Preparing to speak -- a post script

I blogged last week about how I prepare to speak.

This past Sunday I attended a youth fireside in our stake (the organizer is my home teacher and he invited my wife and me to attend with our kids). One of the speakers is one of my favorite sisters in our stake. She’s a former stake YW president, a former seminary teacher and an all-around great teacher.

She began her talk by telling us that she was a compulsive planner and how she prepared her talk (pretty much as I described my preparation). What she said next surprised me, but I got it completely.

She said that morning as she was praying, the very strong impression she had was that she should throw out her prepared remarks and bear her testimony and listen for inspiration as she spoke. She then said she even tried to print out a copy of her talk, “just as a back-up plan,” but the printer wouldn’t connect to her computer.

And then she spoke beautifully and from the heart.

The point: we can prepare all we want. And we should prepare. A lot.

But in the end, if we listen, the Lord will tell us what to say when it’s time to say it.

(And, by the way, I still believe that’s more likely to happen if we are very well prepared than if we are not prepared.)