Jeff VanDrimmelen

As we offer unto the Lord our family prayers and our personal prayers, let us do so with faith and trust in Him. Let us remember the injunction of Paul to the Hebrews: “For he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.”5 If any of us has been slow to hearken to the counsel to pray always, there is no finer hour to begin than now. William Cowper declared, “Satan trembles, when he sees the weakest Saint upon his knees.”6 Those who feel that prayer might denote a physical or intellectual weakness should remember that a man never stands taller than when he is upon his knees.

We cannot know what faith is if we have never had it, and we cannot obtain it as long as we deny it. Faith and doubt cannot exist in the same mind at the same time, for one will dispel the other.

Now, the skeptic may say that these mighty accounts of faith occurred long ago, that times have changed

Have times really changed? Don’t we today, as always, love our children and want them to live righteously? Don’t we today, as always, need God’s divine, protecting care? Don’t we today, as always, continue to be at His mercy and in His debt for the very life He has given us?

  

Times have not really changed. Prayer continues to provide power—spiritual power. Prayer continues to provide peace—spiritual peace.

Part of that testing here is to have so many seemingly interesting things to do that we can forget the main purposes for being here. Satan works very hard so that the essential things won’t happen”

That conflict continues today

Mortality is very brief but immeasurably important. . . .

Each of us will stand before the judgment bar of the great Jehovah and be rewarded according to our deeds in mortality.

In either state, we continue to learn and are accountable for our actions

That experience really solidified my testimony of conference and prayer. The talks we hear during conference truly are the words of the Lord, and if we put our trust in Him and earnestly seek Him in fervent prayer, He will guide us in our decisions.

After watching the Saturday sessions of April 2007 general conference, I began preparing for Sunday by implementing what the Brethren encouraged us to do

During this time, the missionaries invited me to attend October general conference. What stood out most from the messages was not the content but my feelings

I felt in both my mind and heart that I was listening to a prophet of God. I felt inspired and strengthened in my convictions; I also felt peace.

Helps for Home Evening

The list of good men and women from whom he had the opportunity to learn goes on, but Elder Cook points out that many of them didn’t hold lofty positions at the time. They were just good people.

“Specific occupations or levels of education aren’t what I’m talking about when I say learn from good people,” Elder Cook says. “You can find good people everywhere and learn from them all.”

Remembering an example of love demonstrated, not simply taught, the Cooks’ second son, Joe, recalls that his father was uneasy about Joe’s driving back to San Francisco after finishing his first-semester exams at Brigham Young University. It would be late December, the roads might be snowbound, and he would be tired. At the end of the semester Joe answered a knock on the door of his dormitory to see his father standing there, having flown up from the Bay Area to be his son’s driving companion for the trip home. Joe says that was not only a powerful manifestation of his dad’s love for him but the talk time they had on the trip home—filled with discussions of various gospel principles and repeated testimonies of the Savior—became one of the truly formative moments in young Joe’s vision of what he wanted by way of testimony and for his own future fatherhood.