BE A WOMAN OF CHRIST

Be a woman of Christ.  Cherish your esteemed place in the sight of God.  He needs you.  This Church needs you.  The world needs you.  A woman’s abiding trust in God and unfailing devotion to things of the Spirit have always been an anchor when the wind and the waves of life were fiercest.  I say to you what the Prophet Joseph said more than 150 ear ago.  “If you live up to your privileges, the angels cannot be restrained from being your associates.”

All of this is to try to tell you how your Father in Heaven feels about you and what He has designed for you to become.  And if for a time any of you are less visionary than this or seem bent on living beneath your privilege, then we express even greater love for you and plead with you to make your teenage years a triumph, not a tragedy.

I plead with you young women to please be more accepting of yourselves, including your body shape and style with little less longing to look like someone else.  We are all different.  As one advisor to a teenage girl said:  “You can’t live your life worrying that the world is staring at you.  When you let people’s opinions make you self-conscious you give away your power.  The key to feeling confident is to always listen to your inner self – the real you.”  And in the Kingdom of God, the real you is ‘more precious than rubies.’

Elder Jeffrey R. Holland, Ensign 2005