Elder David A. Bednar | We Will Prove Them Herewith | General Conference Oct 2020 | Faith To Act

We Will Prove Them Herewith
(Abraham 3:25)

By Elder David A. Bednar

Of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles

Now is the time to prepare and prove ourselves willing and able to do all things whatsoever the Lord our God shall command us.

I pray for the assistance of the Holy Ghost for all of us as I share the thoughts and feelings that have come to my mind and heart in preparation for this general conference.

The Importance of Tests
For more than two decades before my call to full-time Church service, I worked as a university teacher and administrator. My primary responsibility as a teacher was to help students learn how to learn for themselves. And a vital element of my work was creating, grading, and providing feedback about student performance on tests. As you may already know from personal experience, tests typically are not the part of the learning process that students like the most!

But periodic tests absolutely are essential to learning. An effective test helps us to compare what we need to know with what we actually know about a specific subject; it also provides a standard against which we can evaluate our learning and development.

Likewise, tests in the school of mortality are a vital element of our eternal progression. Interestingly, however, the word test is not found even one time in the scriptural text of the standard works in English. Rather, words such as prove, examine, and try are used to describe various patterns of demonstrating appropriately our spiritual knowledge about, understanding of, and devotion to our Heavenly Father’s eternal plan of happiness and our capacity to seek for the blessings of the Savior’s Atonement.

He who authored the plan of salvation described the very purpose of our mortal probation using the words prove, examine, and try in ancient and modern scripture. “And we will prove them herewith, to see if they will do all things whatsoever the Lord their God shall command them.”1

Consider this pleading by the Psalmist David:

“Examine me, O Lord, and prove me; try my reins and my heart.

“For thy lovingkindness is before mine eyes: and I have walked in thy truth.”2

And the Lord declared in 1833, “Therefore, be not afraid of your enemies, for I have decreed in my heart, saith the Lord, that I will prove you in all things, whether you will abide in my covenant, even unto death, that you may be found worthy.”3

Present-Day Proving and Trying
The year 2020 has been marked, in part, by a global pandemic that has proved, examined, and tried us in many ways. I pray that we as individuals and families are learning the valuable lessons that only challenging experiences can teach us. I also hope that all of us will more fully acknowledge the “greatness of God” and the truth that “he shall consecrate [our] afflictions for [our] gain.”4

Two basic principles can guide and strengthen us as we face proving and trying circumstances in our lives, whatever they may be: (1) the principle of preparation and (2) the principle of pressing forward with a steadfastness in Christ.

Proving and Preparation
As disciples of the Savior, we are commanded to “prepare every needful thing; and establish a house, even a house of prayer, a house of fasting, a house of faith, a house of learning, a house of glory, a house of order, a house of God.”5

We also are promised that “if ye are prepared ye shall not fear.

“And that ye might escape the power of the enemy, and be gathered unto me a righteous people, without spot and blameless.”6

These scriptures provide a perfect framework for organizing and preparing our lives and homes both temporally and spiritually. Our efforts to prepare for the proving experiences of mortality should follow the example of the Savior, who incrementally “increased in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man”7—a blended balance of intellectual, physical, spiritual, and social readiness.

On an afternoon a few months ago, Susan and I inventoried our food storage and emergency supplies. At the time, COVID-19 was spreading rapidly, and a series of earthquakes had jolted our home in Utah. We have worked since the earliest days of our marriage to follow prophetic counsel about preparing for unforeseen challenges, so “examining” our state of readiness in the midst of the virus and earthquakes seemed like a good and timely thing to do. We wanted to find out our grades on these unannounced tests.

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