Where are You Focused?

April Tribe Giauque
Mar 31
5 min read

Written By April T Giauque

Elder Egbo General Conference October 2024

What is your focus? Where is your focus? Who is your focus? Each one of us is responsible for answering these questions. We have a living Prophet who has been telling us to prepare for Christ’s return. When our focus is set on Christ, we are able to prepare and bear the burdens placed on our backs, find joy in the deepest pain, and endure to the end.

Elder Egbo started off by sharing a story about the 1996 Atalanta Olympic Games and how his native Nigerian football team was not picked to win anything won it all! How? They focused on getting the goal. With that one goal, they focused on the next and the next. They had inadequate equipment, meals, and training, but they had heart. They stopped listening to all the distractions and kept their focus. They became Olympic Champions.

We can “win it all” as we put our full focus on Christ! When we ignore the world's distractions and focus on Christ and His gospel, we are guaranteed success beyond what we can fully imagine and can feel great joy. President Russell M. Nelson taught: “When the focus of our lives is on … Jesus Christ and His gospel, we can feel joy regardless of what is happening—or not happening—in our lives.”

Elder Egbo said, “I pray that the Holy Ghost will help each of us heed President Nelson’s invitation to focus our lives on Jesus Christ and His gospel so we can experience joy in Christ “regardless of what is happening—or not happening—in our lives.”

Scriptures focus on Christ

If we turn to the Book of Mormon and to the story of Alma th Younger, we get a glimpse of how we can change. Consider Alma the Younger. He rebelled and fought against the Church. His father, Alma, prayed and fasted. An angel appeared and called Alma the Younger to repentance.

In that moment, Alma began to suffer “the pains of a damned soul.” In his darkest hours, he remembered his father teaching that Christ would come to atone for the sins of the world. As his mind caught hold on this thought, he pled with God for mercy. Joy was the result, a joy he described as exquisite! Mercy and joy came to Alma because he and his father focused on the Savior.

As he spoke, my heart remembered that Alma’s turnaround story was made possible by the faith and focus that his Parents had in praying without ceasing to the Lord to help save their son. I need to add more of this to my own prayers. Elder Egbo says, “For parents with children who have strayed, take heart! Instead of wondering why an angel does not come to help your child repent, know that the Lord has placed a mortal angel in his or her path: the bishop, another Church leader, or a ministering brother or sister.”

If you keep fasting and praying, if you do not set a timetable or a deadline for God, and if you trust that He is stretching forth His hand to help, then—sooner or later—you find God touching the heart of your child when your child chooses to listen.

This is something I need to do in my family and for many people. It’s done in private prayer as I “cry unto the Lord” and outwardly in how I show my love for my children. Once he experienced joy in Christ, Alma the Younger lived with that joy. But how did he maintain such joy even through difficulty and trial?

He states:

“From that time even until now, I have labored without ceasing, [to] bring souls unto repentance; that I might bring them to taste of the exceeding joy of which I did taste. …

“… And … the Lord doth give me exceedingly great joy in the fruit of my labors. …

“And I have been supported under trials and troubles of every kind.”

Joy in Christ

Joy in Christ began for Alma when he exercised faith in Him and cried for mercy. Then Alma exercised his faith in Christ by laboring to help others taste of the same joy.

These continuous labors produced great joy in Alma even in trials and troubles of every kind. You see, “the Lord loves effort,” and effort focused on Him brings blessings. Even severe trials can be “swallowed up in the joy of Christ.”

Helam—a place where they could raise their children and enjoy the free exercise of their religion. These righteous people living good lives were enslaved by a marauding group and stripped of the fundamental human right to exercise religion. Sometimes bad things happen to good people:

“The Lord seeth fit to chasten his people; yea, he trieth their patience and their faith.

“Nevertheless—whosoever putteth his trust in him, the same shall be lifted up at the last day. Yea, and thus it was with this people.”

Endure to the End

How did these people endure through their trials and suffering? By focusing on Christ and His gospel. Elder Egbo said, “Their troubles did not define them; rather, each of them turned to God, likely defining themselves as children of God, children of the covenant, and disciples of Jesus Christ.”

In response, the Lord did “ease the burdens … upon [their] shoulders. … Yea, the Lord did strengthen them that they could bear up their burdens with ease, and they did submit cheerfully and with patience to all the will of the Lord.”

Think about how that joy is a powerful focus, and in gratitude, we can know it comes from God. “Joy is powerful, and focusing on joy brings God’s power into our lives. As in all things, Jesus Christ is our ultimate exemplar, ‘who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross.’

Testimony

Elder Egbo then shares a very personal story about his mother passing away very suddenly and his testimony of understanding how to find joy through the depth of his sorrow. He said, “I know she is not dead because of Him—she lives! And I know because of Christ and the priesthood keys restored through the Prophet Joseph Smith, I will be with her again. The sorrow of losing my mom has been swallowed up in the joy of Christ! I am learning that to ‘think celestial’ and ‘let God prevail’ includes focusing on the joy available in Christ.”