Neal Maxwell

Meanwhile, spiritual submissiveness brings about the wiser use of our time, talents, and gifts as compared with our laboring diligently but conditionally to establish our own righteousness instead of the Lord's (D&C 1:16). After all, Lucifer was willing to work very hard, but conditionally in his own way and for his own purposes. (Moses 4;1).

Brigham Young observed, "Man's machinery makes things alike" (JD 9:370), while God gives to seemingly like individuals pleasing differences. Secularism is no friend of righteous individuality.

It is not the years but the changes that make us grow.

The "new" in us is bound to notice the "old" that remains.

. . . just as God cannot look upon sin with the least degree of allowance, as we become more like Him, neither can we. The best people have a heightened awareness of what little of the worst is still in them! Indeed, the divine discontent, the justifiable spiritual restlessness that we feel, is a natural follow-on feeling in the disciple who has taken the Lord's counsel to "make you a new heart and a new spirit." (Ezekiel 18:31.)

To be cheerful when others are in despair, to keep the faith when others falter, to be true even when we feel forsaken-all of these are deeply desired outcomes during the deliberate, divine tutorials which God gives to us -because he love us.

Of all the errors one could make, God's gospel plan is the wrong thing to be wrong about.

Oh, how great the plan of our God!

The Gospel will . . . bring comfort to the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.

Gospel guard rails.