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Be Strong and of Good Courage Part 2 Transcript
Speaker: Glenn Rawson
First Story: Courage Against Temptations
This next story was shared with me by Stanley A. Peterson back in August of 1996. He used to be my boss. He was a CES administrator. And I’ll tell the story as he shared it with us.
The story involved a young seminary student who graduated this year from seminary that would have been 1996. He is tall, well-postured, and “I will call him Joe for lack of a better name. Joe enlisted in the Marine Corps reserves on a delayed entry program. This allowed him to do his basic training on weekends and allowed for him to serve a two-year mission with the commitment that he would complete his enlistment when he returned.”
Well, a few weeks before graduating from high school and seminary, Joe was involved in a Saturday basic training exercise. Those of you men and women who have been in the military have a feeling of empathy. The recruits had finished their rifle range practice and were marching back to the reserve center. The drill instructor was teaching them the cadence song which contained several obscene phrases. Joe would sing along with the rest of the company until it came to the vulgarities. At which time he would remain silent.
He got away with it for a time but eventually his lack of participation became evident to the drill instructor, who immediately invaded his space with a face-to-face confrontation. With his superior’s nose only an inch or so away from his own, Joe was asked in a shouting voice why he was not participating with the rest of the company. “Sir, I don’t use language like that. Sir.” was his reply.
The now enraged, drill instructor thundered back demanding to know if Joe thought he was better than the rest of the men in the company. Joe answered negatively and repeated his previous explanation. His defense fell on unsympathetic ears. He was then ordered to drop right there. In front of the recruits and the drill instructor, and knock out 50 push-ups.
I’ve not been in the military, but I have great love and respect for those who are. I have been led to understand that while I do push-ups on a regular basis just for the fun of it, in the military, you do it because it’s a punishment.
Be that as it may. In the midst of Joe’s public punishment, the commanding officer, I’m assuming the person who is in charge of the base, approached and asked what was going on.
The superior officer ordered Joe to his feet and demanded to hear his side of the story. This was Joe’s reply: “Sir, I believed that the Marine Corps stood for honor and dignity. I enlisted in the Corps to defend my country not to learn how to swear, sir.”
Apparently, this struck the right cord with the officer who had come in, and that was exactly what the Corps stood for. He then ordered the drill instructor to drop and the 50 push ups and had Joe count them up.
“Afterwards, and during the remainder of the march, the entire company went silent during the offensive verses of the cadence song.”
I hope and pray we have that kind of courage and our covenants, that kind of courage in our convictions. I’ll be honest with you brothers and sisters. This thing about not being able to go to church. It’s really hard. I look around me and I look at what’s going on inside of myself. And the longer I don’t have the opportunity to go to church, the harder it is to care.
Here’s that temptation of when you’re doing my Sabbath day. I know, I know, I’m a wicked waste of skin, I get it. But I’m also sure that it’s just me. I hope and pray that it is not just me who misses church. And I hope in private it is just me who finds himself tempted to let things slide for a certain slide. I suppose if ever there was a time for courage, it’s probably right about now.
Second Story: Doing the Right Thing for the Right Reason
This story comes out of Mark chapter 3 in the New Testament. I remember when I was a missionary serving in Catholic country and seeing artistic representations, both in paintings and sculpture and so forth, of Jesus.
And I don’t mean this to offend any of you, but so often he was portrayed as timid, frail, weak, and nearly effeminate. He even had the tiny petite frail features of a frail woman, so often, with a beard. Somehow that never felt right to me.
And then, later on, I heard people in Sunday School say: the Savior in His love and kindness and compassion and tenderness and mercy. And that’s all they emphasize. I learned the hard way brothers and sisters that in every word, the sense of the word, Jesus was a man, a perfect man. He was a man of strength, boldness, courage. He was a man of justice.
Hence this story. The meeting where Jesus and His disciples were in the synagogue on the Saturday. Jesus went into the synagogue to teach. As was always the case wherever Jesus went, His enemies followed Him, watched Him, and waited to count on Him for something He might happen to say.
