The best performers in the world, whether they be athletes or musicians or artists or doctors or lawyers, they all practice their craft for hours every day. In fact, the ones at the very top have been practicing for hours every single day, week in and week out for years, if not decades. They are the best because they don't assume that they are ever done or finished. They take each practice session as an opportunity to hone their skills, extend their reach, shore up weaknesses, and become better than they were yesterday. An elite performer does not consider a practice rite or trivial or a waste of time. None of them say to themselves, I already did that drill last week, and the week before that, and the week before that. Just as a performer strives every day for perfection, so too have we been invited to become perfect in our attempts to learn and live the gospel of Jesus Christ. If we are to truly become perfect, then we must practice what we preach, for hours every day if need be. Practicing the principles of the gospel means more than just showing up and going through the motions. It means more than rushing through the same repeated phases as we pray. It means more than scanning our eyes over a page of scripture for thirty seconds and then moving on with our day. As the Savior taught, it means going the extra mile. It means forgiving seventy times seven times. It means loving not just the neighbors we like, but loving and praying for even our enemies and those that spitefully use and persecute us. There is no doubt that all of Jesus’s prayers were earnest and sincere, but when He was in the garden of Gethsemane, He prayed more earnestly. Even He was practicing for hours each day and pushing His limits right up to the moment that He died. When we approach each Sacrament meeting, each verse of Scripture, each calling, each fast offering with the eye of extending our skill and our knowledge and refining our faith and our hope and serving and loving with greater depth and tenderness, then we are moving beyond the casual and the amateur worship into the elite performance level. It may take us more than our lifetime to truly reach perfection, but unless we are practicing at a level that requires a significant commitment and consecration of time, talents, and resources, we are never going to get to that level of perfection to which our Heavenly Father has called us.
