0:00:00 - 0:00:23 Um, thoughts and feelings I've had lately on the topic of faith and unbelief. These are massively important ideas. And for the last while I've been peppered by impressions that this is sorely needed. And so I'm going to do my best. We're going to be starting with quotes from a book I wrote, called Through 0:00:23 - 0:00:46 Faith. Now, you'll see, it's a meta example of this. You'll see through this presentation. Hopefully, uh, how one way you could exercise faith is by reading through faith if you have not done so already. And hopefully by the end of this presentation, you'll also understand a little better. Um, why I'm 0:00:46 - 0:00:00 so flabbergasted that there are people out there who haven't read this even though they've watched a bunch of these videos. So let's, uh, let's get started, put in the, uh, oh, by the way. So, uh, I'm just gonna read through these, I'm not going to cite which page these quotes are from. You can, um, 0:00:00 - 0:01:30 look at this if you'd like to see, um, in the PDF, I should say you can get the book through Faith in several ways. There's an audiobook version on this youtube channel that you can listen to for free. There's a PDF version that you can download for free off of my blog which is upward thought.blogspot.com 0:01:28 - 0:01:54 . You can also buy it for print cost off of amazon.com. Just search for through Faith, Robert Smith. OK. So let's get started. Put in the simplest terms. Faith is seeking out and living according to a greater understanding of reality. It is consciously desiring searching for and acting to obtain specific 0:01:53 - 0:02:19 outcomes. Faith is the process by which outcomes are obtained. It consists of the mapping of cause action to effect outcome, the reasons we have to believe the mapping and the desire we have to obtain the expected outcome. Faith is a process because each component of faith is continually updated and 0:02:18 - 0:02:43 improved as we gain understanding through experience. Faith is not a product, it's a process. It is something you do not something you have faith is to outcomes. What wisdom is to knowledge. The one is a process whereby you generate the other. Faith is a mental exercise where you explicitly consider 0:02:42 - 0:03:08 things, open your mind to new ideas, think about what you really desire and why apply everything you've observed, challenge your feelings, question your preconceived notions and marshal the courage and audacity necessary to walk straight into the unknown. Uh I'm gonna break from the quotes here and just 0:03:08 - 0:03:30 say, if I were to rewrite that today, I would say to walk straight into the previously unknown. Continuing with the quotes. Faith is much more than an optional strategy in life. Faith is a principle that drives all situations, whether we classify them as secular or spiritual, all good outcomes in life 0:03:30 - 0:03:54 are obtained through faith no matter how secular they may seem. So now I'm gonna break from the quotes and I will add a few statements. So if you look up the dictionary definition of faith, I will do that right now so I can quote from it. Um The first definition that comes up on Google is complete trust 0:03:53 - 0:04:19 or confidence in someone or something. Now, here it'd be very useful to ask yourself what that actually means. How would you know that you completely trust or confide in someone or something? Well, uh you would have to, you would have to have no constraints on that. In other words, it, it would be, it 0:04:19 - 0:04:47 would be a totality of submission to them in all things and at every level, not just in action but in desire. So, so that's really interesting. But uh let's look at definition, two strong belief in God or in the doctrines of religion based on spiritual apprehension rather than proof. OK. So this is one 0:04:47 - 0:05:11 I take serious issue with to the world and this is phrased better in other definitions that you'll find online to the world. Faith means belief that is not based on evidence. That's, that's what we just read, you'll find it more clearly put and uh this is how it's used commonly. The distinction is made 0:05:10 - 0:05:39 between proof and faith as if they're different things, but they're not different things. They are exactly the same thing. Um So, so how could you differentiate between faith and anything else as far as proof is concerned? Well, um rational thought or logic, these things aren't in opposition to faith 0:05:39 - 0:06:03 . Actually, the problem isn't that rational thought doesn't equate to faith. The problem is that rational thought is misused, that logic is misused. And so if anything, it's not that uh rational thought and faith or logic and faith or evidence and faith are opposites, it's that faith is a more highly 0:06:03 - 0:06:25 constrained form of these things. So if you had these things in circles, faith would be completely inside logic, rational faith or rational thought, et cetera evidence. It'd be totally inside that, but it'd be smaller. So what would lie outside of faith? But still in the other things, everything that's 0:06:25 - 0:06:49 dishonest, that's the distinction, that's what the world is missing. So we're going to go into that more deeply here. But um here are some examples of that kind of dishonesty, unevenness. So what do I mean by that? Well, there, there are many people in this world who will use the full measure of their 0:06:48 - 0:07:16 rational capability, but only when they want to justify themselves in doing less than the best they know or condemn someone else for less than honest reasons, mostly to make themselves look better. Inconsistency is another example of this dishonesty. And in this one, it's not so much that you have multiple 0:07:15 - 0:07:38 things before you in any given moment. And you might apply way more rational thought and logic to some than others. It's, it's that, but through time, not across things, but across time. And so, um, sometimes you might apply yourself fully in these things and then at other times you might not. So a great 0:07:38 - 0:08:02 example of this, there are many, many, many scientists who have uh have practiced critical thinking and problem solving every hour they've worked and however long their career has progressed, they, they've become masters of this at work. But the second they leave work, they stop doing that. And as a 0:08:02 - 0:08:30 whole, scientists tend to believe in some very ridiculous things outside of work. And so that's an example of inconsistency. Faith is not an alternative to evidence. It's, it, it, its distinction is that it describes how to react to evidence. Honestly, it's not an alternative to rational thought. Again 0:08:29 - 0:08:55 , it's just the kinds of rational thoughts that are honest. And so I already read this in the quotes, but just to be 100% clear, faith is not a religious principle. It's a principle for everything. No, that's because God created everything and in his mercy, he provides for all these uniform applications 0:08:55 - 0:09:21 of faith, no matter how partial you are and what you're looking at in, in life. Or yourself anywhere, you look anything you do, there is an opportunity to exercise faith. Now, if you know about God, you can do far more with this. But again, it's a, it's a case now of two circles where the secular applications 0:09:20 - 0:09:42 of faith are smaller than, and fully contained within the spiritual applications, but it's the same exact principle. And so if you can help anyone have greater faith in anything, you will strengthen their ability to draw nearer to God. Even if you, you, your uh your interactions have not mentioned God 0:09:42 - 0:10:06 , whatsoever. Faith in it, of itself perfectly practiced will lead someone straight to God. And it doesn't matter where they're starting from every, every ounce of momentum they build, will roll them forward toward God. OK. So now we're gonna get back to some quotes. And what I've done here is there's 0:10:06 - 0:10:30 a section around page 103. that, that makes a distinction between great faith and small faith or little faith. And what I've done is I've pulled out uh of each paragraph, I've pulled out the statement of the principle. And what we're not going to do is read through all the evidence that I give from the 0:10:30 - 0:10:55 scriptures to support it. And even in the book itself, you're not gonna find the full list because uh I purposefully kept that book short so that uh I could minimize any obstacle anyone would have to reading it. Uh I think it's sufficient to make the points. But it's, it's not a replacement for reading 0:10:55 - 0:11:12 through all of the scriptures. And you can enumerate as you can imagine. You'd, you'd be left if you were quoting passages from scripture to support these points, you wouldn't be left with much that you haven't quoted. So, um, we're gonna reduce that one step for further and I'm just gonna read off the 0:11:12 - 0:11:36 principle and then we're going to move on. Great faith means acting as extremely as your reasons suggest end quote. Um So I do think we should discuss these. So I'll, I'll read the quote and then we'll discuss them. Great faith means acting as extremely as your reasons suggest. One of the biggest obstacles 0:11:35 - 0:12:05 in all of this is that people don't do what is sufficiently justified. Too many people think of faith as this supernatural strength to do incredible things that I wouldn't say is false, but I'd agree with it for very different reasons than you might. I would agree with that because mankind, humans are 0:12:05 - 0:12:32 terrible people and one of the facets and there are many of their terrible nature is that they won't do what is so obviously in their best interest. No, listen to how I said that I didn't say they won't do. Um, they won't live up to the value of the love that God has shown them by loving others the same 0:12:32 - 0:12:58 way. That's not what I said. I didn't even say uh they won't treat other people as they would like to be treated, they won't treat themselves in their best interest as far as their logic and reason suggest they should, they do very stupid things that are very clearly harmful to themselves all the time 0:12:57 - 0:13:25 . And so to overcome that nature is a very difficult thing. And when you find someone who actually does what is reasonably justified in their best interest, you have found an incredibly rare individual and like I said earlier, they do it consistently and evenly. This is not far from what James was describing 0:13:24 - 0:13:51 when he described a perfect man as someone whose tongue was bridled. And and that of course, is a, is an idiom that means much more than what you say. But someone who is aligned in their, in their actions, in their feelings, in their thoughts with what they observe in the world processed in their understanding 0:13:50 - 0:00:00 , the reasoning, someone who's aligned through all of that, that is an extraordinarily rare person. It's a person who is very close to God, even if they don't know it, they are ripe to take the next step higher. And anyone who is not there is not, that's how important this is as basic as this seems. 