Spiritual Quotes from Some Men who Know More than I do

Family:

Children need the emotional and personal strength that come from being raised by two parents who are united in their marriage and their goals.

-Dallin H Oaks October 2012

As you look to your parents and others who have gone before you, you will find examples of faith, commitment, hard work, dedication, and sacrifice that you should strive to duplicate.

One of the great lessons of this historical pattern is that our choices, both individually and collectively, do result in spiritual consequences for ourselves and for our posterity.

-M Russell Ballard April 2009 

The Savior has made it clear that we are not to judge each other. This is especially true of members of our own families. Our obligation is to love and teach and never give up.

-Quentin L Cook, April 2009, Our Father's Plan-Big Enough for All His Children

Teach your children to live moral, righteous lives and walk uprightly before the Lord... it is essential that this be faithfully accomplished in homes which are places of refuge where kindness, forgiveness, truth, and righteousness prevail.

-Quentin L. October, 2012, Cook Can Ye Feel So Now?

 And as each of us becomes more fully converted, we will strengthen our families, our friends, and our associates.

-David A Bednar October 2012 "Converted unto the Lord"

We have much to do to strengthen marriage in societies that increasingly trivialize its importance and purpose. We have much to do to teach our children “to pray, and to walk uprightly before the Lord

-D Todd Christofferson October 2012 Brethren, We Have Work to Do

To receive the blessings of the sealing that our Heavenly Father has given to us, we have to keep the commandments and conduct ourselves in such a way that our families will want to live with us in the eternities. The family relationships we have here on this earth are important, but they are much more important for their effect on our families for generations in mortality and throughout all eternity.

-Robert D Hales, October 1996, The Eternal Family

In a world of turmoil and uncertainty, it is more important than ever to make our families the center of our lives and the top of our priorities. Families lie at the center of our Heavenly Father’s plan.

-L Tom Perry, April 2003, The Importance of the Family

 Parents who place a high priority on their families will gravitate to the Church because it offers the family structure, values, doctrine, and eternal perspective that they seek and cannot find elsewhere.

-M Russell Ballard October 2005, What Matters Most is What Lasts Longest

The ultimate purpose of the adversary, who has “great wrath, because he knoweth that he hath but a short time,”  is to disrupt, disturb, and destroy the home and the family. Like a ship without a rudder, without a compass, we drift from the family values which have anchored us in the past. Now we are caught in a current so strong that unless we correct our course, civilization as we know it will surely be wrecked to pieces.

-Boyd K Packer, April 1994, The Father and the Family

I love my family, and I am so grateful that I get to be with them for time and all eternity. Family can be the source of ultimate joy, and general human experience. It may get challenging at times, to live with the same people for many years, but in the end, it's worth it. I would not be the person I am today without my family. God created families for a great purpose, and one day I hope to have my very own. 

Atonement:

They can put behind them bad habits. They can repent from transgressions. They can bear the priesthood worthily. And they can serve the Lord diligently.

-President Thomas S. Monson See Others as They May Become October 2012 address

If you have made no mistakes, then you do not need the Atonement. If you have made mistakes, and all of us have, whether minor or serious, then you have an enormous need to find out how they can be erased so that you are no longer in darkness.

- Boyd K Packer The Atonement

 When our commitment is diminished for any reason, part of the solution is repentance. Commitment and repentance are closely intertwined.

-Quentin L. October, 2012, Cook Can Ye Feel So Now?

"While he causes havoc today, Satan’s final destiny was fixed by Jesus Christ through His Atonement and the Resurrection. The devil will not triumph. Even now he must operate within the bounds set by the Lord. He cannot take away any blessing that has been earned."

-Richard G. Scott The Transforming Power of Faith and Character Oct. 2010

"He knows what is required, and so, to make our transformation possible, He provides His commandments and covenants, the gift of the Holy Ghost, and most important, the Atonement and Resurrection of His Beloved Son."

-D Todd Christofferson April 2011, As Many as I Love, I Rebuke and Chasten

Throughout His life the Savior gave of His time, His energy, and ultimately, through the Atonement, gave Himself so that all of God’s children could be resurrected and have the opportunity to inherit eternal life.

-Robert D Hales Being a More Christian Christian Oct 2012

But if we do sin, however serious that sin may be, we can be rescued by that same majestic figure, He who bears the only name given under heaven whereby any man or woman can be saved. When confronting our transgressions and our souls are harrowed up with true pain, may we all echo the repentant Alma and utter his life-changing cry: “O Jesus, thou Son of God, have mercy on me."

-Jeffrey R Holland April 2010 Place no more for the Enemy of my Soul

Understanding that faith is a principle of action and of power inspires us to exercise our moral agency in compliance with gospel truth, invites the redeeming and strengthening powers of the Savior’s Atonement into our lives, and enlarges the power within us whereby we are agents unto ourselves

-David A Bednar April 2008 Ask in Faith

 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?

-Jeffrey R Holland October 2012 The First Great Commandment

 For any whose lives are not in order, remember, it is never too late to make the Savior’s Atonement the foundation of our faith and lives.

-Quentin L Cook October 2012, Can Ye Feel So Now?

The power of the atonement is real. I don't know how or why it works, no scientist will ever be able to explain the physics of it to me, but I know it was the power which comes from the sacrifice of the Savior in the atonement that guilt and regret was removed from me. The events still happened, but what changed was my attitude towards those events. The atonement enabled me to move forward with faith and hope despite my past failure.