27. Devoting Our Best Efforts

A bishopric message that appeared in the November 1999 issue of the Bountiful Twentieth Ward Newsette.

In a message addressed earlier this year to members of the Church throughout the world, the First Presidency wrote, “We call upon parents to devote their best efforts to teaching and rearing of their children in gospel principles which will keep them close to the Church.” This same statement was repeated in a second letter just last month.

The commandment to teach and rear children is not new. Parents have always had that responsibility (see, for example, D&C 68:25–28; 93:40–49; and Mosiah 4:14–15). Our prophets seem to sense some urgency, however, in our getting about the task. “We counsel parents and children,” the First Presidency continued in both their February 1999 and October 1999 letters, “to give highest priority to family prayer, family home evening, gospel study and instruction, and wholesome family activities.”

In the February letter, they also added, “However worthy and appropriate other demands or activities may be, they must not be permitted to displace the divinely-appointed duties that only parents and families can adequately perform.”

We are to give highest priority to these things. There are some things that only parents and families can perform to survive what must surely lie ahead and to go where the Lord wants us to go as we enter the new century and the new millennium. Both parents and children need to be wise in not letting other activities and demands, however worthy and appropriate they may seem, divert them from focusing on these stated family duties (family prayer, family home evening, gospel study and instruction, and wholesome family activities).

“Husbands and wives—fathers and mothers—will be held accountable before God for the discharge of these obligations,” we read in the proclamation on the family. “We warn that individuals . . . who fail to fulfill family responsibilities will one day stand accountable before God.”

As we approach the holiday season, may each of us may find the joy, happiness, and fulfillment in our family associations that the Lord intends us to enjoy. May we take our leaders’ counsel seriously when they call upon us to give these things our highest priority. And may the Lord bless us as we do so.