The youth theme for 2025 is “Look unto Christ” and comes from Doctrine and Covenants 6:36, which says, “Look unto me in every thought; doubt not, fear not.”
On this episode of the Church News podcast, Young Men General President Steven J. Lund and Young Women General President Emily Belle Freeman discuss how this important theme can help youth develop faith in the Savior and His Atonement.
All year, youth of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints will plan activities, listen to music, and attend For the Strength of Youth conferences and worldwide events all based on this theme emphasizing lifelong discipleship. Church News reporter Mary Richards hosts this episode.
Listen to this episode of the Church News podcast on Apple Podcasts, Amazon, Spotify, bookshelf PLUS, YouTube or wherever you get podcasts.
Transcript:
President Steven J. Lund: He’s saying, “Doubt not, fear not. And this is why you can doubt not and why you need not fear: Because I have bought you at a price. Look at my wounds and the prints. Because of my Atonement, the universe is at our feet, yours and mine, and there is nothing that we can’t solve together. So have a little peace, be good, keep the commandments, be faithful, and you’ll inherit the kingdom of heaven.” And the Savior is an empowerer. When we look unto Him, He will make us more than we are. Again and again, I have seen Heavenly Father fill in blanks and the Savior give me wisdom, and He is an empowerer. As long as we’re looking to Him, we’ll get through this swirl of life. And, you know, the only way out is through. Going through with Him is a surefire way to find success in this world.
1:07
Jon Ryan Jensen: This is Jon Ryan Jensen, editor of the Church News. Welcome to the Church News podcast. Today, we are taking you on a journey of connection as we discuss news and events of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
1:23
Mary Richards: The youth theme for 2025 is “Look unto Christ.” This comes from Doctrine and Covenants 6:36, which says, “Look unto me in every thought; doubt not, fear not.” All year, youth of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints will plan activities, listen to music, and attend For the Strength of Youth conferences and worldwide events all based around this theme.
I’m Mary Richards, hosting this episode of the Church News podcast. Young Men General President Steven J. Lund and Young Women General President Emily Belle Freeman are here now to talk about the year ahead and how youth can keep this theme in their daily lives all year long.
Welcome, both of you, to the Church News podcast.
2:06
President Steven J. Lund: Thank you.
President Emily Belle Freeman: We’re so excited to be here.
2:09
Mary Richards: Tell me about this theme. And can you share your thoughts on the verse and how it will bless the lives of young people in 2025?
President Steven J. Lund: This is a really important theme because this is such an important issue. What we’re about as a Young Men’s presidency and Young Women’s presidency, and as a First Presidency of the Church and of the Quorum of the Twelve, everyone is focused on this one thing, and that is building a foundation for lifelong discipleship. And discipleship means following Him. And to follow Him, we need to know Him and look unto Him.
2:40
President Emily Belle Freeman: I love when you read the stories of Jesus Christ in the scriptures, particularly in the New Testament, we learn so much from people who actually looked unto Christ. We see how that made a difference in their life. And I think of Peter walking on water and the lesson that we learn there: As long as he was looking at Christ, he was fine. I think also of the woman who touched His robe, same thing; she was looking at Him. And one of my favorite things as we think about this is: Where was Jesus in each of those stories? And He was within reaching distance for both of them.
And I think that’s something powerful, if we can help the youth to understand that as they look unto Christ, as they focus on Him, as they keep Him within reaching distance, it’s going to have a powerful effect on their lives this year.
3:42
Mary Richards: He’s not far away. He’s within reach, yes. This builds on the 2024 theme, right? That “I am a disciple of Jesus Christ” (3 Nephi 5:13).
President Emily Belle Freeman: Yeah, I love what President Lund just said, that that’s our overarching goal right now, is to build lifelong disciples of Jesus Christ. That’s something we’ve talked about this whole past year, is what does it look like to be a disciple. And now that we’ve focused on that for a time, to talk about now: What does it mean to actually be laser focused on Him, and how will that help us progress even one step further?
4:21
President Steven J. Lund: It is kind of an interesting progression, isn’t it, to go from “I am a disciple of Jesus Christ” to “Look unto me in every thought; doubt not, fear not.” Even disciples need to be reminded when the roof caves in where to go for peace and where to go for direction, where to go for comfort. And so to have those thoughts and succession make perfect sense.
