Building on our strengths, recognizing our limitations, relying on the Savior, and receiving his grace can help us find strength in God.
God consistently chooses the young, small, weak, and humble to do his work. In a Brigham Young University devotional, Bishop Gérald Caussé, First Counselor in the Presiding Bishopric, expresses great faith in the Church’s youth: “The scriptures are filled with stories of young and modest people who . . . accomplished exceptional things.”
Bishop Caussé compares Paul, Enoch, the Virgin Mary, and Joseph Smith with today’s youth. Like these scriptural figures, youth today are “great young people [with] pure and humble hearts.” Even so, however, we need the Lord to make us “powerful in words and deeds to accomplish His designs.”
When we feel weak, the Lord can turn our weaknesses into strengths. Bishop Caussé suggests four ways to find strength in the Lord:
- Build on your strengths. “We cannot be happy and successful in life without gratefully acknowledging those gifts and doing all we can to develop them.”
- Recognize your personal limitations. “God is not a God of superheroes. . . . God helps people like you and me, those who recognize their limits and the weakness of their condition and seek His help and guidance.”
- Rely on the Lord. “True wisdom includes recognizing our dependence on [the Lord] to reach our full potential.”
- Receive the Savior’s grace. “I testify that this power of grace is of divine origin and is real and tangible. Each one of us can access it on condition of receiving the ordinances of the gospel.”
Read Bishop Caussé’s full article, “For When I am Weak, Then I am Strong.”
Source: BYU Speeches
—Marissa Compton, Mormon Insights
feature image by lds media library
Thank you for these wonderful tips. I especially like #2. That really resonates with me.
Too often we focus on our shortcomings and limitations. I love Bishop Caussé’s advice to build on our strengths. When we recognize how much our Heavenly Father has given us, our self-worth increases. We start to believe that we are capable of learning new talents and strengthening our weaknesses. I love how God chooses the humble. It reminds me that we don’t need to be the best at anything, we simply need to be willing to follow God’s plan and be his hands.
I thought it was interesting that the first tip for strengthening weaknesses was to recognize the strengths you already have, but I guess it makes sense. We’ve all been given talents, and we shouldn’t undervalue them. Recognizing what we already can do is just as important as knowing what we yet need to work on.