PROVO, Utah — In introducing the theme of the 2024 BYU Women’s Conference to thousands of Latter-day Saint women gathered in the Marriott Center, committee member Jennifer Kerns Davis testified, “God does what He says He’s going to do.”
In the opening keynote address on Thursday, May 2, Davis spoke of how the conference theme — found in 2 Nephi 4:34, “O Lord, I have trusted in thee, and I will trust in thee forever” — has brought her comfort throughout her life, including after a divorce, as a single mother, when she was diagnosed with a serious illness and the suicide of her oldest child. Nephi’s statement “becomes an anthem to women, men, youth and children in every corner of the earth and throughout all time, as we hear Nephi’s declaration of faith, trust and commitment to our Lord,” she said.
In these verses, “Nephi is grieving,” Davis observed. Nephi’s father has just passed away and members in his family are in the process of leaving their faith.
In his discouragement, Nephi calls himself “wretched,” and he says his “heart weeps” and “my soul lingers in the valley of sorrow” and “my strength slackens because of my afflictions.”
Davis asked, “Have you ever felt this way? I have several times.”
But then Nephi remembers the countless ways God has blessed him and when God has delivered on His promises. In verse 21, Nephi remembers “he is loved, with the most perfect love that could ever exist — God’s love,” she said.
As Nephi regains strength, he prays to God and asks for more strength, courage, capability and power from the Lord to overcome the world. He then promises that he will only trust in God, and not in anything worldly.
“These actions Nephi recorded in this chapter become a pattern for us to use when we also need empowerment. In fact, in Nephi’s psalm we see a clear model to make important things happen with our faith,” Davis said.
Individuals can follow Nephi’s example of trust by remembering past blessings and experiences of when God has delivered them. “Remembering when we’ve trusted God in the past can help remind us that God can be trusted in the present and the future,” Davis said.
President Henry B. Eyring, second counselor in the First Presidency, has shared how he was inspired to write in his journal every day of how he has seen the hand of the Lord in his life or the lives of his family. In the process, President Eyring’s testimony and trust in the Lord grew, Davis said.
“Sisters, we too can create our own records of trust,” she encouraged. Like Nephi and President Eyring, Davis said she has been striving to keep a record of God’s promises to her.
The day her oldest son, Parker, died, Davis said, she called 911 and then pleaded with God on her knees “from the painful depths of my soul” for a miracle and for her son’s spirit to stay in his body.
Gradually, she said, she knew she needed to ask for a “but if not,” because she understood that God respected Parker’s agency. “But I didn’t know what ‘but if not’ to ask for, and so I asked God if He could give me the ‘but if not.’”
Davis said that God told her, “There are more miracles, bigger miracles and better miracles than the one you are asking for.”
In that moment, God was asking her to trust Him, Davis said, “even though what I wanted more than anything in the moment was to have my boy. But because He’d already demonstrated He was trustworthy through other life experiences and in the scriptures, I knew that the all powerful God of the universe could turn these ashes into beauty.”
Mustering up a “mustard seed of trust” and “every ounce of courage in my broken heart,” and “thinking of the more, bigger and better miracles He was promising me,” Davis said she replied to Him, “Then I want those.”
She added, “God has not backed down from that promise.”
Davis said that every week she adds to her miracle journal as a testament that God does what He says He will do. In the 20 months since her son’s death, there have been hundreds of miracles. “And we keep receiving them, and I want to never ever forget them. Because there is another promise God has made to me that I’m sure He will not deny me: That I will see that little boy again.”
Davis cautioned that faith, or trust, must be in the Savior and not in a desired outcome.
If she had put her faith in an outcome — that her son would not pass away — “I fear I might have likely lost all trust in God. But the Lord blessed our family in a different way,” Davis said. “… I recognize God is blessing our family in a very special way in particular to our circumstance, and I have no doubt He will compensate us for every loss, because He said He would. Indeed, in His omniscient love He delivers differently. But assuredly, He delivers. And I know He will do the same for you.”