4:44
Mary Richards: And as you’ve met with youth and leaders around the world, what common challenges have you observed that could be alleviated by following this theme to look unto Christ?
4:54
President Steven J. Lund: Looking unto Christ is really a lifestyle decision. So many of us go through life just on the edge of our chair, wondering what crisis is going to come along, and “Can I do this?” and “Can I not do this?” I loved it; we drove over together, just down the parking ramp where we met, and I looked at President Freeman and said, “Well, you ready for this? You got good material?” And her answer was, “No, but I trust in the Spirit.” And that instinct is such a comforting one, that we can’t prepare for all the uncertainties and vagaries of life, but we can always look unto Him, and He never lets us down.
5:33
President Emily Belle Freeman: President Lund and I had the opportunity just a few weeks ago to go and participate on a hike up at Mutual Dell. And it was late at night, it was dark, and we started off on this journey. We were there with some of our council members and some of our presidency and having an experience that some of our youth have actually participated in this year. And it was a 45-minute faith hike. And as you went through, there were different things that you experienced along the way.
And there was one moment that you came to — and, President Lund, I’m going to put you on the spot in a minute, because I’m so interested what your response to this moment was — but you came around this corner, and it’s dark, and there’s luminaries lining the trail, and you came to a spot where there were five little lights in the dirt, and there was a track that was leading you so you knew what to do. And it said, “When you get to the five lights, stop and look up.” And so you would stop and look up, and there was this beautiful painting of Jesus that they had put just right there within your view.
And so you stopped, and then they said, “If you could say anything to Jesus Christ right now, what would you say?” So that part was really interesting for me, and I’m super interested to hear what did you say in that moment.
7:02
President Steven J. Lund: I don’t remember what I said, but I do remember the power of that moment of looking unto Christ in this dark, sensory-rich environment. It’s dark, and the wind’s blowing, and it’s about to rain and so forth, and we’re there just with our spouses walking through the dell. And I think that my response then was, “How am I doing?”
7:26
President Emily Belle Freeman: And mine was very similar. That’s so interesting. I meant to ask you this before, and we’ve never had an opportunity. But I got up in that moment, and I said to Him, “I’m doing my best.” And it’s interesting that that was the thought. And then you walked forward a little bit, and there were five more lights in the dirt, and the prompt was to stop again. And now — the first picture, He was looking over His shoulder at you. The second painting, He was facing you full on — and then they said, “And what would He say to you?”
And the interesting part for me of this — and I’m so interested to know if this was the same for you — is once you walked past that part, you came to this long area where people had written down their response of what He had said to them on this path. And the most often written response was, “Keep going. I love you.” There was, how many, 100 responses were hanging up there, and the most common response was, “Keep going. I love you.”
And I think to myself this is a time where the youth face a lot of different things. In fact, as part of that hike earlier on, they had written what their biggest challenge was, and it was heartbreaking to read what those challenges were. And they ranged from everything, like, “I can’t get along with my parents,” or loneliness was such a big one that they talked about. I loved one that just said right in the middle of the paper, “Math.” That was the biggest. And so you had all of these things. But as I thought about those — anxiety, loneliness, I can’t get along with my family — and that burden that so many of our youth carry, and they’re walking through life with it.
And for me, it was so encouraging that when they had come to the point where someone had asked, “But what do you think the Savior would say to you right now,” I loved that their immediate response was, “Keep going. I love you.” And to think that this theme, “Look unto Christ,” if we can do that with that thought. And I love that the expanded part of this scripture says, “Doubt not, fear not,” that you have that sense in there of “Keep going. I love you.” And I hope they will learn that at the end of this year.
10:15
Mary Richards: Yeah, this is where faith and repentance and endurance seem to all — that’s where my brain was kind of going with this. Then I thought of, “What would I answer there, and what would I think of?” And I just had this thought to remember the sacrament prayers, to remember that idea that we will always have His Spirit to be with us. That’s part of looking unto Christ, isn’t it, that He’s also looking at us, and He’s promised us this each week, that the Spirit will be with us.
10:44
President Emily Belle Freeman: That’s so good.
President Steven J. Lund: That’s that lifestyle decision I was talking about. If we choose to follow Him, if we’ll do those other things that we promise in the sacrament prayer, His promise is pretty straightforward: “I’ll be with you,” and that is enough. That’s always enough.
