How to Endure

By Carol F. McConkie

First Counselor in the Young Women General Presidency

Adapted from a Brigham Young University Women’s Conference address given May 3, 2013.

You can learn to endure to the end in many ways. You can learn to endure as you repent and, with faith in Christ, strive to overcome the things of the world. You learn to endure when you bridle your passions and put the things of God first in your lives. You learn to endure when you keep your covenants.

Enduring means to remember that you have taken the name of Christ upon you and that you will always remember Him and keep His commandments.

Enduring means to serve God, to bless others temporally and spiritually. You are aware of other people, see their needs, and respond immediately to alleviate their burdens and serve them in the way the Savior would.

Enduring means learning how to preach the gospel always, “to stand as witnesses of God at all times and in all things, and in all places that [you] may be in” (Mosiah 18:9) until the end of your lives.

Enduring means to stand in holy places, come what may, so that you will always have the Spirit to be with you wherever you are.

Enduring means to be valiant in the testimony of Jesus Christ, to follow the Savior and keep His commandments, to give everything to build the Church, including making necessary sacrifices to strengthen your family, to attend the temple, to do family history and missionary work, and to reach out to those who are struggling.

Enduring means to sanctify yourselves, to “come unto Christ, and be perfected in him, and deny yourselves of all ungodliness” (Moroni 10:32).

We endure all things by the power of the Atonement of our Savior, Jesus Christ. By the power of the Atonement, we are healed, we are cleansed, we are enabled, and we are loved. Through the Atonement of our Savior, Jesus Christ, in our lives every day we are able to endure adversity and feel a sense of purpose in our mortality. As we endure in all things, we are prepared to receive the greatest of all the gifts of God, that of eternal life.