Whether you say you can, or you say you can’t, your right.

We are a covenant people. If there is a distinguishing feature about members of the Church, it is that we make covenants. We need to be known as a covenant-keeping people as well. Making promises is easy, but to follow through and do what we have promised is another matter. That involves staying the course, being constant and steadfast. It means keeping the faith and being faithful to the end despite success or failure, doubt or discouragement. It is drawing near to the Lord with all our hearts. It is doing whatever we promise to do with all our might—even when we might not feel like it.

We often consider ourselves more or less worthless and in some moods, even beyond help, and we approach the sacrament hesitantly and superficially. But worse still. We do not trust the good news. We do not trust the glad tidings. We do not trust the second opinion of the only Physician who will ever finally judge. This is the Christ. This is He who pleads with us to come boldly to the throne of Grace. He has called himself the Spirit of Truth and that spirit which he has received in fullness brings knowledge, we are taught, of things past, present, and future. Therefore, He, a Seer who transcends all seers, knows our past and our future, and whatever our present soul sicknesses, He knows who we were in the premortal spheres and he does envision our future—what we are to become in the resurrection. In contrast to that, we live in the blur of amnesia about our past and we're subject to fits of doubt and disbelief about our real potential. But hear these words of Elder George Q. Cannon: "Now," he says, "this is the truth. We humble people, we who feel ourselves sometimes so worthless—so good for nothing. We are not so worthless as we think. There is not one of us but what God's love has been expended upon. There is not one of us that He has not cared for and caressed. There is not one of us that He has not desired to save and that he has not devised means to save. There is not one of us that He has not given his angels charge concerning. We may be insignificant and contemptible in our own eyes, and even in the eyes of others, but the truth remains that we are children of God and He has actually given his angels charge concerning us and they watch over us and have us in their keeping." (Gospel Truth, comp. Jerreld L. Newquist, Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1974, 1:2.)

I don't know of any institution that has had complete peace with its historians, with its storytellers. ... I am not afraid of history. I don't know of anybody who's afraid of history. Whatever our history is, that's our history. That's it. Whatever. I know what I love. I know what makes me a Latter-day Saint. I ... had faith before I had doubt, and I have faith after any doubts have been explored. ...

You don't want somebody else telling you your history, and therefore I would like to tell my children, and the children of the church, the youth of the church collectively, I'd like to be having them hear it from friends rather than enemies. I'm just doubtful about the motives of some. ... But there is not anything anybody can say to me that will make me afraid of my history. ... But I think we are genuinely anxious to teach in a way that is appropriate and enlivening.

[Faith is] belief in something concerning which doubt is still theoretically possible: and as the test of belief is willingness to act, one may say that faith is the readiness to act in a cause the prosperous issue of which is not certified to us in advance.

So it is that in finding answers we must find the balance between agency and inspiration. Building upon this foundation, let me teach you a very fundamental but often overlooked principle relative to getting answers to prayers and to questions that trouble you.

Few things facilitate getting the right answer like asking the right question. Let me illustrate.

A young woman came up to me after a meeting at which I had spoken a few weeks ago. She asked if I could help her with a question dealing with the Old Testament. I told her that I would be willing to try.

She asked the question, and I did not have an idea in the world how to answer it. I told her so and then asked why the answer to such a question was important to her.

She indicated that her husband had raised the issue along with other like questions. Each question he was asking carried with it the spirit of doubt. His questions were intended to challenge, not to build faith.

The real question here is: If I had been able to answer each of the questions with which this man was challenging his wife, would it have accomplished anything more than require him to come up with more questions?

Cynics do not contribute, skeptics do not create, doubters do not achieve.

O then despise not, and wonder not, but hearken unto the words of the Lord, and ask the Father in the name of Jesus for what things soever ye shall stand in need. Doubt not, but be believing, and begin as in times of old, and come unto the Lord with all your heart, and work out your own salvation with fear and trembling before him.

Whether you think you can or can't, you're right.

Whether you think that you can, or that you can't, you are usually right.