As you sit in sacrament meeting and listen to the sacramental prayers, do you listen with your ears or with your heart?

This requires us to look upon interruption and frustration and insubordination and disrespect and scorn and even abuse--all the treatment from others that we must renounce for ourselves--as opportunities for choosing good over evil. Do not love and do good only to those who will reciprocate, the Savior taught; it takes no particular righteousness to do that (see Luke 6:32 33). Listen attentively to the teacher whose lectures may be a little dry. Read with particular care the papers of students who struggle to write. Befriend the one who feels different, lost, or lonely. Embrace the child who seems to resist you. Take seriously the ad vice of parents who have trouble following that advice themselves. Invite to dinner those who lack the graciousness or the means to invite you back. Even "love your enemies, do good to them which hate you" (Luke 6:27). Like the Father, let your warming sun and nourishing rain fall on the just and unjust alike. Jesus intimated that this kind of love is who we really are--the very perfection, completeness, and fullness we came here to attain (see Matthew 5:45 48). And anything less--judging others and withholding our favor from them--capitulates to Satan. After all, it is with us as it was with the Redeemer: Satan does not need to overpower us in order to win the war. He only needs to get us to adopt his way of fighting it.

Actually, there is a wide range of choices available to husbands and wives as they attempt to balance their personal needs and the needs of their spouses. “Taking care of my needs without consideration of others” is just one end of the scale; “taking care of others’ needs without considering my own” is at the other. As a marriage counselor, I see severe spiritual and social problems at both ends of the scale.

Who enjoys being around a person who is concerned only about himself, who must always be right, must do what only he wants to do all the time, and never takes anyone else into consideration? Such a person talks to you but does not listen, insists on “serving” you whether you want it or not, has lots of advice but is not willing to give needed help.

At the other extreme are people so concerned about being unselfish that they exhaust themselves trying to please everyone. They continually set aside their needs and wants in the interest of family, church callings, neighbors, and friends. But there comes a time when even the strongest person must draw strength from others.

An important question in service to others is: What does the other person need? Rather than What do I want to give him?

How do we learn to think straight? The book of Proverbs has a little guide that might be helpful: “Hear counsel, and receive instruction, that thou mayest be wise” (Prov. 19:20). I would suggest that straight thinking probably begins with careful listening. It seems to me that those men I have associated with who have seemed to have the instinctive ability to think straight are men who are very good listeners and are able to extract, as they receive counsel and instruction, those principles that will be eternally important in their lives.

Above all, be a genuine friend to the individuals and families you teach. As the Savior declared to us, "I will call you friends, for you are my friends" (D&C 93:45). A friend makes more than a dutiful visit each month. A friend is more concerned about helping people than getting credit. A friend cares. A friend loves. A friend listens, and a friend reaches out.

Although Mrs. Patton has long since left mortality, I have felt a strong impression to share with you the manner in which our Heavenly Father blessed and provided for her, a widow, in her need. With all the strength of my soul I testify that our Heavenly Father loves each one of us. He hears the prayers of humble hearts; He hears our cries for help, as He heard Mrs. Patton. His Son, our Savior and Redeemer, speaks to each of us today: “Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him.”

Will we listen for that knock? Will we hear that voice? Will we open that door to the Lord, that we may receive the help He is so ready to provide? I pray that we will.

Friendship in a marriage is so important. It blows away the chaff and takes the kernel, rejoices in the uniqueness of the other, listens patiently, gives generously, forgives freely. Friendship will motivate one to cross the room one day and say, “I’m sorry; I didn’t mean that.” It will not pretend perfection nor demand it. It will not insist that both respond exactly the same in every thought and feeling, but it will bring to the union honesty, integrity. There will be repentance and forgiveness in every marriage—every good marriage—and respect and trust.

And all these and other elements we are not able to mention eloquently declare that such a union doesn’t just happen.

So the need becomes clear for careful, thoughtful preparation, selection, and courtship. No one should be unwise enough to count on an across-the-crowded-room romanticized live-happily- ever-after marriage made without proper thoughtfulness, preparation, and prayer. Marriage is an everyday and every-way relationship in which honesty and character and shared convictions and objectives and views about finances and family and life-style are more important than moonlight and music and an attractive profile.

The first characteristic behavior (of a great learner) is to welcome correction. You've noticed that in the people around you who seem to be learning most. You see that in your fellow students, for instance, who value wise editing of their writing. If they seek that correction, study it when they get it, and then revise what they have written, they become better writers. In the same way the scientists who submit their work to be reviewed by those who understand their methods and their research findings make the most rapid progress.

... The desire to receive wise correction is a hallmark of a learner and of a community of learners. That is why you can appreciate getting back one of your papers when it is covered with jottings in red ink. The wise learner cares more for the jottings than for the grade at the top of the page. In the same way the wise student of a new language seeks not the tutor who praises whatever they say but one who won't let a mispronounced word or an error in conjugating a verb pass uncorrected.

That desire for correction, a mark of great learners, comes naturally to a Latter-day Saint who knows and values what it means to be a child of God. For him or her it begins with seeking frequent correction directly from our Heavenly Father. One of the most valuable forms of personal revelation can come before private prayer. It can come in the quiet contemplation of how we might have offended, disappointed, or displeased our Heavenly Father. The Spirit of Christ and the Holy Ghost will help us feel rebuke and at the same time the encouragement to repent. Then prayers asking for forgiveness become less general and the chance to have the Atonement work in our life becomes greater.

We have another advantage as Latter-day Saints. We know that a loving Father has allowed us to live in a time when Jesus Christ has called prophets and others to serve as judges in Israel. Because of that we listen to a prophet's voice or sit in counsel with a bishop with the hope that we will hear correction.

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.

Ensign: Being a college president provides one with an unusual perspective on youth and contemporary society. If you had five minutes with the parents of your students—or the parents of any Latter-day Saint student—what would you say?

President Eyring: I’d say the same thing parents have been told as long as there have been parents. I suppose the Lord would have said it to Adam: “Listen to Cain a little more. See if you can understand his feelings. See if you can get him to tell you how he feels about his brother.” Most young people do not use their families as sources of strength as much as they could if they felt easier in going to them, in being understood, in being heard. When they get into difficulty, if youth have a father and mother they can approach they do best. They may have the best counsel in the world—the best teacher, the best bishop—but dad and mom are the ones with whom repentance works best. Where that is the case—even in the worst of difficulties—they come out all right."