Music Offering: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slLqkBZ0F9Q

As individual members of the Christianity, it is in the everyday context of our lives that this witness we exemplify comes under constant scrutiny.

May I share with you a personal experience to illustrate how humbling this can be? I was employed by a major corporation for almost twenty-five years. During those years I developed a personal friendship with a fine business associate from Texas. Our careers paralleled each other very closely. A few years ago, he presented me with a most unusual gift, which I shall always cherish. It was a large, molded bronze, personalized coat of arms. He said, “I have been observing you for many years and have created an original coat of arms using symbols which I believe represent the four most important values to which you have committed your life, namely, your church, your family, your profession, and your quest for personal development.”

Naturally, I was surprised, deeply impressed, and flattered. As the significance of this gift settled upon my mind, the thought of someone quietly taking mental notes of my actions, attitudes, and values fired my imagination. I realized the weighty responsibility each of us has to demonstrate accurately the principles and priorities to which we are committed. It was like a mini-foretaste of Judgment Day!

I thought of the scripture in Revelation in which John saw the books opened, “and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works.” (Rev. 20:12.) It was a most sobering experience.

All of us give our lives daily for what we believe is important. Those with whom we associate are silently assessing us, our values and character traits. Is there anything about our daily conduct we would change if we knew someone was doing a written appraisal for publication?

Suppose you received, as the head of a family, a telephone call from your Christian Leader, who said, “The local newspaper is doing a series of articles on our Church. They have asked permission for a reporter to move into one of our homes for a week to observe firsthand what a Christian family is really like. We have selected you to represent the Church in our area.”

You say, “Yes, Sir, we will be happy to do it.” You have seven children ranging from age two months to a nineteen-year-old son awaiting his mission call. Little time is allowed for “sprucing” things up—just a typical week with life as you live it.

This actually happened to Max and Nettie Ann Nelson of Boise, Idaho, in 1983. How proud I was of this fine family as I read the reporter’s account. What a positive impression was made upon him. The question going through your mind is possibly the same one that I had: “If our family were selected, would we be ready?”

Jesus said, “Hold up your light that it may shine unto the world. Behold I am the light which ye shall hold up.”

In a related admonition, Peter counseled “that ye should shew forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. …

“Abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul;

“Having your conversation honest among the Gentiles: that … they may by your good works, which they shall behold, glorify God in the day of visitation.” (1 Pet. 2:9, 11–12.)

To the Israelites the Lord commanded: “Thou shalt not bear false witness.” (See Ex. 20:16.) Are we not false witnesses if we are untrue to gospel principles we profess but do not practice?

Most damage to the collective reputation of Christianity is done by those members who want to straddle the line, with one foot in the kingdom and the other foot in spiritual Babylon. Those who so compromise their principles want to play for both teams at once—the Lord’s and Satan’s—as if to say, “I want to wait and see which side is winning before I declare myself.”

There are some members who are not concerned about their outward appearances and actions, rationalizing that they know what they really are on the inside. These individuals inevitably are judged “guilty by association.” To be judged fairly, we must avoid the very appearance of evil. We would do well to remember the words: “Whate’er thou art, act well thy part.”

Gordon B. Hinckley related this inspiring story:

“I talked with a young man recently returned from the war. He too had walked the jungle patrols, his heart pounding with fear. But reluctantly he admitted that the greatest fear he had was the fear of ridicule.

“The men of his company laughed at him, taunted him, plastered him with a nickname that troubled him. They told him the things they reveled in. Then on one occasion when the going was rough, he faced them and quietly said, ‘Look, I know you think I’m a square. I don’t consider myself any better than any of the rest of you. … But I grew up in a different way. I grew up in a religious home and a religious town. I went to church on Sundays. We prayed together as a family. I was taught to stay away from these things. It’s just that I believe differently. With me it’s a matter of religion, and it’s kind of a way of respecting my mother and my dad. All of you together might force me toward a compromising situation, but that wouldn’t change me, and you wouldn’t feel right after you’d done it.’

“One by one they turned silently away. But during the next few days each came to ask his pardon, and from his example others gained the strength and the will to change their own lives. He taught the gospel to two of them and brought them into the church.”

I thought of Paul’s counsel to Timothy: “Be thou an example of the believers, in word, in conversation, in charity, in spirit, in faith, in purity.” (1 Tim. 4:12.)

“Ye are my witnesses,” said the Lord through Isaiah. (Isa. 43:10.)

Let us stand tall, brothers and sisters, and be not ashamed to take upon us the name of Christ. May God bless us as a whole and as individuals that the testimony we bear as His witnesses will be true and clear and fully reliable, I humbly pray in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, amen. ~~J. Richard Clark