We can't fully overcome these habits and impacted tendencies by ourselves. Our own resolves, our own will, our own effort - all this is necessary but is not sufficent. We need the transforming power of the Savior, born of faith in him and his atoning sacrifice and of entering into a contract with him. In such a contract, made in ordinance work and in private prayer, we covenant, or promise, or witness to take upon ourselves his name and to keep his commandments. He, in turn, promises us to give us his spirit, which, if we are true to our promises, will renew and strengthen and transform us. In this way we combine our power with the power of the Almighty.

Before we renew our covenants in the sacrament, before we promise or resolve to overcome a bad habit and establish a new one, we should sit down first and count the cost.

If we realistically count the costs and then make a deep enough commitment, we, with the Lord's help, can overcome the gravity pull of habits and atmospheric resistance of our environment with all its luring temptations.

Asking in faith requires honesty, effort, commitment, and persistence.

The foundation of that isn't some ideal of romantic love. It's a commitment based on the goals you share. And real love, married love, is not what you start with -- it's what you create together along the way.

How foolish, when our young people wait to find love, or to have God show them their foreordained mate, instead of rationally looking at the eligible people and choosing someone who can and will live up to the commitment of marriage, someone with shared faith, someone with whom you can establish friendship and affection.

All marriages are between strangers. And sometimes it's the boring man who'll make the best husband, the plain woman who'll make the best mother.

It takes time to come to know the other person; it take time for each of you to become someone new and different and perfectly adapted to the other. You'll be there through the whole process, though, because your commitment is stronger than the bands of death.

But as that knowledge grows, so does the real love, the deep love. Compared to the thick, strong fabric of married love, romantic love is a Kleenex. You can't make anything out of it. It's disposable -- there's always another in the box.

Church members commit to do many things. We agree to serve one another, to mourn with those that mourn, to comfort those that stand in need of comfort. We promise to visit each other. We make covenants. We agree to share the gospel and do vicarious work for the dead. And just like that incident in the car so many years ago, we sometimes fail to do what we have agreed to do.

Our justifications are many. We say we will do it later. We have something more important to do right now. We don’t feel well or we don’t feel qualified or we don’t want to be fanatical about it

I once attended a funeral service with Elder M. Russell Ballard. A statement he made there has remained with me to this day. He said, “Life isn’t over for a Latter-day Saint until he or she is safely dead, with their testimony still burning brightly.” “Safely dead”—what a challenging concept. Brothers and sisters, we will not be safe until we have given our hearts to the Lord—until we have learned to do what we have promised.

When I listen to people say they have something more important to do, I wonder what it could possibly be. What could be more important than keeping a commitment we have made with the Lord?

As I travel the Church I often ask stake presidents what their concerns are and what they perceive to be their greatest need. Frequently the reply is, “We have wonderful people. Some of them just need to be more committed and more dedicated. They need to be more anxiously engaged in the work.”

No wonder we sometimes shrink. A little voice may say, "I'd rather not do that. I'm not sure I can carry it through." But this is the very nub of our stumbling block. Until we covenant, which is more than a casual New Year's Resolution, He cannot bless us to keep our covenants. Without exception, the Lord appends a divine blessing to every covenant we make, guarantees a response from on high, and gives a promise and blessing. In the church our duties expand into privileges, and our privileges expand into higher duties. The most inclusive attendant blessing of the sacrament is His Spirit. And His Spirit, like He, himself, is not sent into the world to condemn the world, but to lift us. He is not committed to putting us down. The gifts and the fruits of the Spirit engulf all our deepest needs, whatever our present desires: insight, flashes of guidance, energy, all the virtues that center in Christ, and through them, all the fire that purifies our feelings and our aspirations. Yes, we come to the sacrament to renew covenants but we also come to be renewed—to be renewed with a divine infusion and then we increase in our strength to honor our covenants with Him and with each other.

Just eight weeks ago I was holding a mission district conference on the island of Chiloe, an interior location in the south of Chile that gets few visitors. Imagine the responsibility I felt in addressing these beautiful people when it was pointed out to me that a very elderly man seated near the front of the chapel had set out on foot at five o’clock that morning, walking for four hours to be in his seat by nine o’clock, for a meeting that was not scheduled to begin until eleven o’clock. He said he wanted to get a good seat. I looked into his eyes, thought of times in my life when I had been either too casual or too late, and thought of Jesus’ phrase, “I have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel.”

I return again to the words anxiously engaged. They do not mean hectically engaged. They do not mean frantically engaged. Rather, they reflect a deep, quiet commitment--some anticipation of what lies ahead... Now there is a problem that we have to face. C.S. Lewis called it "the tether and pang of the particular." He was describing life's local situations with which we must deal... that marvelous Book of Mormon tells us that we have got to be content with the things allotted to us. Whatever the circumference of our tether is, we ought to be content with that and live within the tether and pang of the particular.
...Please, submit your will to God. It is the only gift you've got to give. And the sooner it is placed on the altar, the better it will be for all.... This is the Lord's work.... And you have been called to carry it forward today...

Living in Debrecen, Hungary, was an aged member of the Church, Johann Denndorfer. Born of German parents, he, as a young man, went to Berlin in 1910 to seek work. There he not only found employment, but also, more significantly, he discovered the Church. Following World War I, he returned to Hungary and remained a lone voice for Mormonism during the next forty years.

During the time freedom was curtailed in Eastern Europe, Patriarch Walter Krause travled from Germany to Hungary to pay a home teaching visit to Brother Denndorfer. He later reported to me that when he arrived and introduced himself, Brother Denndorfer said to him, "Before I shake the hand of a servant of the Lord, I first wish to pay my tithing." He then retrieved from a hiding place the tithing he had accumulated during the more-than-forty-year period. "Now I feel worthy to shake the hand of a servant of the Lord," he said.