Family Followership - Henry B. Eyring

Family Followership - Henry B. Eyring

First, we can introduce our children to the Savior through prayer and the scriptures. They can’t, with their physical eyes, see him leading their family, but they can feel his reality. That means we must do more than teach the mechanics of prayer and more than simply make the scriptures available.

A second part of our children’s world we can control is the happiness and joy they see us exhibit in the Lord’s service. That matters to the young person deciding whether to submit. Is the Master’s burden really light? Is the service joyful? Those questions will be answered for our children in our faces, voices, and actions, probably late on a long, long Sabbath day or in other times of stress, or tragedy.

I never heard my father preach about the “peace that passeth understanding,” but I sensed it in his smile as we went to every church meeting together. If he frowned, it was that I was slow getting ready, not that we were going. I suppose I never considered not going, because I never saw it done. And I saw the peace in his face as we left a hospital an hour after my mother died. He left me and walked back into the hospital ward to thank the nurses and doctors, more concerned for them than for himself. He didn’t say so, but I knew the burden was light only because he trusted the Master. Much as Matthew trusted me.

Elder Mark E. Petersen’s questions suggest the paradox of trying to urge children to a service we do not rejoice in ourselves:

“If the parents do not know the thrill of a clear conscience, can they teach its joy to their little ones?

“If parents have never known the satisfaction which comes through the payment of an honest tithe, can they plant the seeds of obedience to this law in the hearts of their children?

“If parents have never discovered the true value of keeping holy the Sabbath Day, can they teach their children to honor it?

“If parents have never caught the vision of the clean life, can they picture it to the members of their families?

“If parents have never been in the temple, can they teach their children the great advantages of temple marriage?

“If father and mother have given no thought to the meaning of a mission, can they develop in the hearts of their sons and daughters a desire to perform one?

“If parents themselves are not fully converted to the Gospel, can they effectively convert their own children?” (A Faith to Live By [Bookcraft, 1959], pp. 112–13.)

A third experience we can control is giving assignments to our children that will build their faith that Christ does lead human beings who submit to him. With that faith, it will be far easier to believe that dad could be right when he gives an apparently unreasonable direction, after seeking divine help.