記住啊，記住
亨利‧艾寧會長
總會會長團第二副會長
摩爾門經的先知經常呼籲：「記住啊，記住」。1我說這些事的用意，是鼓勵你找出方法來認出並記住神的仁慈。
我 們的孩子還很小的時候，我就開始把每天發生的一些事寫下來。讓我來告訴你們這是怎麼開始的。有一天我做完教會的事工回家時，時間已經很晚了。我朝著家門 走，很意外地遇到了住在附近的岳父。他穿著工作服，快步走著，肩上扛了幾根管子。我知道他在建造一個抽水系統，要把我們家山坡下的河水抽送到我們家裡。
他面帶微笑，說話親切溫和，與我匆匆擦身而過，就消失在黑暗中，繼續做他的工作。我往家門走了幾步，想著他為我們做的這件事，一走到門口，就聽到腦海裡有個聲音──不是我自己的聲音──說：「這些經歷不是你自己知道就好了，把這些事寫下來。」
我 走進屋裡，雖然很疲憊，但沒有去睡。我拿出幾張紙來開始寫。在寫的時候，我明白了剛才在腦海裡聽到的那項信息。我應該為孩子們記錄這些事，留待他們日後閱 讀，讓他們知道我曾經看到過神的手祝福我們的家庭。外公大可不必為我們做這些事，他可以請別人做，或者根本不必做。但是他在為我們這些家人服務，這是與神 立約的耶穌基督門徒的一貫作為。我知道那是真的，於是把這些事寫下來，好讓孩子們在將來需要時可以記得這件事。
我每 天都會寫幾行，持續寫了許多年。不論有多疲憊，也不論隔天要多早出門，我沒有一天中斷過。每次動筆前，我會思考這個問題：「今天我看到神的手影響我們、我 們的孩子或我們的家庭了嗎？」我持續不斷地思考，奇妙的事就發生了。我回想著當天的情形時，總會看見一些證據，顯示神施助了家中某個人，而那是我當天在匆 忙時所沒有看出來的。當這種情形發生（其實這經常發生）時，我了解到，只要努力去記住，神就會向我顯示祂所做過的事。
我不僅內心的感激之情油然而生，見證也成長了。我更確信天父會垂聽並回答禱告，也更感激由於救主耶穌基督的贖罪，使人們的心變得柔和、純淨。我更相信聖靈能使我們想起一切的事 ──甚至是我們在當下沒有注意到或忽略的事。
歲月流逝，我的幾個兒子如今都已長大成人。偶而他們之中有人會讓我感到驚喜，說道：「爸，我在讀自己以前的日記，那時候……。」然後他會告訴我，閱讀這些陳年往事，讓他注意到神當時所做的事情。
我 說這些事的用意，是鼓勵你找出方法來認出並記住神的仁慈。這會培養我們的見證。你也許不寫日記，也許不會把自己寫下的紀錄與所愛及服務的人分享。但是你和 他們都會因你記住主所做過的事而蒙受祝福。你們可能還記得我們有時候會唱出：「若把主的恩典從頭數一數，必能叫你快樂立時讚美主。」2
要記住並不容易。今生我們的雙眼被帷幕遮住，無法記得前生與天父及其愛子耶穌基督在一起的情形；也無法以肉眼看見神對我們生活的影響，或僅憑邏輯思考來理解此事。要看見這些事，必須有聖靈與我們同在。在邪惡的世界中，要配稱擁有聖靈為伴並非易事。
這 就是為何從太初以來，忘記神始終是一個普遍存在於祂兒女中的問題。想想在摩西時代，神供應了嗎哪，並以奇妙且顯而易見的方式帶領及保護祂的兒女。不過，先 知依然警告這群備受祝福的人民，正如過去和未來眾先知都會做的那樣：「你只要謹慎，殷勤保守你的心靈，免得忘記你親眼所看見的事，又免得你一生、這事離開 你的心。」3
對 於那些蒙受豐盛祝福的人來說，「記住」始終是最困難的挑戰。對神忠信的人會受到保護及昌盛，這都來自於為神服務及遵守祂的誡命。但在蒙得那些祝福後，隨之 而來的誘惑則是忘記那些祝福的源頭。我們很容易開始覺得那些祝福不是我們所倚靠的那位慈愛之神所賜的，而是憑著自己的力量獲得的。眾先知一再地發出如此的 悲嘆：
「由此可以看出，人類兒女的心多麼虛偽不定；是的，也可見主以祂偉大無限的良善，祝福所有信靠祂的人，使他們昌盛。
「是 的，我們可以知道，每次祂使祂的人民昌盛時，是的，就是加增他們的田地、他們的牲口，和金子、銀子以及各式各樣的寶物；饒恕他們的性命，拯救他們脫離敵人 的手；軟化敵人的心，不向他們宣戰；是的，總之，祂為祂人民的福祉與幸福做了一切的時候，是的，那就是他們硬起心來，忘記主他們的神，並將聖者放在腳下踐 踏的時候，是的，這是因為他們生活安逸和極度昌盛之故。
先知繼續說道：
「是的，他們多麼迅於自負，是的，多麼迅於誇耀和做各樣的惡事；多麼遲於記起主他們的神，不側耳聽祂的忠告，是的，多麼遲於走在智慧的道路上！」4
