President Henry B. Eyring: 'Trust in God, then go and do'

President Henry B. Eyring said that as he prepared for general conference he read the messages of the Lord's servants in the scriptures and in past conferences.

"My errand for today became clear," said President Eyring, first counselor in the First Presidency. "God sends messages and authorized messengers to His children. I am to build trust in God and His Servants enough that we will go out and obey His counsel. He wants that because He loves us and wants our happiness. And He knows how a lack of trust in Him brings sadness."

Speaking Sunday morning, President Eyring said that lack of trust has brought sorrow to Heavenly Father's children from before the world was created.

"We know through the revelations of God to the Prophet Joseph Smith that many of our brothers and sisters in the premortal world rejected the plan for our mortal life presented by our Heavenly Father and His eldest Son, Jehovah.

"We don't know all the reasons for Lucifer's terrible success in inciting that rebellion. However, one reason is clear. Those who lost the blessing of coming into mortality lacked sufficient trust in God to avoid eternal misery.

"That sad pattern of lack of trust in God has persisted since the creation."

President Eyring said he would be careful in giving examples from the lives of God's children, since he does not know all the reason for their lack of faith enough to trust Him. "Many of you have studied the moments of crisis in their lives," he told the worldwide congregation. "Jonah, for instance, not only rejected the message from the Lord to go to Nineveh but went the other way. Naaman could not trust the direction of the Lord's prophet to bathe in a river to allow the Lord to heal his leprosy, feeling the simple task was beneath his dignity. The Savior invited Peter to leave the safety of a boat to walk to Him across the water."

Peter, at first, hesitated and then walked on the water. But he became fearful and began to sink. "'And immediately Jesus stretched forth his hand, and caught him, and said unto him, O thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt?' (Matthew 14:31).

President Eyring, "We can take courage from the fact that Peter came to trust the Lord enough to stay faithful in his service all the way to his martyrdom."

The young Nephi stirs a desire to develop trust in the Lord to obey His commandments, however hard they appear. Nephi said, "'I will go and do the things which the Lord hath commanded, for I know that the Lord giveth no commandments unto the children of men, save he shall prepare a way for them that they make accomplish the thing which he commandeth them" (1 Nephi 3:7).