PROVO, Utah — The offer Jesus Christ made to a prophet consumed with feelings of inadequacy was for everyone, said Thursday’s keynote speaker at BYU Women’s Conference.
Christ told Enoch, who was overwhelmed by the responsibility of his calling, that his spirit would be upon the prophet and he would abide in him.
“Therefore walk with me,” Christ said in Moses 6:34 in the Pearl of Great Price of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
“Friends, the Lord is also calling to each of us: ‘Walk with me,’” Primary General President Susan H. Porter said Thursday afternoon at the Marriott Center on BYU’s campus.
“What an awe-inspiring opportunity to be able to walk with the Savior, the Son of God, our Redeemer, through the ups and downs and twists and turns of life,” she said.
President Porter made it the invitation of her talk.
“I invite you to behold yourself choosing to walk humbly with Jesus. I pray you will feel His love for you,” she said.
She shared a video of the Primary song, “I Will Walk with Jesus,” with scenes of Christ from the church’s Bible Videos series.
“The main message of this beautifully simple song is that when we open our heart and minds to receive the Savior and his gospel, he will walk with us,” she said.
President Porter centered her talk on a key to taking Christ up on his offer.
“As I have pondered about what is needed to accept his invitation to come unto him, follow him and walk with him, my thoughts have been drawn to humility — the humility to choose to follow our Savior, now and forever," she said.
President Porter said Christ himself looked to his Father in Heaven as his source of strength and power during his mortal life and in Gethsemane.
As other keynote speakers did on Wednesday, President Porter mixed music into her presentation. The leader of the church’s children’s organization reminded listeners of Christ‘s injunction that those who humble themselves as a little child are the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.
She shared a clip of one of the children who sang the new Latter-day Saint hymn “Gethsemane” in the church’s October general conference.
“I hope that people know that Jesus is always there for them, that no matter what‘s happening,” said Andrew King, the boy in the clip. “I hope that they can feel that testimony when we sing that song.”
Here are eight brief ways President Porter described humility and its aftereffects:
- “Humility is not weakness.”
- “Humility ‘is an indication that we know where our true strength lies’” (Gospel Library definition).
- “As we grow in humility, we are less critical and more compassionate. We are less demanding and more helpful.”
- “Humility frees us from the fear of what others may think of us because our worth comes from God.”
- “We know we are becoming more humble when we are willing to walk forward without knowing all things, when we are willing to say, ‘I do not know all things; but the Lord knoweth all things.’”
- “As the Savior humbled Himself before his Father, he received his Father’s strength. Likewise, when we humble ourselves before God, our hearts open to receive strength from him, bringing the power of God into our lives to help us become as he is.”
- “Humility touches hearts. Humility changes hearts. Humility opens our hearts to receive the Spirit of God. Being humble fills us with the desire to leave behind old habits and choose to walk with the Savior. Our hearts open to receive his strength and his power to persevere and stay with him through our hard battles of life.”
- “Letting God prevail is the essence of humility. It is a sacred choice to place our trust in God, not in man. We choose to honor sacred covenants that connect us to Heavenly Father and his Son. Letting God prevail in our lives enables us to walk with him.”
President Porter shared a personal example of a difficulty in her life as a young mother raising children in a compound overseas. She received an impression that, “The Lord loves a plodder.”
“Those five words delivered by the still small voice were like a healing balm to my soul,” she said. “I was a plodder. I was walking slowly, but I knew in that moment that not only was the Savior perfectly aware of my situation, but he loved me. He was walking beside me. He recognized that I was not moving forward in great leaps and bounds, accomplishing amazing things, but that I was moving and that for him was enough.”
