“PREPARE YOUR HEART”
Henry B. Eyring
(Talk to Religious Educators, 22 August 1987)
You and I have had times in our lives when we
consistently made effective preparation for teaching. Other times
we were less effective. Everything I have learned from my
experience is summed up in a description of the teacher
preparation of an Old Testament prophet, Ezra. In chapter 7,
verse 10, this is the description given of the way he prepared.
“For Ezra had prepared his heart to seek the law of the
Lord, and to do it, and to teach in Israel statutes and judgments.”
That not only includes everything I have learned from
experience about teacher preparation, but it even gives it in the
right order. It starts with preparing your heart. There is a
practical reason for that. Ezra was preparing his heart to seek the
law of the Lord. Every scripture I know about obtaining the law
of the Lord has words in it like seek, search, meditate, feast, lay
hold, ponder, treasure, or study. You and I have read those
scriptures. We know they are true. And yet if we look back in our
lives to the times we prepared well and the times we didn’t
prepare as well, the difference was whether or not we acted as if
we really believed obtaining the law of the Lord took long,
constant, sustained effort.
When we prepared well, we were observing, pondering,
and meditating much of the time. That raises a practical problem
for all of us. Whether we are teaching early morning seminary or
have been a professional teacher for years, our lives are crowded.
Time is in short supply. Most of us have a feeling that we haven’t
enough time to meet our family obligations let a lone find blocks
of time to prepare.
My father taught me long ago that finding time to seek
is a matter of preparing the heart. One evening he was helping
me with some physics or math problems in the basement of our
home. I was in college and he had high hopes for me, as he did
for my brothers, that I would follow him in science. He looked
up as he saw me stumbling on a problem and said, “Hal, didn’t
we work on a problem just like this a week ago?” I said, “I think
we did.” He said, “Well, you don’t seem to be any better at it this
week than you were last week.” I didn’t say anything to that.
Then he looked at me with a shock of recognition on his face and
asked, “Hal, haven’t you been thinking about it during this last
week?” I looked a little chagrined and said that I hadn’t. He put
down the chalk, stepped back from the blackboard on our
basement wall, and looked at me. With sadness in his voice, he
then taught me something I will never forget. I am just beginning
to understand what he meant. He said, “But, Hal, what do you
think about when you are walking down the street or when you
are in the shower? What do you think about when you don’t have
to think about anything?” I admitted that it wasn’t physics or
mathematics. With a smile, but I think with a sigh, he responded,
“Well, Hal, I don’t think you’d better make a career of science.
You’d better find something which you just naturally think about
when you don’t have to think about anything else.”
I realized that my father was right about physics or
mathematics or anything else that I might seek to learn. But I
have come to understand that he was even more right about
seeking to learn the law of the Lord. My preparation for teaching
has only been effective when my mind naturally turned to
seeking the law of the Lord, as I walked down the street or did
anything that didn’t require all my attention.
Now I have puzzled over why I don’t do that all the
time. Why do I have so many lapses? I have tried to see what
was different in those times when my heart led my mind to the
law of the Lord naturally and when it didn’t I find one difference.
At least for me it is described in 2 Nephi, chapter 9, verse 42.
“And whoso knocketh to him will be open; and the
wise, and the learned, and they that are rich, who are puffed up
because of their learning, and their wisdom, and their riches—
yea, they are they whom he despiseth; and save they shall cast
these things away, and consider themselves fools before God,
and come down in the depths of humility, he will not open unto
them.”
I believe that only the humble heart will be naturally
persistent in seeking the law of the Lord. President Ezra Taft
Benson said, “Humility is the recognition of our dependence
upon a higher power, a constant need for the Lord’s support in
our work.” That is the feeling that I have had when I prepared
well, a constant need for the Lord’s support. (Seminar for New
Mission President, Jun. 1979, p. 85).
But when you might ask the question that some of your
students have probably asked you, almost as a challenge: “Well,
how do you make yourself humble?” President Spencer W.
Kimball took that question and answered it this way. “How does
one get humble? To me, one must constantly be reminded of his
dependence. On whom dependent? On the Lord. How remind
one’s self? By real, constant, worshipful, grateful prayer”
(Spencer W. Kimball, “Humility,” in Speeches of the Year, 3
Jan. 1963 [Provo: Brigham Young University Press], p. 3). I
realize that each of you may have a different way of triggering
that awareness of your dependence, but for me the prescription of
President Kimball seems to work best. I can sometimes read the
scriptures and not feel dependent. I can sometimes sing a hymn
or visit someone in need and not feel dependent. But I find it
impossible to spend even a few minutes in real prayer, where I
am worshipful and grateful, without feeling an overwhelming
dependence on the Lord.
Now then, I have given you a simple prescription. We
need to prepare our hearts as Ezra did to search continually,
which is what search means. That takes a heart that is humble
from a constant feeling of dependence on the Lord. For me, at
least, the surest way to trigger that feeling of dependence is to
kneel down and to pray to god in worship and in gratitude.
