Progression and achievement belong to those who have learned to use the opportunity of now. Our strides of today will determine our locations tomorrow.

We ... tend to evaluate others on the basis of physical, outward appearance: their "good looks," their social status, their family pedigrees, their degrees, or their economic situations. The Lord, however, has a different standard by which he measures a person. When it came time to choose a king to replace King Saul, the Lord gave this criteria to his prophet Samuel: "Look not on his countenance, or on the height of his stature; ... for the Lord seeth not as man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart."

Shaking off restrictive chains requires action. They cannot be wished away. A declaration will never break chains. It requires commitment, self-discipline, and work.

Greatness is best measured by how well an individual responds to the happenings in life that appear totally unfair, unreasonable, and undeserved. Sometimes we are inclined to put up with a situation rather than endure. To endure is to bear up under, to stand firm against, to suffer without yielding, to continue to be, or to exhibit the state or power of lasting.

When a mother asked her small child how he fell out of bed, he answered, "Because I wasn't in far enough." Let me just say in passing that it has been my experience that most people who fall out of the Church do so because they were not in far enough.

Undoubtedly our Heavenly Father tires of expressions of love in words only. He has made it clear through his prophets and his word that his ways are ways of commitment, and not conversation. He prefers performance over lip service. We show our true love for him in proportion to our keeping his words.

It is not so important whether a young man has been through the experience of a mission as it is whether the mission experience has been through him.