可 悲的是，昌盛繁榮並不是人們忘記神的唯一原因；當我們的生活不順遂（有不少人是如此），也很難記得祂。當我們經濟困頓，被敵人擊倒，或者疾病無法治癒，我 們靈魂的敵人便會傳送邪惡的信息，說世上沒有神，或說即使神存在，祂也不在乎我們。之後聖靈可能很難讓我們記住從出生以來以及在困難的時刻中，主在我們一 生中所賜與的各種祝福。
要醫治這種忘記神、祂的祝福及祂給我們的信息的可怕疾病，有一個簡單的方法。耶穌基督在祂即將被釘十字架、復活，並從他們之中被帶走，在榮耀中升天回到天父那裡之前，祂向門徒應許了這個方法。他們很憂心，想知道當祂不在他們身邊時，他們要如何持守下去。
這就是那應許，這應許當時已為他們應驗了，如今也會為我們所有人而應驗：
「我還與你們同住的時候，已將這些話對你們說了。
「但保惠師，就是父因我的名所要差來的聖靈，祂要將一切的事指教你們，並且要叫你們想起我對你們所說的一切話。」5
能夠記住而得以增長及保持見證，其關鍵就在於獲得聖靈為伴。聖靈將幫助我們看出神為我們做過的事；聖靈也能幫助我們的服務對象看出神為他們做過的事。
天 父已賜給我們一個簡單的模式來獲得聖靈，並非只能獲得一次，而是在我們混亂的日常生活中可以持續地獲得。這個模式在聖餐祈禱文中一再地被提起：我們承諾要 一直記得救主，我們承諾要承受祂的名，我們承諾要遵守祂的誡命，於是我們能蒙得應許，只要我們這麼做，就會有祂的靈與我們同在。6那些承諾會以一種奇妙的方式鞏固我們的見證，並且只要我們信守自己做過的承諾，最後就能透過贖罪改變我們的性情。
聖 靈見證耶穌基督是天父的愛子，天父愛我們，祂希望我們與祂共享永生的家庭生活。即使那項見證才剛萌芽，我們會有渴望去事奉祂並遵守祂的誡命。只要持之以 恆，就會獲得聖靈的各項恩賜，讓我們在服務時獲得力量。我們會愈來愈清楚地看到神的影響力，使得我們最後不僅能記住祂、敬愛祂，還能透過贖罪的力量變得更 像祂。
你也許會問：「但是對於完全不認識神而且自稱不記得有過任何屬靈經驗的人，該如何開始這個過程呢？」每個人都有屬靈的經驗，只是某些人尚未察覺出來。每個來到世上的人，都已獲賜基督的靈。在摩羅乃書裡說明了基督的靈是如何運作的：
「因為看啊，基督的靈已賜給每一個人，使他們能分辨善惡，所以，我告訴你們判斷的方法；每一樣邀人為善並勸人信基督的事物，都是藉基督的大能和恩賜差來的，所以你們可以完全知道那是屬於神的。
「任何勸人作惡、不信基督、否認祂、不服事神的事物，你們就可以完全知道那是屬於魔鬼的，因為魔鬼就是這樣做事的，他不勸任何人為善，不，不勸任何人；他的使者這樣，臣服於他的人也是這樣。……
「所以，弟兄們，我懇求你們在基督的光中努力探求，使你們能分辨善惡；如果你們接受每一樣美好的事物，不加以指責，你們一定會成為基督的孩子。」7
所 以，即使人們在接受證實成為教友而有權利獲得聖靈的恩賜之前，即使聖靈在他們尚未受洗時向他們證實真理之前，他們都有過屬靈的經驗。自他們童年時期起，基 督的靈就已邀請他們行善並警告他們抗拒邪惡。即使他們不知道這些經驗源自何處，他們仍對這些經驗有記憶。一旦他們聽到傳教士或我們向他們教導神的話語，他 們將重拾這些記憶。他們會記得學習福音真理時的那種快樂或悲傷的心情。對基督之靈的那項記憶會使人內心軟化，能讓聖靈向他們作見證。那會引導他們遵守誡命 並且願意承受救主的名。當他們付諸行動，走進了洗禮的水中，並且在證實禮中聽見蒙神授權的僕人說出「接受聖靈」這幾個字時，他們一直記住神的能力必會增 強。
我向各位見證，你們在這次大會聆聽演講者所說的真理時所得到的溫暖感覺，是從聖靈而來的。應許聖靈會來的這位救主，正是天父榮耀的愛子。
今 晚及明天晚上，你們可以祈禱、沉思並問這個問題：神是否特地向我發出了信息？我是否看到了祂的手影響我的生活，或我子女的生活？我會那麼做。我會找出方法 來記住當天的回憶，因為將來有一天我和我所愛的人會需要記住神是多麼愛我們，我們是多麼需要祂。我見證祂愛我們、賜福給我們，遠多過我們大多數人所察覺 的。我知道此事千真萬確，記住祂會為我帶來喜樂。奉耶穌基督的名，阿們。
註：
1. 摩賽亞書2：41；阿爾瑪書37：13；希拉曼書5：9。
2. 「計算恩典」，聖詩選輯，第149首。
3. 申命記4：9。