Now, it is not hard to see why we will then
automatically follow the pattern of Ezra. You will remember that
first he prepared his heart to seek the Lord’s law, and then he
sought it in the scriptures, the words of prophets. I bear you my
testimony that constant seeking for the Lord’s law will always
have the effect of making you want to try it. The law of the Lord
is about rewards, and the descriptions of those rewards when
they come into your heart have a powerful pull to make you
desire them. That hungering and thirsting after righteousness, at
least in my experience and in those whom I have observed,
always lead to doing what the law requires.
suggestions for my teaching. But it has led me to emphasize the
first principles of the gospel, the law of the Lord, and to find
ways to encourage and to suggest application of those principles,
even when the lesson may be primarily historical or narrative.
When that happens in your life, as it must have done in
Ezra’s life, some powerful things will change the way you teach
forever. First of all, you will come to know that the law of the
Lord is true. The Savior told his students that if they would do
what he taught, they would know whether it was of God. I bear
that testimony, and it is the most valuable testimony you can
have and then offer to your students. It will lead them to live the
gospel.
A number of years ago, I had a powerful feeling that the
seminary and institute students across the world would become
constant students of the scriptures if their teachers did. To a
degree, even beyond what I had hoped for, I believe that is
occurring. I keep meeting your people who, because of their
seminary and institute experiences, are reading and pondering the
scriptures daily, seeking to know the law of the Lord for them.
As you feel the gospel work in your life, you will not
only receive testimony, but you will have your heart turned
outward. You remember that happened to Enos, who is an
example of the preparation we are describing. In verse 3 of the
book of Enos it says: “Behold, I went to hunt beasts in the
forests; and the words which I had often heard my father speak
concerning eternal life, and the joy of the saints, sank deep into
my heart.”
Enos was doing exactly what we are describing. His
heart was prepared, and he was humble enough that while he was
hunting he at the same time was thinking about the words of
eternal life. Because he was thinking about them continually
while he was walking through the forest, while he was doing
something he didn’t have to think about, the words sank deep
into his heart. And then, when they had sunk into his heart, in
verse 4 we read: “And my soul hungered.” What he meant by
that is he wanted to do what it was the words of eternal life
require, the law of the Lord.
Because he wanted the gifts that were promised in the
law, he turned to prayer. I have suggested that prayer triggers
humility, but humility and hungering for the blessings of the
gospel lead also to prayer. In Enos’s case it led to long and
mighty prayer. Then you will remember that in answer to that
prolonged effort a voice came and told him that his sins were
forgiven. After he learned that it came because of his active faith
in Christ, he said this in verse 9: “Now, it came to pass that when
I had heard these words I began to feel a desire for the welfare of
my brethren, the Nephites; wherefore, I did pour out my whole
soul unto God for them.”
Now you can see that by doing what the law requires
after having sought it persistently you will prepare a very
different lesson, one with greater power than you could have had
you not first prepared your heart. You will know what it is you
are trying to accomplish as you create a lesson plan. You will
know what the students must do. They must have their hearts
touched to become humble and then search for themselves,
persistently and constantly. They will have to try to live the law
in order to know the law is true and to have their faith increased.
I don’t think that means you must invent new lessons.
On the contrary, my experience has been that when my heart has
been prepared I have always been more inclined to follow the
lesson plan, to see what was intended to bless the lives of my
students. The very feeling of humility tends to make me less
inclined to think I know more than those who have made
I have the same confidence about preparing our hearts if
we prepare our hearts to teach, even if we don’t talk very much
about it to our students, they will sense it. They will begin to see
they must have humble hearts and then search and seek in the
minutes and hours of their lives when they are not having to
think about something else. When they do, they will have the
gospel open to them and will want to live it. They will then have
testimony, and their hearts will turn outward.
I suppose we have all had the experience of testing 2
Nephi 32:9 and finding that it is true. It says: “But behold, I say
unto you that ye must pray always, and not faint; that ye must not
perform any thing unto the Lord save in the first place ye shall
pray unto the Father in the name of Christ, that he will consecrate
thy performance unto thee, that thy performance may be for the
welfare of thy soul.”
I have applied that in the moments before I went into a
class and found it came true. But if I read that scripture carefully,
it says that we must not perform anything unto the Lord save in
the first place we shall pray unto the Father. My suggestion is
that you and I might pray well before the class, long before the
final moments of preparation and before we even begin working
on a teaching outline. Rather, my early prayer might be that I
would sense my dependence, that I might have a humble heart
and that I might then hunger, thirst, search, ponder, and meditate
in the moments when I don’t have anything else I must think
about. When that prayer is answered, you and I will know it as
we walk down a street and find that our hearts and minds have
turned to the law of the Lord.
I pray that we may prepare our hearts that our students
may be as the students of King Benjamin were. You will
remember that he told his son before he taught the people that he
was going to give them a new name. He could have only done
that knowing that they had been preparing their hearts before
they came, as he had been preparing his. I pray that we may all
have that blessing come into our hearts and into the hearts of our
students. In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.