My Mom sent me this talk from Elder Holland when I was on my mission, and I read it often as it provided strength to me. It was given at a BYU devotional in 1987.
http://speeches.byu.edu/reader/reader.php?id=6989
"As time goes by, we ought--as a matter of personal maturity and growth in the gospel--to spend more of our time with and devote more of our energy to the good things, the best things, the things that endure and bless and prevail. This is why, I believe, family and true friends become increasingly important the older we get, and so does knowledge and so do simple acts of kindness and concern for the circumstances of others. Peter lists a whole handful of these virtues and calls them "the divine nature," and he promises us "divine power" in possessing and sharing them (see 2 Peter 1:38). These gospel qualities and principles, as I understand them, are the most important as well as the most permanent of life's acquisitions. But there is a war going on over such personal possessions, and there will yet be a bazooka shell or two falling into your life that will prompt--indeed, will require--careful examination of what you say you believe, what you assume you hold dear, and what you trust is of permanent worth.When difficult times come upon us or when temptation seems all around, will we be--are we now?--prepared to stand our ground and outlast the intruder? Are we equipped for combat, to stay loyal for as long as it takes, to stay true for the duration of the war? Can we hold fast to the principles and the people who truly matter eternally to us? "
"You see, a disciple of Christ--which I testify to you Joseph was and is--always has to be a disciple; the judge does not give any time off for bad behavior. A Christian always stands on principle, even as old Holland is out there swinging a pitchfork and screaming an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth--forgetting, as dispensation after dispensation has forgotten, that this only leaves everyone blind and toothless.
No, the good people, the strong people, dig down deeper and find a better way. Like Christ, they know that when it is hardest to be so is precisely the time you have to be at your best. As another confession to you, I have always feared that I could not have said at Calvary's cross, "Father forgive them for they know not what they do." Not after the spitting, and the cursing, and the thorns, and the nails. Not if they don't care or understand that this horrible price in personal pain is being paid for them. But that's just the time when the fiercest kind of integrity and loyalty to high purpose must take over. That's just the time when it matters the very most and when everything else hangs in the balance--for surely it did that day. You and I won't ever find ourselves on that cross, but we repeatedly find ourselves at the foot of it. And how we act there will speak volumes about what we think of Christ's character and his call for us to be his disciples."
"The question then, for all of us milling around the Greyhound bus depot about to report for duty, is: When gospel principles get unpopular or unprofitable or very difficult to live, will we stand by them "for the duration"? That is the question our experiences in Latter-day Saint life seem most determined to answer. What do we really believe, and how true to that are we really willing to live? As university students--bright and blessed and eager and prosperous--do we yet know what faith--specifically, faith in the Lord Jesus Christ--really is, what it requires in human behavior, and what it may yet demand of us before our souls are finally saved?"
