The Challenge to Become

In his October 2000 conference address, The Challenge to Become, Elder Dallin Oaks said, “The Apostle Paul taught that the Lord’s teachings and teachers were given that we may all attain “the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ” (Eph. 4:13). This process requires far more than acquiring knowledge. It is not even enough for us to be convinced of the gospel; we must act and think so that we are converted by it. In contrast to the institutions of the world, which teach us to know something, the gospel of Jesus Christ challenges us to become something.”

He then goes on to delineate between having a testimony of the gospel and being truly converted, stating that the Lord does not care so much about what we have believed, but what we have become. “To testify,” he says, “is to know and declare.” But the Lord is challenging us to do more than that.  We must be truly converted which comes by doing and becoming.

Elder Oaks declares that the work of conversion is done in our homes.  He said, “Now is the time for each of us to work toward our personal conversion, toward becoming what our Heavenly Father desires us to become. As we do so, we should remember that our family relationships—even more than our Church callings—are the setting in which the most important part of that development can occur. The conversion we must achieve requires us to be a good husband and father or a good wife and mother. Being a successful Church leader is not enough. Exaltation is an eternal family experience, and it is our mortal family experiences that are best suited to prepare us for it.”

A measure of our success on this journey of conversion, said Elder Oaks, is to have the spirit, to begin to see things the way the Lord and our Father in Heaven see things, and to be able to hear their voice instead of focusing on the worldly voices around us.  If we are truly being converted, we are “doing things in His way instead by the ways of the world.”