BYU Speeches
Alphabetical by Speaker

Let me ask you another question: What is Heavenly Father’s game plan for us? I am sure He would like you to implement some of your goals and some of your parents’ goals. But His game plan for us is found in Moses 1:39: “For behold, this is my work and my glory—to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man.” Now that is a game plan. It appears to me that our Father in Heaven has high expectations for all of us. Have we embraced those goals?

Often the Lord calls us to do difficult things that we may not be sure we want to do but that will bring great blessings.

The nearer we get to God, the more easily our spirits are touched by refined and beautiful things. If we could part the veil and observe our heavenly home, we would be impressed with the cultivated minds and hearts of those who so happily live there.

Perhaps at times you may feel that God is not aware of you or that you haven’t felt His love. I believe that if you will reflect for just a moment on the loving service you receive from others, you will see the workings of the Lord moving in the background.

Integrity is the very core of our being. It is who we really are. When all the scaffolding is removed, it is our integrity that both defines us and identifies us.

Why is it so important for you individually to gain a testimony of the Book of Mormon? Because if you do, it will become your personal iron rod.

Why is it so critical to have a correct vision of this divine destiny of godliness of which the scriptures and other witnesses so clearly testify? Because with increased vision comes increased motivation.

“A brother, a sister, or a friend can literally be an oasis in the desert of mortality—the mere sight of them can refresh and renew. This type of friendship is an example of God’s tender mercy.”

No matter what challenges or uncertainties you face, I pray that you will always faithfully employ this essential spiritual element in your learning.

Each of us must find and know the way the Lord chooses to communicate with us through the Holy Ghost. This process is extremely personal. The Lord will not use methods to communicate with each of us different from those He has used in the past.

By all means let’s continue to pray for the poor and needy, the sick, and those who mourn. But let’s all—every one of us—do more than pray. Let’s do what we can, according to our circumstances, to lift those arms that hang down. Let’s act in a way that will bless the poor and needy.

Improper understandings of love–which unfortunately are common in our culture today–are responsible for many of the struggles some individuals and couples have in dating, courtship, and marriage.

Dr. Clayborne Carson, Stanford University Historian, shares some personal insights from the life and work of Martin Luther King, Jr.

As you build upon these strengths, humbly recognize your personal limitations, remain faithful to your covenants, and put your confidence in the Lord, you will see your weaknesses transformed into strengths through the power and grace of His Atonement.

True beauty is the result of a subtle alchemy and a delicate balance, which in large part comes from our personal inner light, rather than from aesthetic or physical criteria alone.

I would invite each of you to study and prepare your minds and then make a commitment to develop your talents and provide a significant contribution to the world.

My young friends, remember that marriage is essential to eternal life and that a good marriage and family life is crafted, not found.

Nations change when people change, and people change through the witness of other people—people like each of you here today. You make the future. You build it stone by stone with the choices you make.

As you leave your alma mater, you’ll carry many fond memories of your years on this campus. You’ll recall the long hours of hard work in the library and the lab, the sound of the national anthem in the morning and evening, and the teachers and the friends who have enriched your life.

President Hinckley is encouraging us to be prepared, both spiritually and temporally, so that we might receive all the blessings Heavenly Father has in store for His children.

Clayton Christensen teaches about the dangers of success through the historic pattern of disruptive innovations that caused successful companies to stumble.

I invite you to consider how you will demonstrate your trust in God throughout your lives. What will you do to show God that you trust Him above everything else—above your own wisdom and especially above the wisdom of the world?

Today, as you look to the future—as your future “commences,” if you will—the words of an often-quoted Chinese proverb are worth taking seriously: “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”

Opportunities to gather the elect, to lift others, and to let your light shine are not reserved only for members of the Living Legends or our other BYU performing groups. Opportunities to serve … are available to all of us if we will seek for them and have the faith and courage to accept them when they come.

The powerful truths of the gospel stretch our minds and spirits, and after knowing and believing even some of them, our lives are changed forever.

I believe that one of the most significant obstacles to our laying hold upon the word is our inability to fully immerse ourselves in the word or other worthwhile things—our inability to fully focus on them.

Those who view their contemporaries as competitors to be beaten rather than as brothers and sisters to be served often believe that others’ successes diminish their own. They are therefore more apt to find and point out faults of those around them.

Our efforts with respect to spiritual strengthening, intellectual enlargement, character development, and lifelong learning, while worthy ends, are more importantly means and resources enabling us to lose our lives in the service of God and fellowman.

La invitación del Señor de buscar el pan de cada día de la mano de nuestro Padre Celestial es evidencia de un Dios amoroso, consciente aun de las pequeñas necesidades diarias de Sus hijos, y deseoso de ayudarlos, uno a uno.

“I know our Heavenly Father’s love for you is real and unending. It is most powerfully manifest through the grace of His Son, Jesus Christ. I bless you that the love of God will envelop you as you love and strive to serve Him.”

The Lord’s invitation to seek our daily bread at our Heavenly Father’s hand speaks of a loving God, aware of even the small, daily needs of His children and anxious to assist them, one by one.

Your greatness in the things God has ordained as primary and fundamental will not come in a day or with one grand act. It will be built over time with the sort of patient, persistent effort that has brought you to the achievement that we are celebrating today.

How we ought to rejoice that this Firstborn Son in the spirit was willing to become the Only Begotten Son in the flesh, to suffer incomprehensibly and die ignominiously to redeem us.

It is because of the Atonement of Christ that we can recover from bad choices and be justified under the law as if we had not sinned.

Our test is to learn to serve one another and to attain personal holiness. All the commandments of God tend to one, or usually both of these ends at the same time.

My plea to you today is that you work hard to preserve and wisely exercise your own moral agency in the years ahead, and work equally hard to preserve and provide that same blessing of moral agency to others. Let us all be agents rather than objects.

With courage, conviction, and civility—drawing upon our noble heritage as Americans—each one of us can make a profound difference.

All things sacred and holy are to be revealed and brought together in this last and most wonderful dispensation. With the Restoration of the gospel, the Church, and the priesthood of Jesus Christ, we hold an almost incomprehensible store of sacred things in our hands.

So the question isn’t, Are you going to crash and burn every once in a while? Of course you are—you are human! In Romans 3:23 we read, “For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.” The question is, What are you going to do about it?

It is important to learn how to live in faith rather than in fear because the process of changing for the better is at the very foundation of the Father’s plan for us. Changing for the better is what we are here in this life to do, and it is what the mission of His Son enables us to do.

The successful temple marriage begins when two people want God’s blessings in the way he has ordained. Then our Father in heaven can promise these two everything that he has and deliver it.

As you leave these portals today, thank God reverently for what He has done for you, for the blessings that have been yours, for the work He has given you to do, for the strength He has bestowed upon you to do it, for the truth He has let you garner.

The message is clear: Whether in prosperity or in adversity, if we are not diligent and faithful, even the elect of God, even those greatly blessed by the Lord, can fall prey to the Great Lie and become hard-hearted, self-absorbed, stiff-necked, and puffed up in their pride.

My dear brothers and sisters, with all my heart I invite you to follow Jesus Christ and embrace Heavenly Father’s great plan of salvation. I use the word embrace because I want you to accept the plan gladly and eagerly—to adopt it into your life fully and completely.

That is what we need: leaders with integrity, energy, inspiration, wisdom, and courage… I believe that if you heed the Lord’s call to be the light of the world, you will be those leaders.