Your Potential, Your Privilege

by President Dieter F. Uchtdorf (priesthood session)

• As priesthood holders, we live below our privileges when it comes to sacred power, gifts, and blessings that are our opportunity and right as bearers of God's priesthood.
• The fact that our Heavenly Father would entrust this power and responsibility to man is evidence of his great love for us and a foreshadowing of our potential as sons of God in the hereafter.
• In our daily lives, there may be little evidence that our understanding goes beyond the level of a rehearsed script.
• As you read the scriptures and listen to the words of the prophets with all your heart and mind, the Lord will tell you how to live up to your priesthood privileges. Don't let a day go by without doing something to act on the promptings of the Spirit.
• It is only when you study the owner's manual, learn how to use the software, and turn on the power that you can access its full potential.
• Read the scriptures and handbooks with more purpose and more focus.
• We rightfully place high priority on secular learning and vocational development. We want and we must excel in scholarship and craftsmanship. I invite you to also become experts in the doctrines of the gospel--especially the doctrine of the priesthood.
• The more we study the doctrine and potential and apply the practical purpose of the priesthood, the more our souls will be expanded and our understanding enlarged, and we will see what the Lord has in store for us.
• If we are not seeking to use this channel of revelation (the priesthood), we are living beneath our priesthood privileges.
• Let us plead with the Lord to endow our mind and soul with the spark of faith that will enable us to receive and recognize the divine ministering of the Holy Spirit for our specific life situations and for our challenges and priesthood duties.
• Going through the motions as a priesthood bearer: doing what is expected but not experiencing the joy that should be yours.
• If coming to church early to help prepare the sacrament feels more like a hardship than a blessing, then I invite you to think about what this sacred ordinance might mean to a ward member who perhaps has had a challenging week. If your home teaching efforts don't seem to be effective to you, I invite you to see with the eye of faith what a visit from a servant of the Lord will do for a family that has many unseen problems.
  

For the complete talk, go here.