Your Next Step - Keep Moving Forward!

In his talk entitled, "Your Next Step," Elder Randall K Bennett of the 70 talks about the discouragement we sometimes feel when we consider how far we need to come to be who our Heavenly Father wants and intends for us to be, and more importantly, he discusses a few ways to overcome these feelings.

Be a Child
It's important to remember our relationship to God. He is our Heavenly Father, which makes us children, His children. When a young child attempts to walk, but stumbles and falls, do we scold the child for making a mistake? Absolutely not! We encourage, love, support, and help the child continue learning and improving. Our Heavenly Father sees us in the same light. When we make mistakes, He is there encouraging, loving, supporting, and helping us. Our Savior's Atonement allows us to repent and become clean, and the Holy Ghost fills us with love and will guide us to make personal improvements.

Children are also humble, submissive, and innocent. We can progress a lot just by emulating some of these childlike attributes.

ACT with Faith
To take the next step in our eternal progression requires action. We can't sit back and do nothing and then wonder why we haven't seen the personal progress for which we've been yearning. Even small steps of faith can have a big impact. Elder Bennett says, "The Lord more than matches our willingness to act in faith. Our willingness to take a step is not just met; it is exceeded by the Lord's promised blessings."

Sometimes the next step may seem uncomfortable because it requires us to stop doing something we've done for a long time or start doing something we have not been doing consistently. But if we act in faith to take the next step, Elder Bennett promises that "we [will be] blessed with strength" because "He will more than match our efforts with His power." He makes a powerful point that the Lord's strength is not only given to those who keep all of His commandments; rather, it is also given to those who seek and are making a genuine effort to do so. What comfort!

Overcome the Natural Man
We know that "the natural man is an enemy to God" and that its tendency is to procrastinate or even give up trying. Overcoming the natural man is one of life's greatest challenges and does not happen overnight. All we can do is faithfully take steps forward, one step at a time. Elder Bennett gives this reassurance, "We fail only if we fail to take another faithful step forward. We will note, we cannot, fail if we are faithfully yoked to the Savior- he who has never failed and will never fail us!"

The central theme through this message seems to be that as we make the effort to take steps forward, our loving Heavenly Father will magnify our efforts to help us be successful. It's not the pace that matters, but the direction we are heading - so keep moving forward!