Self-reliance opens doors to service
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On the threshold of a new year, establishing or strengthening one's self-reliance is a worthy goal.
Not only does it promote individual happiness and self-respect, but also it gives one the ability to serve others."Let us be self-reliant and independent," President Marion G. Romney, then of the First Presidency, admonished in October 1976 general conference. "Salvation is an individual matter, and we must work out our own salvation, in temporal as well as in spiritual things."
In the October 1977 general conference, President Spencer W. Kimball said:
"The responsibility for each person's social, emotional, spiritual, physical, or economic well-being rests first upon himself, second upon his family, and third upon the Church if he is a faithful member thereof.
"No true Latter-day Saint, while physically or emotionally able, will voluntarily shift the burden of his own or his family's well-being to someone else. So long as he can, under the inspiration of the Lord and with his own labors, he will supply himself and his family with the spiritual and temporal necessities of life."
The welfare handbook published by the Church in 1990, Providing in the Lord's Way: A Leader's Guide to Welfare, states: "When we accept the responsibility for our own and our family's well-being, we are better able to sustain ourselves in our everyday lives. We are better prepared to endure times of adversity without becoming dependent upon others. We also honor the sacred relationships that the Lord has established between husbands and wives, parents and children." (See Mosiah 4:14-15; 13:20; D&C 83:2,4.)
Suggested in the handbook are six characteristics of a self-reliant person: education; health; employment; home storage; resource management; and social, emotional and spiritual strength.
The Church News asked six guest writers to share ideas, tips and personal experiences in developing each of the six characteristics. Their perspectives are on pages 4-7.