4. 希拉曼書12：1-2，5。
5. 約翰福音14：25-26。
6. 見教約20：77，79。
7. 摩羅乃書7：16-17，19。
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O Remember, Remember
President Henry B. Eyring
Second Counselor in the First Presidency
“O remember, remember,” Book of Mormon prophets often implored.1 My point is to urge you to find ways to recognize and remember God’s kindness.
When our children were very small, I started to write down a few things about what happened every day. Let me tell you how that got started. I came home late from a Church assignment. It was after dark. My father-in-law, who lived near us, surprised me as I walked toward the front door of my house. He was carrying a load of pipes over his shoulder, walking very fast and dressed in his work clothes. I knew that he had been building a system to pump water from a stream below us up to our property.
He smiled, spoke softly, and then rushed past me into the darkness to go on with his work. I took a few steps toward the house, thinking of what he was doing for us, and just as I got to the door, I heard in my mind—not in my own voice—these words: “I’m not giving you these experiences for yourself. Write them down.”
I went inside. I didn’t go to bed. Although I was tired, I took out some paper and began to write. And as I did, I understood the message I had heard in my mind. I was supposed to record for my children to read, someday in the future, how I had seen the hand of God blessing our family. Grandpa didn’t have to do what he was doing for us. He could have had someone else do it or not have done it at all. But he was serving us, his family, in the way covenant disciples of Jesus Christ always do. I knew that was true. And so I wrote it down, so that my children could have the memory someday when they would need it.
