Your Truest Ability

"...I testify that you are individually loved of God, you are central to the meaning of His work, and you are cherished and prayed for by the presiding officers of His Church. The personal value, the sacred splendor of every one of you , is the very reason there is a plan for salvation and exaltation." ~Elder Jeffrey R. Holland, General Conference, October 2010

This weekend I had the opportunity to record on my very first project ever. I was in the studio with Russ Dixon until midnight on Friday night recording the EFY version of "The One". No, it didn't really take that long to record it. We ran into several problems that prevented the work from moving forward and were reminded of the sacredness of humility and the power of prayer in all things. There were traffic problems and mental roadblocks and disasters and technical difficulties. But, we were driven to prayer (as we should have been at the beginning) and once we put everything in the Lord's hands, miracles happened and the song was finished quickly. One of the greatest challenges of the night was coming up with the perfect one-line catch-phrase during the bridge. One line. One little teeny tiny line. But it had to be perfect. It had to reflect the whole song and had to be intensely strong, for it would be the line that would change lives. It had to be life-changing. We battled the poor little line for an hour and a half, tossing ideas to and from and even coming up with some ridiculous and silly little lines (of which I will NEVER share) but none of them felt right. During the whole process prayers had been offered several times, seeking for the needed inspiration. As we had just about thrown our hands in the air, a whisper spoke to my heart and Russ looked at me in shock. It was THE perfect line. It was exactly what we wanted this song to reflect. It summed up the entire testimony. That line now reads: He sees me for what I can become.

What truth! While we ourselves can only see the here and the now, the "has beens" and the "should've dones", Heavenly Father sees in us the great potential that we own. He has placed inside each of us a greatness that only He can see and only we can discover. He sees our powers and our abilities and our spiritual gifts and our future. He holds a great trust in us that we, too, will discover this personal greatness. It is in His plan. It is His will.

The challenge for each of us is to be willing to discover it. Too often we measure ourselves on a worldly level, thinking that worldly talents measure our potential. But, our abilities drive much deeper than the ability to sing or play sports, to draw well or to write amazing things. While those talents are really given to us from God, they aren't what really define us. Our TRUEST abilities lie in what we do with those gifts, how well we serve, how much we can obey the promptings of the Holy Spirit, how confident we can stand while speaking to a group of youth about something sacred, exemplifying unconditional love, magnifying our happiness in the Lord and being humble enough to not only recognize our own potential, but allowing ourselves to become it. These are just a few of the greatest abilities that we possess.

Look deep inside yourself. Look past the "traditional" talents you see. Discover what is most amazing about you. Find what you are really, really amazing at. Search for YOUR "truest ability". Then live it.