10:58
Mary Richards: Let’s talk about any ideas or suggestions: How can youth keep this theme in their daily lives? How can they remember what you’ve just talked about and these ideas of looking unto Christ and remembering that He is with them always? How can this be a daily thing?
11:14
President Steven J. Lund: Yeah, in the real world, it’s pretty easy to feel warm thoughts reading the scriptures in this room. But out in the real world, people bump into each other, and it gets harder. Brad Wilcox was invited — I’m going to steal one of his stories, but it’s about him — was invited by a local football team to come and be the honorary coach on the sidelines and give a little pep talk before the players went out on the field. And Brad’s not a football player. In fact, I happen to know that I believe that was the second football game he’s ever attended at BYU.
But in the locker room, he said, “Well, let me just say that next year’s youth theme is ‘Look unto me in every thought; doubt not, fear not.’ So as you go out on the field today, doubt not, fear not.” And then the whole team is starting to chant this, “Doubt not, fear not,” until they’re bouncing up and down, “Doubt not, fear not.” Then they ran out the door. “Doubt not, fear not.” And then during the game, players would come off the field, and he got to stand on the edge of the field, then they’d run past him and say, “Doubt not, fear not, Brother Wilcox.” And so these things do have some staying power, if we let them.
12:20
President Emily Belle Freeman: That’s so good. And I want to just take us into the scriptures for a minute. And anyone who’s listening in at home, if you just want to turn to Doctrine and Covenants 6:36. Sometimes we get so focused on one verse, and that verse can become so much more powerful if we’ll look at what precedes it and what follows it. And that is actually true about this verse of scripture. I love how it starts out in 34: “Therefore, fear not, little flock; do good; let earth and hell combine against you, for if ye are built upon my rock, they cannot prevail.”
And I love that that is how He enters us into that. And sometimes these youth feel like the smallest, they feel like the least. When we travel around the world and we speak to these youth, they will talk to us about being the only one in their school or that they know who is an active, practicing member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. And I love that He starts out and says, “Fear not, little flock.” You don’t have to be in a big group to be strong. And I love that that’s how He starts.
And what He just spells out so clearly — and I feel like we heard this in the last conference; so many of the Apostles telling us that the adversary is real, that we are up against hard things, that they didn’t shy away from letting us know what part of the world we are living in right now. And I love when He says that: “Let earth and hell combine against you,” that that could be true, and that may be true for some of our youth this year. But “if ye are built upon my rock, they cannot prevail.” And then He says two verses down from there, “Look unto me in every thought; doubt not, fear not.” And I think it is true that there will be things we will be up against that are bigger than we are, that are harder than we can handle on our own.
I had an experience with my niece just two days ago in a very sacred moment that was hard. And in that moment, she was just sobbing, and she said to me, “I can’t do this. I am not strong enough to do this. I cannot do this.” And in that moment, my first inclination was something Elder Ronald A. Rasband said many years ago in a CES devotional: In really trying moments of darkness, sometimes the only thing you can do is speak the name of Jesus Christ in that situation. And we had a quick prayer together, but then I grabbed her cheeks in my hand, her whole face, I just took her face in my hand, and I said to her, “You have to be brave right now. You believe. You believe.”
And in that moment of letting go of the fear and letting go of the doubt — even though it was very prevalent, and what we were walking into — but for her, that moment of “You have to believe in this moment” changed everything. And I love that that’s what He’s saying, is, “Doubt not, fear not”; you will want to, but don’t. And then He says this — and this kind of goes back to what you were saying earlier about the sacrament prayers — “Behold the wounds which pierced my side, and also the prints of the nails in my hands and feet” (Doctrine and Covenants 6:37).
And I love that where that courage is going to come from we find in the next verse. And my invitation to everyone would be: Do not miss the next verse, following it, because where that power to doubt not and fear not comes from is the sacrament. It’s that priesthood ordinance combined with our covenant promise is what will give us the enabling strength we need, all of us, to get through whatever life brings us. The sacrament ordinance can unlock God’s power to give us that strength so that we won’t doubt and we won’t fear no matter what comes.