In that meeting, there was a man with a crippled hand. I get the feeling, though I don’t know this, that they perhaps might have positioned this individual, because they’re watching him to see what Jesus will do if we will heal this man on the Sabbath day, which, as you know, the scribes and the Pharisees, considered to be a very great sin. “You can’t heal on the Sabbath because that’s practicing medicine. That’s working. That’s violating the Sabbath. It’s twisted, but that’s how it works.”
Well, now, think about this from Jesus’s point of view. There’s the man with the crippled hand. There’s his enemies watching him. Did Jesus heal every afflicted soul that he met? No. All it takes is a careful reading of the New Testament to realize that perhaps there were many more cripples, invalids, possessed individuals that Jesus didn’t heal than those that He did. Think about that experience at the Pools of Bethesda. The Pools of Bethesda were lined with all manner of folks who were infirm in every way, but He went right straight to one man and healed him.
So did Jesus have to heal the man with the withered hand? Would you have had plausible deniability if He didn’t? Of course He would. He didn’t have to. And the reasons would be not only to Him. He could have ignored the man, have not said anything and no one would have thought any less of Him for doing so. He could have simply finished his teaching, bore His testimony, and gone his way. But Jesus was more than that.
Look at the setting of this story. He said to the man with the withered hand, “stand forth”, while I can imagine you can just feel the tension, ratchet up in that synagogue. And then Jesus faced His enemies and asked them this question “if it was wrong to do good on the Sabbath day.” And then He stood looking at them, waiting for their answer.
Imagine the look on His face, I don’t visualize him as smiling at that moment. I visualize the look on his face though certainly intense. The Pharisees refused to answer.
Jesus said to the afflicted man, “Stretch forth, thy hand.” There’s the man’s hand. It was instantly healed.
His enemies were so angry. They got up out of the meeting and left right there. That alone would be bad enough for the days ahead for Jesus, but they also began plotting to kill Him along with the Sadducees. Jesus had to leave the area just to stay alive.
Doing the right thing is not showing off. Doing the right thing for the right reason is not self-righteousness. But the courage, the choice to stand up and be counted when it’s not popular. Well, it began with the Savior himself in pre-mortality, carried through with two-thirds who voted to follow the Savior. And it follows through today to those of you who are willing to do the right thing, even when it’s not fun or convenient or popular.
Third Story: Making the Choice
I’ve talked about making the choice to be strong and to be of good courage. But let me just explain a couple of things for a moment. I’ve mentioned in these fire sites before that I love to run. And so much of running, especially at my age, is in your head.
Well, yeah, yeah, it’s in your knees and it’s in your joints, but so much of it’s in your head. In fact, if it comes down to it, whether it be the power of your lungs, the strength of your legs, or the strength of your heart and mind, the greatest is your heart and mind.
I don’t know how many times I have been out running. I have a knee that is junk. It’s bone on bone with a torn meniscus. There’s never a moment when it doesn’t hurt and throb. Paying to fix that is beyond me at the moment. But I love to run. I’ve been running for now more than 30 years nearly every day.
I’ve learned that what I tell myself is what I believe, and my body responds to the conversations of my mind. If when I’m running, I start to think, “Oh, this hurts. I need to stop.” Somehow I have to stop.
But I’ve actually done this. I’ve been out running and it hurts. It hurts a lot. And I’ve said to myself, “I can do this”. Just like Captain America said in the first movie, “I can do this all day.” And I say that to myself. “I can do this. It doesn’t hurt that bad.” Somehow, it doesn’t hurt that bad. I can keep going. I say to myself, I am strong. I am tough. I can do this and somehow, somewhere, it comes up from within and I can do it.
Brothers and sisters, that’s faith. It’s faith in me. And if I have faith in me, I can I have faith in God, I can do even more. And they in both is unstoppable. Therefore, please forgive me for sermonizing, but please understand, I know this principle was true as a man or woman think of in their heart. So are they. I remember Elder Dalin H. Oaks teaching at BYU Idoe to the students, paraphrasing.
