And Neither Will You

And Neither Will You

　

I have a special friend named Marenann. We were visiting teaching companions for a long time, and every time we would visit I learned something from her.

One day Marenann told me about something that happened to her years before when she was a ward Primary President. For some reason her Bishop became upset with her, and when he was talking to another brother in the ward he called her a witch. Well, you can imagine how mad this made Marenann.

She said when she got home that night she knelt beside her bed and told Heavenly Father that if he was going to let that Bishop go to the Celestial Kingdom then she didn’t want to be there. Marenann told me that she always stopped after she prayed and listened to hear if Heavenly Father wanted to tell her something, so she stayed on her knees this night and waited to see what Heavenly Father would say about that. After awhile she heard in her heart the words, "He won’t be there." That made her feel a lot better, but then the thought came to her, "Wait," so she waited on her knees to hear what else Heavenly Father wanted to tell her. She said she waited and waited, until her knees began to ache, and still she heard nothing. She knew she needed to wait longer, so she tried shifting from one knee to the other, but still she heard nothing and she knew she had to wait longer. Finally in agony she kind of fell to one side to relieve the pressure on her knees, until at last she heard the words, "And neither will you ."

Then she knew what the Lord had waited to tell her until she was humble enough to hear. That she wasn’t fit for the celestial kingdom either unless she learned to love everyone, even this Bishop.