16:57
President Steven J. Lund: Yeah, I’m so glad you brought up that verse 37. Reading the scriptures, you see that transition sometimes, and I always thought it was just kind of a — verse 37 looks like a change of the subject. “OK, while I’ve got you here, let me just point this out to you.” But I’ve come to believe as you do, as you just said, no, this is context. He’s saying, “Doubt not, fear not. And this is why you can doubt not and why you need not fear: Because I have bought you at a price. Look at my wounds and the prints. Because of my Atonement, the universe is at our feet, yours and mine, and there is nothing that we can’t solve together. So have a little peace, be good, keep the commandments, be faithful, and you’ll inherit the kingdom of heaven. We’re going to do this together.” Just such a powerful thing.
17:49
Mary Richards: Yoking with the Savior through covenants. This is something — do you see this becoming so much more a part of teaching the youth, whereas in the past maybe it was, “Well, we’ll kind of get to that” or “You’ll understand that when you’re older,” but now it’s more ingrained in these teachings that you have made covenants to yoke yourself with the Savior.
18:07
President Emily Belle Freeman: And that’s a powerful concept for them, because they do believe Jesus is strong enough. They actually do believe Jesus is the strength of youth. They don’t necessarily believe that they are, so being able to think of that yoke, then it doesn’t matter how strong they are. It only matters how strong He is.
18:33
President Steven J. Lund: And thank you for tying this back to the sacrament service. It just always feels to me like of all the blessings of the kingdom, maybe the sacrament ordinance is one that is maybe the most underutilized. There’s this opportunity for us every Sunday the sacrament’s being passed, and that’s most Sundays, to form a connection between the Savior and His love for us that was actually manifest in the suffering that He undertook and the work that He did for us in advance of our lives, and to be able to have that connection really matters. We should think about it more.
I keep having this incident come to my mind of being up at a camp when I actually talked to a girls camp; Sister Freeman set me up as a distant second replacement, as she was conflicted with two things to do, and it was such a wonderful thing to get to talk to these girls on this dark summer night up in the mountains. And after it’s over, their bishop and his wife walked over and started chatting about my talk and something I’d said.
And he said, “This is all very personal to us now, because a few weeks ago, we lost our little girl in a traffic incident, and I was the driver. And I’m the bishop of our ward.” And he said, “We’re on our way to our son’s baptism when this thing happened. And so it was devastating to our family, of course, and it was devastating to our ward, because they all knew this little girl too. And so the next morning, nobody expected us to show up at church, and we weren’t sure that we could go to church that day. But in the night, I had this impression of what it is that our family needed in order to get to the next step of healing, what it is that our ward needed, and that was they needed to hear their bishop’s voice pronouncing the sacrament prayer.”
And so that morning, they walked in at two minutes to go. They walked up the aisle, and the family took their seat, and he went up and walked past his bishop’s seat on the stand and sat between his priests and then at the appointed time knelt and pronounced the blessings of the sacrament. And I thought it so fascinating that the impression that the Spirit gave him about how to accelerate healing was to go there, to go to those words of promise and of covenant and that that ultimately was the way that they would all get through this together.
21:14
President Emily Belle Freeman: I love that story so much, and I’m so glad you shared it, because I think when you asked us, “How can the youth keep this theme in their daily lives all year long?” it would be a missed opportunity if we weren’t pointing them to the sacrament every single Sunday for the rest of this year as one of the primary places that they can look unto Christ. That is that opportunity where they go.
And to not focus on what we often do when we teach the youth about the sacrament, we mostly will focus, when we talk about the Aaronic Priesthood, on those boys who bless, pass and prepare the sacrament. And when we do that, we lose a really important opportunity to teach about the power that we draw upon through that Aaronic Priesthood ordinance itself and to be able to teach them that if we look unto Him every Sunday and partake the sacrament, that priesthood ordinance, and keep our covenant promise, it unlocks for us the ability to draw upon God’s power — the ministering of angels, the enabling strength to overcome, an increase of the Spirit in our life.
That happens every single Sunday, and each of us can think of where in our life right now we need heaven’s help, ministering angels. Each of us can think of in our life where we are not strong enough without Him, that we need that enabling strength. Each of us can think of decisions that we are making right now that we are uncertain about that we might say, “O God, our eyes are upon Thee. Hear us and help right now.” Well, He does, because of the Spirit that we get an increase of every time we partake of the sacrament. And so that thought of letting the sacrament be a really important part of teaching this theme is such an opportunity for us.
23:31
President Steven J. Lund: Those impressions that those young people had up on the mountainside about “What would you say to the Savior, and what would He say to you?” and He said to them, “Keep going. I love you,” that finds place during sacrament meeting, during the sacrament. That’s the impulse there, that He’s saying exactly those words to you. “Keep going, be good, keep my commandments. I’m with you. I love you. We’ve got this together, and I’ve got you.”
