“Never let a problem to be solved become more important than a person to be loved.”
| "Finding Joy in the Journey," Conference October 2008
Service
LDS Quotes on Service
“Indolent and unworthy the beggar may be—but that is not your concern: It is better, said Joseph Smith, to feed ten impostors than to run the risk of turning away one honest petition.”
| Approaching Zion
“During the Great Depression, Harold B. Lee, serving then as a stake president, was asked by the Brethren to find an answer to the oppressive poverty, sorrow, and hunger that were so widespread across the world at that time. He struggled to find a solution and took the matter to the Lord and asked, “What kind of an organization will we have … to do this?”…And “it was as though the Lord had said [to him]: ‘Look, son. You don’t need any other organization. I have given you the greatest organization there is on the face of the earth. Nothing is greater than the priesthood organization. All in the world you need to do is to put the priesthood to work. That’s all.’”
| transcript of welfare agricultural meeting, Oct. 3, 1970, 20.
“The submission of one’s will is really the only uniquely personal thing we have to place on God’s altar. The many other things we ‘give’… are actually the things He has already given or loaned to us.”
| “Swallowed Up in the Will of the Father,” Ensign, Nov. 1995, 24.
“We go to the temple to make covenants, but we go home to keep the covenants that we have made. The home is the testing ground. The home is the place where we learn to be more Christlike. The home is the place where we learn to overcome selfishness and give ourselves in service to others.”
| Ensign, May 1995, p. 12
We obtain a remission of our sins by pleading to God, who compassionately responds, but we retain a remission of our sins by compassionately responding to the poor who plead to us.
“No one is useless in this world who lightens the burden of it to anyone else.”
Simply stated, we minister because we love our Heavenly Father and His children. Our ministering efforts will be more successful if we keep our ministering simple. The most joy comes from the simple things of life, so we need to be careful not to think that more needs to be added to any of the adjustments we have received to build faith and strong testimonies in the hearts of God’s children.
| The True, Pure, and Simple Gospel of Jesus Christ
Nikolai Berdyaev taught the same principle:
“A false interpretation of ‘good works’ leads to a complete perversion of Christianity. ‘Good works’ are regarded not as an expression of love for God and man, not as a manifestation of the gracious source that gives life to others, but as a means of salvation and justification for oneself, as a way of realizing the abstract idea of the Good and receiving a reward in the future life. ‘Good works,’ done not for the good of others, but for the good of one’s own soul, are not good at all. Where there is no love, there is no goodness. Love does not require or expect any reward, it is reward in itself, it is a ray of paradise illuminating and transfiguring reality.”
In modeling our ministering after Jesus Christ, it is important to remember that His efforts to love, lift, serve, and bless had a higher goal than meeting the immediate need. He clearly knew of their day-to-day needs and had compassion on their current suffering as He healed, fed, forgave, and taught. But He wanted to do more than take care of today. He wanted those around Him to follow Him, to know Him, and to reach their divine potential.