I wrote down a few lines every day for years. I never missed a day no matter how tired I was or how early I would have to start the next day. Before I would write, I would ponder this question: “Have I seen the hand of God reaching out to touch us or our children or our family today?” As I kept at it, something began to happen. As I would cast my mind over the day, I would see evidence of what God had done for one of us that I had not recognized in the busy moments of the day. As that happened, and it happened often, I realized that trying to remember had allowed God to show me what He had done.
More than gratitude began to grow in my heart. Testimony grew. I became ever more certain that our Heavenly Father hears and answers prayers. I felt more gratitude for the softening and refining that come because of the Atonement of the Savior Jesus Christ. And I grew more confident that the Holy Ghost can bring all things to our remembrance—even things we did not notice or pay attention to when they happened.
The years have gone by. My boys are grown men. And now and then one of them will surprise me by saying, “Dad, I was reading in my copy of the journal about when . . . ” and then he will tell me about how reading of what happened long ago helped him notice something God had done in his day.
My point is to urge you to find ways to recognize and remember God’s kindness. It will build our testimonies. You may not keep a journal. You may not share whatever record you keep with those you love and serve. But you and they will be blessed as you remember what the Lord has done. You remember that song we sometimes sing: “Count your many blessings; name them one by one, And it will surprise you what the Lord has done.”2
It won’t be easy to remember. Living as we do with a veil over our eyes, we cannot remember what it was like to be with our Heavenly Father and His Beloved Son, Jesus Christ, in the premortal world; nor can we see with our physical eyes or with reason alone the hand of God in our lives. Seeing such things takes the Holy Ghost. And it is not easy to be worthy of the Holy Ghost’s companionship in a wicked world.
That is why forgetting God has been such a persistent problem among His children since the world began. Think of the times of Moses, when God provided manna and in miraculous and visible ways led and protected His children. Still, the prophet warned the people who had been so blessed, as prophets always have warned and always will: “Take heed to thyself, and keep thy soul diligently, lest thou forget the things which thine eyes have seen, and lest they depart from thy heart all the days of thy life.”3
And the challenge to remember has always been the hardest for those who are blessed abundantly. Those who are faithful to God are protected and prospered. That comes as the result of serving God and keeping His commandments. But with those blessings comes the temptation to forget their source. It is easy to begin to feel the blessings were granted not by a loving God on whom we depend but by our own powers. The prophets have repeated this lament over and over:
“And thus we can behold how false, and also the unsteadiness of the hearts of the children of men; yea, we can see that the Lord in his great infinite goodness doth bless and prosper those who put their trust in him.
“Yea, and we may see at the very time when he doth prosper his people, yea, in the increase of their fields, their flocks and their herds, and in gold, and in silver, and in all manner of precious things of every kind and art; sparing their lives, and delivering them out of the hands of their enemies; softening the hearts of their enemies that they should not declare wars against them; yea, and in fine, doing all things for the welfare and happiness of his people; yea, then is the time that they do harden their hearts, and do forget the Lord their God, and do trample under their feet the Holy One—yea, and this because of their ease, and their exceedingly great prosperity.”
And the prophet goes on to say:
“Yea, how quick to be lifted up in pride; yea, how quick to boast, and do all manner of that which is iniquity; and how slow are they to remember the Lord their God, and to give ear unto his counsels, yea, how slow to walk in wisdom’s paths!”4
Sadly, prosperity is not the only reason people forget God. It can also be hard to remember Him when our lives go badly. When we struggle, as so many do, in grinding poverty or when our enemies prevail against us or when sickness is not healed, the enemy of our souls can send his evil message that there is no God or that if He exists He does not care about us. Then it can be hard for the Holy Ghost to bring to our remembrance the lifetime of blessings the Lord has given us from our infancy and in the midst of our distress.
There is a simple cure for the terrible malady of forgetting God, His blessings, and His messages to us. Jesus Christ promised it to His disciples when He was about to be crucified, resurrected, and then taken away from them to ascend in glory to His Father. They were concerned to know how they would be able to endure when He was no longer with them.
