There were many talks that touched me deeply but one that truly struck a chord deep within my soul was Elder Jeffery R. Hollands talk. It was so very powerful.
In my car I have been listening to past General Conferences tapes and I heard Elder Holland talking about Peter and his great love for the Savior.
Elder Holland I believe, has a great love and appreciation for Peter.
Which now has inspired me to learn more about that great apostle.
In the talk, Elder Holland talked about the fear that came upon the disciples when they observed Christ walking upon the water towards them.
When Peter realized it was the Savior He immediately asked to come unto the Lord in which the Lord invited him to come.
"Impulsive Peter was immediately out of the boat and started walking on water towards His Lord." Impulsive struck me, because I too have an impulsive streak.
I am in hopes my impulsiveness is as great as Peter's.
Elder Holland continued that as long as Peter had his gaze fixed upon the Savior the raging waves around him did not scare him; but once he took his eyes of the Savior he started to fear and and then started to sink and then cried out to his Lord, "Save me."
The Savior immediately took his hand and lifted him up and then admonished him, "Why did you fear?"
There have been many times in my life when I have heard that same question and had that same cry.
But back to what I wanted to share.
After the Savior was crucified Elder Holland shared these thoughts:
October 2012 General
Conference
The First Great Commandment
By Elder Jeffrey R. Holland
Of the
Quorum of the Twelve Apostles
We have a life of devoted discipleship to give in demonstrating our love of the Lord.
There is almost no group in history for whom I have more sympathy
than I have for the eleven remaining Apostles immediately following the death
of the Savior of the world. I think we sometimes forget just how inexperienced
they still were and how totally dependent upon Jesus they had of necessity
been. To them He had said, “Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast
thou not known me … ?”1
But, of course, to them He hadn’t been with them nearly long
enough. Three years isn’t long to call an entire Quorum of Twelve Apostles from
a handful of new converts, purge from them the error of old ways, teach them
the wonders of the gospel of Jesus Christ, and then leave them to carry on the
work until they too were killed. Quite a staggering prospect for a group of
newly ordained elders.
Especially the part about being left alone. Repeatedly Jesus had
tried to tell them He was not going to remain physically
present with them, but they either could not or would not comprehend such a
wrenching thought. Mark writes:
“He taught his disciples, and said unto them, The Son of man is
delivered into the hands of men, and they shall kill him; and after that he is
killed, he shall rise the third day.
“But they understood not that saying, and were afraid to ask him.”2
Then, after such a short time to learn and even less time to
prepare, the unthinkable happened, the unbelievable was true. Their Lord and
Master, their Counselor and King, was crucified. His mortal ministry was over,
and the struggling little Church He had established seemed doomed to scorn and
destined for extinction. His Apostles did witness Him in His resurrected state,
but that only added to their bewilderment. As they surely must have wondered,
“What do we do now?” they turned for an answer to Peter, the senior Apostle.
Here I ask your indulgence as I take some nonscriptural liberty in
my portrayal of this exchange. In effect, Peter said to his associates:
“Brethren, it has been a glorious three years. None of us could have imagined such
a few short months ago the miracles we have seen and the divinity we have
enjoyed. We have talked with, prayed with, and labored with the very Son of God
Himself. We have walked with Him and wept with Him, and on the night of that
horrible ending, no one wept more bitterly than I. But that is over. He has
finished His work, and He has risen from the tomb. He has worked out His
salvation and ours. So you ask, ‘What do we do now?’ I don’t know more to tell
you than to return to your former life, rejoicing. I intend to ‘go a fishing.’”
And at least six of the ten other remaining Apostles said in agreement, “We
also go with thee.” John, who was one of them, writes, “They went forth, and
entered into a ship immediately.”3
But, alas, the fishing wasn’t very good. Their first night back on
the lake, they caught nothing—not a single fish. With the first rays of dawn,
they disappointedly turned toward the shore, where they saw in the distance a
figure who called out to them, “Children, have you caught anything?” Glumly
these Apostles-turned-again-fishermen gave the answer no fisherman wants to
give. “We have caught nothing,” they muttered, and to add insult to injury,
they were being called “children.”4
“Cast the net on the right side of the ship, and ye shall find,”5 the stranger calls out—and with
those simple words, recognition begins to flood over them. Just three years
earlier these very men had been fishing on this very sea. On that occasion too
they had “toiled all the night, and [had] taken nothing,”6 the scripture says. But a fellow
Galilean on the shore had called out to them to let down their nets, and they
drew “a great multitude of fishes,”7 enough that their nets broke, the
catch filling two boats so heavily they had begun to sink.
Now it was happening again. These “children,” as they were rightly
called, eagerly lowered their net, and “they were not able to draw it for the
multitude of fishes.”8 John said the obvious: “It is the
Lord.”9 And over the edge of the boat, the
irrepressible Peter leaped.
After a joyful reunion with the resurrected Jesus, Peter had an
exchange with the Savior that I consider the crucial turning point of the
apostolic ministry generally and certainly for Peter personally, moving this
great rock of a man to a majestic life of devoted service and leadership.
