Neal A. Maxwell Discusses Patience. Song- This is Amazing Grace. ACU Sunday Series.

Neal A. Maxwell. Patience. Song- This is Amazing Grace. ACU Sunday Series.

Patience. Neal A. Maxwell.

https://youtu.be/WuYtWvzGXmE

BYU Speeches

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Having patience with ourselves and our circumstances will bring us closer to God and increase our love, humility, and willingness to submit to Him. This speech was given on November 27, 1979. Read the speech here: https://speeches.byu.edu/talks/neal-a... Learn more about the author: https://speeches.byu.edu/speakers/nea... More BYU Speeches here: https://www.speeches.byu.edu/ Subscribe to BYU Speeches:    / byuspeeches   Follow BYU Speeches: Podcasts: https://www.speeches.byu.edu/podcasts/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/byuspeeches/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/byuspeeches/ Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/byuspeeches/ Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/byuspeeches/ © Brigham Young University. All rights reserved. "Thank you very much, Bob. I appreciate this great privilege each time that it is mine, my brothers and sisters. I am grateful to the choral group today for that last number, the lyrics of which I hope will linger with you somewhat, because I will turn to them as I close my speech. I have chosen to speak today about a very pedestrian principle: patience, I hope that I do not empty the Marriott Center by that selection. Perhaps the topic was selfishly selected because of my clear and continuing need to develop further this very important attribute. But my interest in patience is not solely personal; for the necessity of having this intriguing attribute is cited several times in the scriptures, including once by King Benjamin who, when clustering the attributes of sainthood, named patience as a charter member of that cluster (Mosiah 3:19; see also Alma 7:23). Patience is not indifference. Actually, it means caring very much but being willing, nevertheless, to submit to the Lord and to what the scriptures call the “process of time.” Patience is tied very closely to faith in our Heavenly Father. Actually, when we are unduly impatient we are suggesting that we know what is best—better than does God. Or, at least, we are asserting that our timetable is better than His. Either way we are questioning the reality of God’s omniscience as if, as some seem to believe, God were on some sort of postdoctoral fellowship and were not quite in charge of everything. Saint Teresa of Avila said that unless we come to know the reality of God, including his omniscience, our mortal existence “will be no more than a night in a second-class hotel” (quoted by Malcolm Muggeridge in “The Great Liberal Death Wish,” Imprimis [Hillsdale College, Michigan], May 1979.) Our second estate can be a first-class experience only if you and I develop a patient faith in God and in his unfolding purposes. We read in Mosiah about how the Lord simultaneously tries the patience of His people even as He tries their faith (Mosiah 23:21). One is not only to endure, but to endure well and gracefully those things which the Lord “seeth fit to inflict upon [us]” (Mosiah 3:19), just as did a group of ancient American saints who were bearing unusual burdens but who submitted “cheerfully and with patience to all the will of the Lord” (Mosiah 24:15). Paul, speaking to the Hebrews, brings us up short by writing that, even after faithful disciples had “done the will of God,” they “[had] need of patience” (Hebrews 10:36). How many times have good individuals done the right thing only to break or wear away under subsequent stress, canceling out much of the value of what they had already so painstakingly done? Sometimes that which we are doing is correct enough but simply needs to be persisted in patiently, not for a minute or a moment but sometimes for years. Paul speaks of the marathon of life and of how we must “run with patience the race that is set before us” (Hebrews 12:1). Paul did not select the hundred-meter dash for his analogy! The Lord has twice said: “An