A Life Founded in Light and Truth | Henry B. Eyring, Aug 2000

The simple principles of agency, opposition, and obedience can help us teach our youth and fill our lives, and theirs, with ever-growing light and truth.

This speech was given on August 15, 2000.

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I am grateful to be with you at the start of this Education Week. All those who have made the arrangements and those who will teach and perform deserve our praise and thanks. I am grateful for your attendance, which for many required substantial sacrifice. And I offer my thanks and admiration to those who have taken time to participate at a distance through what seems to be an unending stream of the miracles of electronic communication. We welcome you warmly.

One glance at the newspaper or at the television tells us that we live in stormy times. One thought of our families grips our hearts with concern for the forces of error that beat upon them. All of us know that we must build our lives on a solid foundation of truth to be safe. And we are under covenant to be witnesses of truth to others as long as we may live. It won’t protect them just to have our witness of truth unless they build their lives on it. So there are few questions as important as this one: “How does a person build a life founded on truth?” It won’t surprise you that the answer is simple enough for a child to understand, but that applying it is easy only for a person who has the heart of a child.

Jesus Christ answered the question of how to build on a foundation of truth with a story. You not only can remember it, but you can visualize it—especially if you’ve ever lived in a floodplain or in tornado country:

Therefore whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock:

And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not: for it was founded upon a rock.

And every one that heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man, which built his house upon the sand:

And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell: and great was the fall of it. [Matthew 7:24–27]

A Foundation of Truth

Obedience to commandments is the way we build a foundation of truth. Here is the way that works, in words that are so simple a child could understand. The truth of most worth is to know God our Heavenly Father, His Son Jesus Christ, and Their plan for us to have eternal life with them in families. When God communicates that priceless truth to us, He does it by the Spirit of Truth. We have to ask for it in prayer. Then He sends us a small part of that truth by the Spirit. It comes to our hearts and minds. It feels good, like the light from the sun shining through the clouds on a dark day. He sends truth line upon line, like the lines on the page of a book. Each time a line of truth comes to us, we get to choose what we will do about the light and truth God has sent to us. If we try hard to do what that truth requires of us, God will send more light and more truth. It will go on, line after line, as long as we choose to obey the truth. That is why the Savior said that the man who obeyed His commandments built on a rock so solid that no storm or flood could hurt his house.

In another place in the scriptures, the Lord described in a beautiful way how that foundation could be built so that we could finally come to know all He knows and become like Him and our Heavenly Father. Listen to His words. His words are truth. And listen to see if something comes into your mind that you should do, because these words are true.

I give unto you these sayings that you may understand and know how to worship, and know what you worship, that you may come unto the Father in my name, and in due time receive of his fulness.

For if you keep my commandments you shall receive of his fulness, and be glorified in me as I am in the Father; therefore, I say unto you, you shall receive grace for grace. [D&C 93:19–20]

And then a few verses later the Lord says:

And truth is knowledge of things as they are, and as they were, and as they are to come;

And whatsoever is more or less than this is the spirit of that wicked one who was a liar from the beginning...

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