Here is the promise. It was fulfilled for them then. It can be fulfilled for all of us now:
“These things have I spoken unto you, being yet present with you.
“But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you.”5
The key to the remembering that brings and maintains testimony is receiving the Holy Ghost as a companion. It is the Holy Ghost who helps us see what God has done for us. It is the Holy Ghost who can help those we serve to see what God has done for them.
Heavenly Father has given a simple pattern for us to receive the Holy Ghost not once but continually in the tumult of our daily lives. The pattern is repeated in the sacramental prayer: We promise that we will always remember the Savior. We promise to take His name upon us. We promise to keep His commandments. And we are promised that if we do that, we will have His Spirit to be with us.6 Those promises work together in a wonderful way to strengthen our testimonies and in time, through the Atonement, to change our natures as we keep our part of the promise.
It is the Holy Ghost who testifies that Jesus Christ is the Beloved Son of a Heavenly Father who loves us and wants us to have eternal life with Him in families. With even the beginning of that testimony, we feel a desire to serve Him and to keep His commandments. When we persist in doing that, we receive the gifts of the Holy Ghost to give us power in our service. We come to see the hand of God more clearly, so clearly that in time we not only remember Him, but we come to love Him and, through the power of the Atonement, become more like Him.
You might ask, “But how does this process get started in someone who knows nothing about God and claims no memory of spiritual experiences at all?” Everyone has had spiritual experiences that they may not have recognized. Every person, upon entering the world, is given the Spirit of Christ. How that spirit works is described in the book of Moroni:
“For behold, the Spirit of Christ is given to every man, that he may know good from evil; wherefore, I show unto you the way to judge; for every thing which inviteth to do good, and to persuade to believe in Christ, is sent forth by the power and gift of Christ; wherefore ye may know with a perfect knowledge it is of God.
“But whatsoever thing persuadeth men to do evil, and believe not in Christ, and deny him, and serve not God, then ye may know with a perfect knowledge it is of the devil; for after this manner doth the devil work, for he persuadeth no man to do good, no, not one; neither do his angels; neither do they who subject themselves unto him. . . .
“Wherefore, I beseech of you, brethren, that ye should search diligently in the light of Christ that ye may know good from evil; and if ye will lay hold upon every good thing, and condemn it not, ye certainly will be a child of Christ.”7
So, even before people receive the right to the gifts of the Holy Ghost, when they are confirmed as members of the Church, and even before the Holy Ghost confirms truth to them before baptism, they have spiritual experiences. The Spirit of Christ has already, from their childhood, invited them to do good and warned them against evil. They have memories of those experiences even if they have not recognized their source. That memory will come back to them as missionaries or we teach them the word of God and they hear it. They will remember the feeling of joy or sorrow when they are taught the truths of the gospel. And that memory of the Spirit of Christ will soften their hearts to allow the Holy Ghost to testify to them. That will lead them to keep commandments and want to take the name of the Savior upon them. And when they do, in the waters of baptism, and as they hear the words in confirmation “Receive the Holy Ghost” spoken by an authorized servant of God, the power to always remember God will be increased.
I testify to you that the warm feelings you have had as you have listened to truth being spoken in this conference are from the Holy Ghost. The Savior, who promised that the Holy Ghost would come, is the beloved, glorified Son of our Heavenly Father.
Tonight, and tomorrow night, you might pray and ponder, asking the questions: Did God send a message that was just for me? Did I see His hand in my life or the lives of my children? I will do that. And then I will find a way to preserve that memory for the day that I, and those that I love, will need to remember how much God loves us and how much we need Him. I testify that He loves us and blesses us, more than most of us have yet recognized. I know that is true, and it brings me joy to remember Him. In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.
NOTES
1. Mosiah 2:41; Alma 37:13; Helaman 5:9.
2. “Count Your Blessings,” Hymns, no. 241.
3. Deuteronomy 4:9.
4. Helaman 12:1–2, 5.
5. John 14:25–26.
6. See D&C 20:77, 79.
7. Moroni 7:16–17, 19.
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