23:56
Mary Richards: And every day. I was thinking about a story you shared, President Lund, when this theme was released. You talked about a friend who’s a motorcycle policeman, and he said the secret to keeping those machines upright and how to do those tight turns and how to move on the highway is look where you want to go, and then everything else kind of follows where you’re looking. And that’s something for the youth to think, maybe, in mind; look where you want to go?
24:20
President Steven J. Lund: Yeah, I was thinking about that actually last night. I have a brother who has a motorcycle too, and he’s ridden thousands of miles, and he’s a good motorcycle rider. And one day a couple years ago, he was riding down a benign country road, and it was a nice, sunny day, and things were good. And something caught his attention, and he looked off and was following it, and suddenly his wheels were in the gravel on the side of the road and then in the dirt. And then the person who was riding a motorcycle behind him saw his motorcycle go off into a ditch, taillight, headlight, taillight, and he disappeared.
And it was that effect, apparently. His motorcycle wasn’t where his eyes were. As his eyes followed around to the right, he kind of lost track of the road a little bit. And we can do that too. If we keep the Savior in sight, like those people in New Testament times, then He’s going to keep us in the center of the road. And hard stuff’s still going to happen, the world’s still going to come at us, but we’re not alone in any of that, so yeah.
25:21
Mary Richards: Make it an active thing. Well, let’s talk about how you envision this 2025 theme, “Look unto Christ,” being integrated into the For the Strength of Youth conferences, youth devotionals, those worldwide events, stake events, ward events, everything like that.
What thoughts could you share — or invitations, perhaps — on how youth might plan activities around this theme?
25:42
President Emily Belle Freeman: So, I’m going to take off from where President Lund just was with that motorcycle and where are our eyes focused right now. And one of the things that we hope will be part of 2025 — and you’ll see that in the youth broadcast as you listen — is Elder Dieter F. Uchtdorf talk to us about the “For the Strength of Youth” guide. And that’s going to be a really important resource for us this upcoming year as we look unto Christ, being able to go there where our strength is, to learn those eternal truths, to accept those invitations to act, to rely on those promised blessings. And as the youth enter into these FSY conferences, as you’re thinking about firesides or devotionals, as you’re planning your camps, we hope that “For the Strength of Youth” guide would be part of helping your youth learn how to look unto Christ.
I think about that guide a lot, because as we travel all around the world and as we listen to leaders talk about that guide and youth talk about that guide, one of the things that we’re learning is that the guide has gotten everywhere it needs to go, all around the whole world. If you ask people if they have a copy of the “For the Strength of Youth” guide, most people will raise their hands. But if you ask how many have read it, that is a completely different experience, and the importance of actually getting into that guide and understanding the doctrines that are behind what we are learning about each of those eternal truths.
And I have recently been thinking a lot about this. If you were to ask yourself just this question as an introspective question — and maybe if each of the youth were to ask themselves this question — when that guide was released, Elder Uchtdorf said to us that “Jesus Christ has very high standards for His followers. And the invitation to earnestly seek His will and live by His truths is the highest standard possible.” And then I love when He says this: “The Lord is not saying, ‘Do whatever you want,’” or make your choices based on personal preference or what is convenient or popular. “He is saying, ‘Let God prevail.’ He is saying, ‘Come, follow me.’ He is saying, ‘Live in a holier, higher, more mature way.’
And recently, I’ve been asking myself this question, and I think it would be so interesting for all of us to ask this question: “Are my standards higher and holier now than they were before this new guide was released?” Because that was the intention of this guide. So “Are my standards now higher and holier than the way they were before this guide came?”
And if we want to know and understand and learn about that, then let’s get in that book. Let’s bring it into our lessons. Let’s use it as we’re planning camp. Let’s have activities, weeknight activities, where we’re actually opening up that book and coming up with activities based on that book. I mean, if you and I were to brainstorm right now, “What is an activity that you could do around ‘Love God, love your neighbor’? What is an activity that you could do around ‘Let Jesus Christ help you’?” That would not be hard for us to come up with you say one, that you would pick them.
