Kevin S Hamilton | “Then Will I Make Weak Things Become Strong” | April 2022 General Conference

“Then Will I Make Weak Things Become Strong”
By Elder Kevin S. Hamilton

Of the Seventy

As we humble ourselves and exercise faith in Jesus Christ, the grace of Christ and His infinite atoning sacrifice make it possible to change.

President Thomas S. Monson once shared the story of prison warden Clinton Duffy. “During the 1940s and 1950s, [Warden Duffy] was well known for his efforts to rehabilitate the men in his prison. Said one critic, ‘You should know that leopards don’t change their spots!’

“Replied Warden Duffy, ‘You should know I don’t work with leopards. I work with men, and men change every day.’”1

One of Satan’s greatest lies is that men and women cannot change. This untruth gets told and retold in many different ways as the world says that we simply cannot change—or worse yet, that we should not change. We are taught that our circumstances define us. We should “embrace who we really are,” the world says, “and be authentic to our true selves.”

We Can Change
While it is indeed good to be authentic, we should be authentic to our real, true selves as sons and daughters of God with a divine nature and destiny to become like Him.2 If our goal is to be authentic to this divine nature and destiny, then we will all need to change. The scriptural word for change is repentance. “Too many people,” President Russell M. Nelson teaches, “consider repentance as punishment—something to be avoided except in the most serious circumstances. … When Jesus asks you and me to ‘repent,’ He is inviting us to change.”3

God’s Conditions
Computer software developers use conditional statements to tell computers what to do. These are sometimes referred to as if-then statements. As in, if x is true, then do y.

The Lord also operates through conditions: conditions of faith, conditions of righteousness, conditions of repentance. There are many examples of conditional statements from God such as:

“If you keep my commandments and endure to the end [then] you shall have eternal life, which gift is the greatest of all the gifts of God.”4

Or “if ye shall ask with a sincere heart, with real intent, having faith in Christ, [then] he will manifest the truth of it unto you, by the power of the Holy Ghost.”5

Even God’s love, although infinite and perfect, is also subject to conditions.6 For example:

“If ye keep my commandments, [then] ye shall abide in my love; even as I have kept my Father’s commandments, and abide in his love.”7

Elder D. Todd Christofferson further expounded on this gospel truth when he taught: “Some are wont to say, ‘The Savior loves me just as I am,’ and that is certainly true. But He cannot take any of us into His kingdom just as we are, ‘for no unclean thing can dwell there, or dwell in his presence’ [Moses 6:57]. Our sins must first be resolved.”8

Weak Things Can Become Strong
The blessing of receiving God’s power to help us change is also conditional. The Savior, speaking through the prophet Moroni in the Book of Mormon, taught: “If men come unto me I will show unto them their weakness. I give unto men weakness that they may be humble; and my grace is sufficient for all men that humble themselves before me; for if they humble themselves before me, and have faith in me, then will I make weak things become strong unto them.”9

Looking more closely at what the Lord is teaching us here, we see that He first says that He gives men and women weakness, singular, which is part of our mortal experience as fallen or carnal beings. We have become natural men and women because of the Fall of Adam. But through the Atonement of Jesus Christ, we can overcome our weakness, or our fallen natures.

He then says that His grace is sufficient and that if we will humble ourselves and have faith in Him, then He will “make weak things [plural] become strong unto [us].” In other words, as we first change our fallen natures, our weakness, then we will be able to change our behaviors, our weaknesses.

General Conference Saturday Afternoon Session April 2022

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