How can we find answers to questions that perplex us?
What wisdom do you lack?
What do you feel an urgent need to know or understand?
If we are to have any hope of sifting through
the myriad of voices and the philosophies of men
that attack truth, we must learn to receive revelation.
You don't have to wonder about what is true.
You do not have to wonder whom you can safely trust.
Regardless of what others may say or do,
no one can ever take away a witness borne to your heart
and mind about what is true.
Heavenly Father's always there.
He's the source of all truth and all goodness and all light.
But in order to have that penetrate
our hearts and our lives, we have to work towards it.
There's this broad spectrum.
And you start at the source, and it's nice and clean.
And you work your way down, and you
start introducing contaminants.
But at the end of the day, we're all kind
of striving to have that clean water.
And it's there as long as you know how to sift through it
and how to look for it.
I definitely think in today's world,
we have to filter through a lot to get to the truth
that Heavenly Father wants us to know.
And especially with technology today, it's
so easy to get false information and to have people send you
false information to try to, you know, shake your faith.
There are people out there whose only purpose
is to draw us away.
There are people who want to take us off the path.
There are people who have put a lot of time and effort
into tricking us and filling our heads with questions.
With there being opposition in all things,
there comes a point where we have to become self-reliant
within our own testimony.
But we have to constantly be seeking out
those trustworthy sources, because if not, the adversary
is also active.
Through some of my peers I ran into some anti-doctrine,
and I felt kind of like I'd been lied to my entire life,
because there were things that I didn't know.
And that was really hard.
When I got on the internet, I wanted
to know right then, and sure enough,
I came across unreliable sources.
My emotions, the feelings of anger--it never went away.
It was this constant "I need to know more now."
I was in my junior year of high school, and a friend
that I really trusted, she started
sharing some things with me.
And for the first time in my life,
I started to doubt if the Church was true or not.
I still went to church.
I still read my scriptures.
I still said my prayers.
But I just was confused a lot.
I couldn't really find what was true.
So I had a returned missionary who befriended me,
and he was the first person in the last year
and a half of my life who asked me, "Why?
Why did you stop going to church?"
And I was like, "Uh ..."
I did not have any words.
He invited me to read a conference talk,
and then he invited me to pray.
I didn't know what was true.
And I just kind of floated for a while until all of a sudden--it
kind of seemed like out of nowhere--just this huge feeling
came over me that I needed to tell my mom.
And it was really spiritual for me
because it was the first time in a long time
that I felt like that was the Spirit.
And I knew it was the Spirit.
There wasn't a doubt in my mind that that was what
God wanted me to do right then.
When I was reading the conference talk,
it was like this spark, and just feelings of peace
entered into my heart, in contrast
to what I had been reading.
The contentment that I was feeling--I knew that everything
was going to be OK.
And that's something I hadn't felt in a really long time.
We were sitting at the kitchen table,
and my dad pulled up the Gospel Topics page on LDS.org.
And they weren't judging me; they weren't mean to me.
They just asked me, "What are your questions?"
And I would tell them one, and we
would look up what the prophets had to say about it.
And that night is when I learned that there
were specific sources that I could
turn to to find my answer.
You have to remember the times when the Holy Ghost really
comforted you, because, you know,
I've had times where I've struggled also,
where I've had my doubts.
But then I remember the times when the Holy Ghost has
comforted me and been there for me,
and that's not a feeling that comes out of nowhere.
It's not like--after I came back to the Church,
it's not like those questions went away.
Like, they're still there.
However, the way I go about them is much different.
I turn to the divinely appointed sources.
I turn to prayer.
I turn to my leaders.
I turn to the words of Christ.
I know that as I continue to turn to those sources,
that I will gain more and more light each and every day.
The purest source lies within the gospel of Jesus Christ
and Jesus Christ Himself.
He is the way, the truth, and the life.
We live in a world that is complex and increasingly
contentious.
The constant availability of social media and a 24-hour news
cycle bombard us with relentless messages.
Nothing opens the heavens quite like the combination
of increased purity, exact obedience,
earnest seeking, daily feasting on the words of Christ
in the Book of Mormon, and regular time
committed to temple and family history work.
I promise that as you continue to be obedient,
expressing gratitude for every blessing the Lord gives you,
and as you patiently honor the Lord's timetable,
you will be given the knowledge and understanding you seek.