29:33
President Steven J. Lund: It wouldn’t be hard for us. Might be hard for me. What comes to my mind is that we live in this world where the Spirit and Heavenly Father’s influences and the very angels in heaven are constantly interacting with us, but we hardly ever know. And so anything we can do to get our young people thinking about looking back at the spiritual events at FSY conferences, we hope that there, and in fact, it’s just miraculous how often they’re having spiritual experiences and the voice of God is actually speaking to them, and they’re feeling impressions that they go and act upon.
So if we can get them realizing what they’re experiencing and get them to think back about other times when they’ve had those kinds of experiences, where, as they’re racing through life, they’ve had those intersections, those memories of sacred experience of Heavenly Father demonstrating His love by taking an active role in their lives can be kind of permanent, but what do those activities look like exactly?
30:34
President Emily Belle Freeman: Yeah, and the youth will be so good at this. Maybe it’s Jesus Christ will help you and they decide you’re all going to get together, you’re going to have a really great snack — because a really great snack is always a good idea.
President Steven J. Lund: It’s a spiritual principle.
President Emily Belle Freeman: That is a spiritual principle; feeding the 5,000. And then you’re going to come up with a playlist where everyone gets to say their favorite song about Jesus Christ. And now your class or your quorum has this playlist of songs about Jesus Christ that they’re going to listen to every Sunday together. That’s a great activity. Or maybe you’ve got a service project coming up. Well, that is loving your neighbor. And maybe you’ll point into that book, and you’ll pull a quote out or read one of the scriptures at the back.
Be creative of how can you and your youth plan activities that allow you to be in that guide, that are going to help you look unto Christ. We don’t only have to focus on physical, intellectual, social, spiritual. We have an entire guide that the youth could be setting goals about and we could be planning activities about and we could have camps planned around. I hope we see that this year.
31:52
Mary Richards: And you mentioned a playlist of music. 2025 will have new music, the Strive To Be youth album. There’s some beautiful music pointing people to Christ as well. That’s coming up?
32:02
President Emily Belle Freeman: We’re really excited about where the music is going right now, and that’s something you’re going to want to be watching and keeping an eye on this year, and even into next year, as we’re working with our music team, who is fantastic, to produce these albums. So you’re going to see a new song every month dropping that will be related to this theme that you’ll want to be watching for. At FSY, they are going to be having experiences this year to be able to participate with these songs that have to do with this theme.
The theme song is going to be so powerful this year, and our hope is that the youth and leaders are going to find strength in this music and as we are working to incorporate this in more ways. Last year, we had a festival that happened in the United States that was so amazing, and we were able to broadcast that. And if you haven’t listened to it yet, you’ll be able to find it on the stream that you can get on, or on YouTube, and go back and watch what happens, the power of that music. But this year, we are looking forward to even more of those concerts and even more opportunity for the youth to be able to engage in not just listening but singing along with this music.
33:23
President Steven J. Lund: And the reason that matters is because we all need spiritual help. We live in a pretty corrosive environment where we’re being confronted, especially when we’ve got a device in our hand, just constantly being confronted by very challenging anticultural, antivalues kinds of things. And so one of our important imperatives is to try to figure out how to get Sunday spread out through the rest of the week. To have a spiritual experience on Sunday morning is one thing, but how do we provide opportunities and windows into spirituality on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and the rest of the week?
One of the best ways — and Sister Freeman has been pounding this drum pretty hard — one of the most powerful ways is music. Music has this power to go right past our intellect, right past our filters, and go right into our soul. And that’s true for good music, and that’s good for horrible music. So anytime that we can draw young people — and each other; I listen to this music too — into listening to these songs that are so nurturing and so filled with faith and confidence during the week, it just inoculates them against so much of the corrosive agents that are about them.
34:30
Mary Richards: This music is also for young adults, we should add. My missionary son listens; it’s allowed on their mission, and he says, “It’s a banger album,” he said about 2024.
President Emily Belle Freeman: That’s awesome.
President Steven J. Lund: Yeah, that was my point; I listen too. We young adults listen to it.
34:44
Mary Richards: Exactly. You’re right there with us. And this year’s 2025 youth theme resources include this beautiful logo with the sun at the top of the image and the bright yellow rays coming down. Tell me more about how you think this artwork and other resources can reinforce the theme and will help youth look unto Christ.