Be careful what you say about yourself, for you will live up to or down to, however you
declare yourself.
Whatever you believe, you are.
You are.
Whatever you think you can do by faith in God and righteousness, you will do. That I have learned is a true principle. Hence, when I say be strong and of a good courage, I don’t want somebody saying, “Well, okay for you, Glenn. But I’m 86 years old. I can’t.
Fourth Story: Where Do You Direct your Faith and Courage?
So where do you direct your faith? Where do you direct your courage? Dalin, this story is for you.
It was the early summer of 1916 near Tabiona in eastern Utah. Tabiona is a little ranch in community over in the UNI Basin of Eastern Utah. I know of it because my mission president was from there. The World Relief Society president, her name was Esther Wagstaff, decided that she wanted to pay a visit to those sisters who lived across the river who had been shut in by winter snows and bad roads. She asked one of her counselors to go with her. That counselor was Elena or Elena, I’m not sure which Alina, Dorothy Lambert, Mitchie. Alina, Dorothy Lambert, Mitchie. The two of them climbed into the wagon and began their ministering journey of love and duty.
As the day progressed, they traveled from sister to sister making their visits. Each time they came to someone’s property, which had a gate, Sister Michi would climb down, open the gate, wait for Sister Wagstaff to drive the wagon through then she would close the gate and climb back up on the wagon.
Now let me jump out. I get this. I understand this perfectly. I don’t know how many times for so many years when I was just a wee little shaver with my dad on the ranch. We would go to check on this cows and we would go through this fence. Well guess who was elected to open the gates? It was always me, the little guy. I would jump out of the truck. I would open the gates and I remember some of those gates were big pole gates. Sometimes they were barbed wire gates. I remember some of those gates were so tough and so tight that little old me, you know, me hiding with grasshopper, I couldn’t get those gates open and my dad would come and help me. But the bigger I got, the more I was delegated to do the gates on my own, hundreds of gates through my life. And I left the ranch when I was going on 20 years old.
For those of you that are still on the ranch, you know exactly what I’m talking about. Well, that’s tough enough for anybody, but for a woman in her 60s. That becomes a chore. Now mind you, to gates are tough enough, but think about climbing back up into the wagon. Well, all of that is complicated because of the fact that Grandma Lena, as her posterity called her, suffered from severe, varicose veins. Well, now I quote from Grandma Lena, she said, “Well, we turned homework, and of course there were gates to go through again, but we didn’t talk of that. I just climbed out of the wagon and opened each gate as we came to it. And when sister Wagstaff had driven through, I closed the gate again and got back into the wagon.
As we neared the last gate, sister Wagstaff said, “Hasn’t this been a satisfying day? It has been so good to visit these sisters.”Grandma Lena said, “Yes, it’s been a wonderful day. we just didn’t have to open any more gates. And then Grammar Linus said, “To our amazement, the gate ahead of us, opened by itself.” The heavy piece oftwo-bought-four that went from the gate into the gate posts, moved by itself, and the gates swung open. I had dragged it open and I emphasized, dragged. It opened a few hours before.
Sister Wackstaff drove the wagon through. One of us said in a whisper, “Let’s watch and see if it closes.” We both turned around and watched as the gate swung shut and was facet. But I’m Alina concludes, “I just can’t tell you how we felt. I guess it was a miracle right before our eyes. Those gates were heavy. You know how they were made. Poles and two by fours and barbed wire. Well, we had done the best we could to do our duty. Maybe our guardian angels were there to help. I just don’t know.
The Lord once said, “I will go before your face. I will be on your right hand and on your left, and my spirit shall be in your hearts, and mine angels round about you to bear you up.”
Dr. N. Covenant’s 84/88, and so they are. Indeed, they are. But the angels can’t be round about us to bear us up. If we’re too afraid, too afraid to get moving, too afraid to try.
My beloved brothers and sisters, I wish I could see you. I wish this were a chapel and I was looking into your face. I would tell you that the Lord loves you. And you are more than you think you are. And you can do much more, much more. no matter how old you are. Be strong and of a good courage. In the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.
