YSA Summit 5 - Deciding to Decide 4/4

Decision Quotes

We do not always receive inspiration or revelation when we request it. Sometimes we are delayed in receiving revelation, and sometimes we are left to our own judgment and understanding based on study and reason. We cannot force spiritual things. It must be so. Our life’s purpose to obtain experience and to develop faith would be frustrated if our Heavenly Father enlightened us immediately on every question or directed us in every act. We must reach conclusions and make decisions and experience the consequences in order to develop self-reliance and faith. Even in decisions we think very important, we sometimes receive no answers to our prayers. This does not mean our prayers have not been heard. It only means we have prayed about a decision that, for one cause or another, we should make without guidance by revelation. – Dallin Oaks, The Lord’s Way, 1991, pp. 36-38.

The second decision for us to consider is this: Whom shall I marry? Now we’re getting close to that which is in your mind and heart. It is essential that you become well acquainted with the person whom you plan to marry, that you can make certain that you are looking down the same pathway, with the same objectives in mind. It is ever so significant that you do this. I should like to dispel one rumor that is very hard to put to rest. I know of no mission president in all the world who has ever told a missionary that he had the responsibility to marry within six months after his mission. I think that rumor was commenced by a returned missionary. In making the momentous decision concerning whom you will marry—and in making other decisions throughout your life—you have a formula, a guide to assist you. It is found in the ninth section of the Doctrine and Covenants, verses 8-9:

“You must study it out in your mind; then you must ask me if it be right, and if it is right I will cause that your bosom shall burn within you; therefore, you shall feel that it is right. But if it be not right you hall have no such feelings, but you shall have a stupor of thought.”

That counsel from the ninth section of the Doctrine and Covenants has guided me, and it will guide you. – Thomas Monson

Now may I move to the last decision: What will be my life’s work? I have counseled many returning missionaries who have asked this question. I interviewed seventeen hundred missionaries one year all over the world. My advice to them, and to each one of you young people here this evening and elsewhere throughout the world, is that you should study and prepare for your life’s work in a field that you enjoy, because you are going to spend a good share of your life in that field. It should be one which will challenge your intellect and which will make maximum utilization of your talents and your capabilities. Finally, it should be a field that will supply sufficient remuneration to provide adequately for your companion and your children. Now that’s a big order. But I bear testimony that these criteria are very important in choosing your life’s work. – Thomas Monson

This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning. - Speech given by Winston Churchill at the Lord Mayor’s Luncheon, Mansion House, London, November 10, 1942 (middle of WWII)

The End.

P.S. I know my fonts and spacing and stuff do crazy things sometimes when I write stuff in Word and then copy paste it into here. It doesn't give me the option to change the font, so I don't know what's up. Oh well.