Although life is hectic, if we focus on one thing—love for the Lord—everything we need to juggle will fall exactly into place.
About six months ago, I had the tiniest prompting.
“You should volunteer to be the church organist,” I thought.
To say I was surprised would be an understatement. I was entirely overwhelmed with work, I was due to have our baby in just over a month, I hadn’t actually played the organ in ten years, and there was already someone doing it. I felt that if I added one more thing to my plate, I would collapse. Anxiety overcame me, and I ignored that little prompting.
Photo by Ben Koorengevel
A few weeks later, I was talking to my church leader when, before I knew it, I was volunteering to play the organ for church. To my complete shock, he thanked me for saying something—the organist had actually moved but continued to come back to help out, and he had no idea who else he could ask. In that moment, all of my previous anxieties disappeared. Instead, I felt complete peace. I remembered that the reason we serve is to show our love for God and for his children, and that showing my love for God is ultimately the life I chose to live when I committed to follow Jesus Christ.
In Jeffrey R. Holland’s talk “The First Great Commandment,” he teaches that loving God is the greatest responsibility we have after we covenant to follow Jesus Christ. He says, “We have neighbors to bless, children to protect, the poor to lift up, and the truth to defend. We have wrongs to make right, truths to share, and good to do. In short, we have a life of devoted discipleship to give in demonstrating our love of the Lord.” In other words, when we choose to live a life following the Savior, we have work we need to do to show our love for him.
Through my experience, I learned that the Lord wasn’t asking me to put more on my plate. He was asking me to love him by putting him first. I can say now that ever since I volunteered my time to serve God, he has given me more in return. With my small offering as church organist, God has helped everything in my life fall right into place. As we put our love for God first, he will multiply our efforts in every area of our lives.
To discover more about how to increase our love for the Lord, read or watch Jeffrey R. Holland’s talk “The First Great Commandment.”
Source: General Conference
—Emma Saavedra, Latter-day Saint Insights
FEATURE IMAGE BY JEHYUN SUNG
Find more insights
To read more about increasing your testimony, read “Building a Sure Testimony: Three Lessons We Can Learn from Peter” by Emily Cook.
Check out “Be Ye Therefore Perfect—Eventually” by Jeffrey R. Holland to learn more about increasing your discipleship.