Looking at their battered little boats, their frayed nets, and a stunning pile
of 153 fish, Jesus said to His senior Apostle, “Peter, do you love me more than
you love all this?” Peter said, “Yea, Lord; thou knowest that I love thee.”10
The Savior responds to that reply but continues to look into the
eyes of His disciple and says again, “Peter, do you love me?” Undoubtedly
confused a bit by the repetition of the question, the great fisherman answers a
second time, “The Savior again gives a brief response, but with relentless
scrutiny He asks for the third time, “Peter, do you love me?” By now surely
Peter is feeling truly uncomfortable. Perhaps there is in his heart the memory
of only a few days earlier when he had been asked another question three times
and he had answered equally emphatically—but in the negative. Or perhaps he
began to wonder if he misunderstood the Master Teacher’s question. Or perhaps
he was searching his heart, seeking honest confirmation of the answer he had
given so readily, almost automatically. Whatever his feelings, Peter said for
the third time, “Lord, … thou knowest that I love thee.”12
To which Jesus responded (and here again I acknowledge my
nonscriptural elaboration), perhaps saying something like: “Then Peter, why are
you here? Why are we back on this same shore, by these same nets, having this
same conversation? Wasn’t it obvious then and isn’t it obvious now that if I
want fish, I can get fish? What I need, Peter, are disciples—and I need them
forever. I need someone to feed my sheep and save my lambs. I need someone to
preach my gospel and defend my faith. I need someone who loves me, truly, truly
loves me, and loves what our Father in Heaven has commissioned me to do. Ours
is not a feeble message. It is not a fleeting task. It is not hapless; it is
not hopeless; it is not to be consigned to the ash heap of history. It is the
work of Almighty God, and it is to change the world. So, Peter, for the second
and presumably the last time, I am asking you to leave all this and to go teach
and testify, labor and serve loyally until the day in which they will do to you
exactly what they did to me.”
Then, turning to all the Apostles, He might well have said
something like: “Were you as foolhardy as the scribes and Pharisees? As Herod
and Pilate? Did you, like they, think that this work could be killed simply by
killing me? Did you, like they, think the cross and the nails and the tomb were
the end of it all and each could blissfully go back to being whatever you were
before? Children, did not my life and my love touch your hearts more deeply
than this?”
My beloved brothers and sisters, I am not certain just what our
experience will be on Judgment Day, but I will be very surprised if at some
point in that conversation, God does not ask us exactly what Christ asked
Peter: “Did you love me?” I think He will want to know if in our very mortal,
very inadequate, and sometimes childish grasp of things, did we at least
understand one commandment, the first and greatest commandment
of them all—“Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all
thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind.”13 And if at such a moment we can
stammer out, “Yea, Lord, thou knowest that I love thee,” then He may remind us
that the crowning characteristic of love is always loyalty.
“If ye love me, keep my commandments,”14 Jesus said. So we have neighbors to
bless, children to protect, the poor to lift up, and the truth to defend. We
have wrongs to make right, truths to share, and good to do. In short, we have a
life of devoted discipleship to give in demonstrating our love of the Lord. We
can’t quit and we can’t go back. After an encounter with the living Son of the
living God, nothing is ever again to be as it was before. The Crucifixion,
Atonement, and Resurrection of Jesus Christ mark the beginning of a Christian
life, not the end of it. It was this truth, this reality, that allowed a
handful of Galilean fishermen-turned-again-Apostles without “a single synagogue
or sword”15 to leave those nets a second time
and go on to shape the history of the world in which we now live.
I testify from the bottom of my heart, with the intensity of my
soul, to all who can hear my voice that those apostolic keys have been restored
to the earth, and they are found in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day
Saints. To those who have not yet joined with us in this great final cause of
Christ, we say, “Please come.” To those who were once with us but have
retreated, preferring to pick and choose a few cultural hors d’oeuvres from the
smorgasbord of the Restoration and leave the rest of the feast, I say that I
fear you face a lot of long nights and empty nets. The call is to come back, to
stay true, to love God, and to lend a hand. I include in that call to fixed
faithfulness every returned missionary who ever stood in a baptismal font and
with arm to the square said, “Having been commissioned of Jesus Christ.”16 That commission was to have changed
your convert forever, but it was surely supposed to have changed you forever as
well. To the youth of the Church rising up to missions and temples and
marriage, we say: “Love God and remain clean from the blood and sins of this
generation. You have a monumental work to do, underscored by that marvelous
announcement President Thomas S. Monson made yesterday morning. Your Father
in Heaven expects your loyalty and your love at every stage of your life.”
To all within the sound of my voice, the voice of Christ comes
ringing down through the halls of time, asking each one of us while there is
time, “Do you love me?” And for every one of us, I answer with my honor and my
soul, “Yea, Lord, we do love thee.” And having set our “hand to the plough,”17 we will never look back until this
work is finished and love of God and neighbor rules the world. In the name of
Jesus Christ, amen.
I listened to this talk and was overwhelmed by the passion in Elder Holland's voice. It rocked me to the very core of my soul and got me to thinking would I be stammering when the Lord looked me directly in the eye and asked, "Lorie, lovest thou me more than these?" Or could I like Peter look the Lord directly in the eye and answer, "Yay Lord, thou knowest I lovest thee"'
It is my hope that each and everyday my actions and examples show my Lord and God that I do indeed love him more than these.
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