"Being converted to the gospel of Jesus Christ means to walk in a newness of life," said Elder Robert E. Sackley of the Seventy in his general conference address in October 1988.
"It means learning to yield to the Spirit and responding to the things that the Lord expects us to respond to. It means caring for and serving others with deep, considerate feelings rather than pursuing the natural desires of our own lives. In our day and time there has been a great tendency to shrug off the things of the Spirit as we become more and more involved in worldly things. We seem to be living in a world where people give little thought to others, as they are busily caring for their own needs. As followers of Christ, we must live outside ourselves and lose ourselves in service to others. . . ."It was the great Apostle Paul who said, `Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.' (2 Cor. 5:17.)
"To find that `more excellent way,' brothers and sisters, we must cast aside our old selves and our old habits and ways of thinking. We must first recognize how we should change, and then we must make those changes, thus putting on the new and beginning to live as we have never lived before - walking in a newness of life.
"The Apostle Paul also said speaking of our relationship to the Lord, `Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.' (Rom. 6:4.)
"Throughout the world I personally have witnessed man's great tendency to think of himself without consideration of others. I believe with all my heart that we cannot come unto Christ unless we put on `a newness of life' in caring for those we love, in sharing the gospel, in keeping the commandments, and in honoring the covenants we have made. These are the things we must do now and better than we have ever done them before."
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