Edward Dube | Pressing toward the Mark | General Conference April 2021 | Faith To Act

Pressing toward the Mark
By Elder Edward Dube

Of the Seventy

It is not so much about what we are going through in life but what we are becoming.

As I read the book of Acts and Paul’s epistles, I am amazed at how Paul was driven by love and gratitude in serving, teaching, and testifying of Jesus Christ. How can such a person serve with such love and gratitude, especially considering his great sufferings? What motivated Paul to serve? “I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.”1

To press toward the mark is to faithfully continue on the “strait and narrow path which leads to eternal life”2 with our Savior and our Father in Heaven. Paul viewed his sufferings as “not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.”3 Paul’s letter to the Philippians, which he wrote when he was bound in prison, is a letter of overwhelming joy and rejoicing and encouragement to all of us, particularly in this difficult time of uncertainty. We all need to take courage from Paul: “I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ.”4

While we look at Paul’s service, we are inspired and uplifted by our own “Pauls” in our day, who also serve, teach, and testify with love and gratitude amidst the challenges they face in their lives and in the lives of their loved ones. An experience I had nine years ago helped me to realize the importance of pressing toward the mark.

In 2012, as I walked for the first time into the general conference leadership meeting, I could not help feeling overwhelmed and inadequate. In my mind there was a voice persistently repeating, “You do not belong here! A serious mistake had been made!” Just as I was walking trying to find a place to sit, Elder Jeffrey R. Holland spotted me. He came to me and said, “Edward, it is good to see you here,” and he tenderly patted my face. I felt like a baby! His love and embrace warmed me up and helped me to feel the spirit of belonging, the spirit of brotherhood. On the following day, I observed Elder Holland doing the same thing he had done to me on the previous day, warmly patting then-Elder Dallin H. Oaks’s face, who is his senior!

At that moment I felt the Lord’s love through these men we sustain as prophets, seers, and revelators. Elder Holland, through his kind, natural actions, helped me to overcome my self-centeredness and my feelings of inadequacy. He helped me to focus on the sacred and joyful work to which I had been called—to bring souls to Christ. He, like Paul of old, pointed me to press toward the mark.

Interestingly, Paul is exhorting us to press forward while calling us to forget that which is behind—our past fears, our past focus, our past failures, and our past sadness. He is inviting us, just like our dear prophet, President Russell M. Nelson, to “a newer, holier approach.”5 The Savior’s promise is real: “For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it.”6

In my first general conference address, I shared an experience of my mother teaching me to work in our field. “Never look back,” she said. “Look ahead at what we still have to do.”7

Toward the end of her life, while Mother battled cancer, she lived with Naume and me. One night I heard her sobbing in her bedroom. Her pain was intense, even after taking her last daily dose of morphine only two hours earlier.

I entered her room and sobbed with her. I prayed aloud for her to receive instant relief from her pain. And then she did the same thing she had done in the field years ago: she stopped and taught me a lesson. I will never forget her face at that moment: frail, stricken, and full of pain, gazing with pity on her sorrowing son. She smiled through her tears, looked directly into my eyes, and said, “It is not up to you or anyone else, but it is up to God whether this pain will go away or not.”

General Conference Sunday Morning Session April 2021

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