35:03
President Emily Belle Freeman: Every day. And I love as we think about that sunshine and those rays of light that are coming from it, and we think about each of those rays of light and “Can we gather those throughout this year?” One thing that was interesting for me is when we recorded that youth broadcast, President Lund and I, and we were in the Sacred Grove, and we had an experience to talk about having faith that your prayers would be answered. And we talked about those rays of light that would show up in your life. And I wouldn’t have known on that day that two days after that, my husband would receive a cancer diagnosis that now has filled the last months of our life, and we have struggled against a really hard thing. And it could have been a really dark time for us.
In fact, I was just thinking about that as I was praying last night. Sometimes I’ll sneak off into a room by myself to pray. And Greg was sleeping, and I snuck into the living room and just had a little prayer. And as I was praying about all the things that I do the same way we all do — we offer that same prayer over and over again — and I thought to myself, “What has carried us through? What has held us through?” The thing that has been constant for us are those rays of light, that even in the midst of really hard things, we have seen His fingerprint, we have seen tender mercies, we have felt the prayers of so many people that what is carrying us right now are those ray-of-light moments.
And when I look at our logo, which we love, and I think about as we had the opportunity to talk about that as presidencies, and we looked at several different things. And one of the things that drew us so quickly to that logo were those streams of light coming down. All of us were just drawn to those beams, to those rays of light, and maybe each of us this year could look and just think; I mean, I can imagine people writing onto that logo. “Here’s one, here’s another one, here’s another one.” What if by the end of the year, you have filled each of those rays with your own moments where the Lord has shown up in your story and carried you through? And how powerful would that kind of witness be in someone’s life.
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President Steven J. Lund: Yeah, I almost feel like we should point them to the wonderful conference talk by Elder Alexander Dushku, where he basically made the comment that few of us actually see a pillar of light, but all of us will see rays of light that cumulatively can become pillars of light, like you and I experience regularly.
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President Emily Belle Freeman: Yes, that’s such a good talk. That would be a great resource this year for youth programs to go back to, is to Elder Dushku’s talk on those rays of light, those beams of light.
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Mary Richards: I do have to say another good resource along those same lines, President Lund, is your BYU devotional, the “Flashes of Light.” Exact same concept of we may not get a big, powerful moment, but we have so many manifestations, and we look back over them, we see it, right?
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President Steven J. Lund: It was a similar theme, although that’s a lightweight version compared to Elder Dushku’s magisterial discourse, but thank you.
38:48
Mary Richards: Yeah, that’s another good resource. Our last question, our tradition at the Church News podcast is to always ask this last question, which is: What do you know now? So I want to ask you, President Lund and President Freeman, what do you know now about looking unto Christ?
39:04
President Emily Belle Freeman: I would say for me that looking unto Christ has changed the course of my life, that every time I have chosen to look to Him, it has improved, it has brought strength, it has given direction and comfort and insight in ways that I would not have been able to experience on my own. And because that has been so true for me, because I have proved the Lord, and He has been there so many times, it’s my hope and prayer that our youth are going to have that same experience this year, that this will be a time of strengthening for us, that this will be a time of great growth, and we’re going to see these youth experience their testimony of Jesus Christ expand and enlarge in ways they maybe haven’t experienced before. And I look forward to a season like that.
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President Steven J. Lund: I would say amen to that and just add this color that the Savior is an empowerer. When we look unto Him, He will make us more than we are. And in my calling, in our callings, we feel that change all the time. We walk into settings all the time, like even in the parking lot this morning coming up here, where we’re not quite sure what we’ve got to deliver. But then again and again, I have seen Heavenly Father fill in blanks and the Savior give me wisdom. And He is an empowerer, and so my testimony has grown. And if I were to summarize it, I would say that I have learned that everything’s going to be all right because we’re looking to Him. As long as we’re looking to Him, we’ll get through this swirl of life. And the only way out is through. Going through with Him is a surefire way to find success in this world.
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Jon Ryan Jensen: Thank you for listening to the Church News podcast. I’m your host, Church News editor Jon Ryan Jensen. I hope you learned something today about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and had your faith in the Savior increase by looking through the Church News window as a living record of the Restoration. Please subscribe, rate and review this podcast so it can be accessible to more people. And if you enjoyed the messages we shared today, please share the podcast with others. Thanks to our guests; to my producer, KellieAnn Halvorsen; and to others who make this podcast possible. Join us every week for a new episode. Find us on your favorite podcasting channels or with other news and updates about the Church on TheChurchNews.com or on the Church News app.
