How to Prepare for Conference
·
Learning from General
Conference Messages
·
“5 Steps for Making
Conference Stay with You”
·
“Ideas to Prepare to
Participate in General Conference”
The
purpose of this and every general conference is to help us to hear Him. We have
prayed, and invite you to pray, that the Spirit of the Lord will be with us in
such rich abundance that you can hear the messages that the Savior has
especially for you—messages that will bring peace to your soul. Messages that
will heal your broken heart. Messages that will illuminate your mind. Messages
that will help you know what to do as you move ahead through times of turmoil
and trial.
President
Russell M. Nelson, April 2021
As
we listen to the messages that have been carefully prepared by our leaders
under the direction of the Holy Ghost, I invite you to pray to identify the
debris you should remove from your life so you can become more worthy.
President
Russell M. Nelson, October 2021
I
invite you to listen for three things during this conference: pure truth, the
pure doctrine of Christ, and pure revelation. Pure revelation for the questions
in your heart will make this conference rewarding and unforgettable. If you
have not yet sought for the ministering of the Holy Ghost to help you hear what
the Lord would have you hear during these two days, I invite you to do so now.
Please make this conference a time of feasting on messages from the Lord
through His servants. Learn how to apply them in your life.
President
Henry B. Eyring, Trust in God, Then Go and Do,” Oct. 2010
Your needs are great
and varied. Each of you is a unique child of God. God knows you individually.
He sends messages of encouragement, correction, and direction fitted to you and
to your needs.
Elder
Anderson, Facebook and Instagram, 2020 and 2022
We are looking forward to #GeneralConference in just a few days. We look
forward to being with you. It will be a time of great rejoicing and great
revelation, and I promise you that you will get answers you need as you prepare
yourself for this important time.
I invite you to prepare yourself for a marvelous
general conference with the three suggestions in this video. I express my love
and my great happiness at being with you soon.
Let me give
you three quick suggestions. First of all, be very prayerful as you go into
these next few days. Think about the things that most concern you, you might write
them down, then pray to our Heavenly Father in the name of Jesus Christ that
answers can be provided. It won’t be so much of what is said as what you feel.
Next, as you
attend the conference, don’t be casual in this attendance. Think about it as if
you are going to have an interview with a very important person. Get prepared
for it. Think about the time. Don’t just come up and down, run into the next
room and get some popcorn. This is very serious and can be very helpful to you.
The final
thing I would recommend is that as you listen take notes, not so much as you
would if you were in a school room, but notes that come into your mind,
thoughts, impressions that come.
Then after
the conference is over when you go back and read these talks again, read them
realizing that the Lord may give you more: more impressions, more important
things for your life.
Ponder questions you need answers to
Elder
Bednar, Facebook and Instagram 2022
We are on the eve of another general conference. I’d like to
make just one suggestion for you to consider that can greatly increase the impact
of this conference in your life. Have questions in your mind and in your heart.
As you exercise faith in the Lord as you formulate and consider those questions,
and as you actively listen by the power of the Holy Ghost, you will receive the
answers that you need.
President
Dieter F. Uchtdorf, “General Conference—No Ordinary
Blessing,” Ensign, Sept. 2011
There are messages
in each general conference as a gift and a blessing from heaven specifically
for our personal life situations. As you prepare for general conference, I
invite you to ponder questions you need to have answered. For example, you
might yearn for direction and guidance by the Lord regarding challenges you are
facing.
Answers to your
specific prayers may come directly from a particular talk or from a specific
phrase. At other times answers may come in a seemingly unrelated word, phrase,
or song. A heart filled with gratitude for the blessings of life and an earnest
desire to hear and follow the words of counsel will prepare the way for
personal revelation
Plan to listen with intent and then act
President
Eyring “Trust in God, Then Go and Do”
You
show your trust in [God] when you listen with the intent to learn and repent
and then you go and do whatever He asks. If you trust God enough to listen for
His message in every sermon, song, and prayer in this conference, you will find
it. And if you then go and do what He would have you do, your power to trust
Him will grow, and in time you will be overwhelmed with gratitude to find that
He has come to trust you.
Review past general conference messages.
President
Dieter F. Uchtdorf
The
more we treasure the words of the prophets and apply them, the better we will
recognize when we are drifting off course—even if only by a matter of a few
degrees.
Prepare as the prophets do
Elder
Robert D. Hales, “Personal Revelation: The
Teachings and Examples of the Prophets,” Oct. 2007
We prepare to
receive personal revelation as the prophets do, by studying the scriptures,
fasting, praying, and building faith. Faith is the key. Prophets receive
personal revelations to help them in their own lives and in directing the
earthly affairs of the Church. Our responsibility is to seek personal
revelations for ourselves and for the responsibilities the Lord has given us. By
unwavering faith, we learn for ourselves that “it is by faith that miracles are
wrought.”
Generally, those
miracles will not be physical demonstrations of God’s power—parting of the Red
Sea, raising of the dead, breaking down prison walls, or the appearance of
heavenly messengers. By design, most miracles are spiritual demonstrations of
God’s power—tender mercies gently bestowed through impressions, ideas, feelings
of assurance, solutions to problems, strength to meet challenges, and comfort
to bear disappointments and sorrow.
These miracles come
to us as we endure what the scriptures call a “trial of [our] faith.” Sometimes
that trial is the time it takes before an answer is received.
Identify the doctrine or principle being taught, find
invitations to act, and recognize the promised blessings
Learn Elder Bednar’s pattern for studying conference
messages —doctrine, invitations, blessings
Doctrine taught.
Invitations to act. Promised blessings.
Identifying and
applying the pattern of those three connected elements can bless individuals as
they prepare for, listen to and study messages from Apostles and Prophets given
during general conference, said Elder David A. Bednar of the Quorum of the Twelve
Apostles.
“The basic pattern is
to identify the fundamental doctrine or principle that is being taught, find
invitations to act related to that doctrine or principle, and then also
recognize the promised blessings that will come as we act in accordance with
that invitation,” he said.
In an interview
leading up to the 191st Annual General Conference of The Church of Jesus Christ
of Latter-day Saints, Elder Bednar recalled earlier Church presidents —
including President Harold B. Lee and President Spencer W. Kimball — teaching
that conference messages should serve as an important guide in our lives until
the next general conference.
