The Four-Point Guide

As each realizes his own potential and what our Heavenly Father expects of him, a determination to live proper standards, to be true to one’s best self, and to act always in accordance with a high sense of true values, there will follow incomparable joy and lasting peace.

A four-point guide will help focus our attention on such a goal:

First, be where we ought to be. A wise father counseled his son: “If you ever find yourself where you shouldn’t be, then get out!” Choose your friends carefully, for you will tend to be like them and be found where they choose to go.

Second, say what we ought to say. What we say and how we say it tend to reflect what we are. In the life of the Apostle Peter, when he attempted to distance himself from Jesus and pretended to be other than what he was, his tormenters detected his true identity with the penetrating statement, “Thy speech bewrayeth thee.” The words we utter will reflect the feelings of our hearts, the strength of our character, and the depth of our testimonies.

Third, do what we ought to do. Pierre, one of the central characters in Tolstoy’s War and Peace, torn by spiritual agonies, cries out to God, “Why is it that I know what is right and I do what is wrong?” Pierre needed a mind-set, a resolve—even a stiffening of his backbone. One clever with words put it this way as he paraphrased the familiar counsel “Never put off ’til tomorrow what you should do today,” by adding, “Why do we not put off ’til tomorrow what we shouldn’t do today!”

Then there is the excuse of the weak: “The devil made me do it.” It is only when we take charge of our own actions that we direct them in the proper course.

Fourth, be what we ought to be. The Apostle Paul counseled his beloved young friend Timothy: “Let no man despise thy youth; but be thou an example of the believers, in word, in conversation, in charity, in spirit, in faith, in purity.” Peter asked the question: “What manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy conversation and godliness?” Then Peter’s life answered convincingly his own question. The Master’s own voice queried: “What manner of men ought ye to be? Verily I say unto you, even as I am.”

Thomas S. Monson, “The Upward Reach,” Ensign, Nov 1993, 47