted was pretty gullible in this case. Did he really think this guy would make good on his promise? What were the chances this guy wouldn’t skip town? Well, Elder Christofferson did get the estimate for the repair, and he did go to that motel and find the man. That man wrote a check for the amount, and guess what? The check didn’t bounce!
Now for the rest of the story. That check was almost the same amount as the building fund assessment we had paid. We could certainly wait until he had a steady paycheck to take care of the repair, and in the meantime we could make ends meet, which we had been doubtful we could do. This was a witness to us that the Lord does, as Nephi said, “Provide means whereby [we] can accomplish the thing which he has commanded.”2 I’ve learned that faith often means stepping into the dark, but as we do, I know the Lord will light the way before us. I am thankful for a loving Heavenly Father who watches over us and cares about us. I know this is His Church and that our Savior lives. I thank the Lord for the blessings the gospel has brought into our lives. In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.