0:00:00 - 0:14:41 It's not basic because you're not doing it. If you did it, your life would be incredibly different from cover to cover every, every day would be way different than it is next. Quote. Great faith means taking the next logical step beyond what you were explicitly told. I'm sorry, I was about to move on 0:14:41 - 0:15:06 , but I need to go back. So um acting as extremely as your reasons suggest. Here's, here's something you should do. Go back to the four gospels in the New Testament and pick one. I don't care which and I want you to read it from start to finish specifically looking for a list that you'll compile. And 0:15:06 - 0:15:38 here's, here's the form. What did Jesus do? How did people react specifically, not qualitatively specifically? What do people do in reaction? What you're gonna find is that he did things. Yes, that were incredible. But the reaction of people is probably far beyond what you're calling to memory. When 0:15:37 - 0:16:01 I, when I say this, it's probably way more extreme than you thought. So for example, you'll find that when he heals the blind man who calls to him, when the, when his convoy is coming through, he says, who's coming by? And someone tells him, oh, it's that Jesus guy and he starts shouting, thou son of 0:16:01 - 0:16:18 David, thou son of David. And the apostles say, hey, shut up, go away. And yes, they did say that to people all the time. There's reasons for that I won't get into and he shouts even louder and Jesus hears him and he says, who's that? What's going on? And apostles tell him what's going on and he says 0:16:18 - 0:16:52 , bring him to me and he says, he says, what do you want me to do? And the man says, I want to see, I want you to give me my sight and Jesus heals him. It says that he immediately leaves everything and follows Jesus. Now, I want you to think of all the things that you think you want from God. And I want 0:16:52 - 0:17:15 you to think of what you would do differently in your life if he suddenly gave them to you. And I can confidently assert that the answer is not very much, you'd probably just stay the same person you are. If you lived back then, would you give up everything to follow Him if he gave you something that 0:17:15 - 0:17:39 you didn't have? And it's easy to say that if you think that he's not around and you think that things are different now and he just wants you to cruise in your normal life. Well, he doesn't. And uh as we'll see in a moment here, maybe the reason that you don't have the things that you think God can 0:17:39 - 0:18:03 give you is because you don't have faith. So do that, read through one of those gospels and you make that list and you're going to find that the expectation that God has of you is much higher than you have for yourself. Moving on the next quote says, great faith means taking the next logical step beyond 0:18:03 - 0:00:00 where you, what you were explicitly told. So there are scriptures that talk about this. But the idea is that we should not wait around for God to explicitly command us in all things. We should actively learn about Him and actively build our understanding of what he would do in our place. So at best, 0:00:00 - 0:18:54 what, what some people do is they will pray sometimes about some things and try to figure out what God wants them to do. Well, that's like starting to study a topic. When you get the test, you ought to be studying it the whole time knowing there's going to be a test. The, the Lord said on multiple occasions 0:18:53 - 0:19:23 , if a person knew when they'd be robbed, they'd be ready for the robber. He told us plainly that these tests will come. In other words, every single day, every moment, we have an opportunity to demonstrate what the Lord would do in our place. And that is, it's not just a, um, an arbitrary expression 0:19:22 - 0:19:52 of, of um fealty to God. It is the very path by which we encounter every good thing. They're one and the same. And so you have to actually spend your time learning more about him and figuring out what he would do in all the situations where you have no idea and better learning more accurate ideas of 0:19:52 - 0:20:24 what he would do in all the places where you think you already know. And so that's what taking the next logical step involves another, another application of this is to not be slothful in the sense that if you were a servant to a master and he commanded you to do something. If right after you were done 0:20:24 - 0:20:48 , you went off to your little hut or wherever you lived and just did whatever the heck you wanted to do, you would be an unprofitable servant or worthless servant because the servant is supposed to go back to the master and say what next, what next? And Jesus talks about this plainly, he said, what servant 0:20:48 - 0:21:16 is there? That when his master comes, the servant sits down and eats and rests himself from his, his labors of the day, it doesn't happen first. He serves his master and only after his master's work is done, does he have his own time? So we ought to be anxiously engaged in the Lord's will and realize 0:21:15 - 0:21:37 that that's a full time job now, rather than think that I'm saying that you need to be engaged in some explicitly churchy thing 24 7. It's not at all what I'm saying. I'm saying quite the opposite. You need to look at life and it's obvious that there are all these demands on our time and things we have 0:21:37 - 0:22:04 to do that at first do not seem connected in any way to God's will. And yet that is an invitation to learn more about him specifically so that you can understand how his will applies to those things. And whether there's a dramatic change to the actual things you're doing or only a dramatic change to 0:22:03 - 0:22:28 the reasons why you're doing them, doesn't matter. The point is to plug it into God's will and receive from him, any kind of directions he has on what needs to go and what needs to change next. Quote. Great faith means pushing forward with the reasons you have in spite of strong opposition and abundant 0:22:27 - 0:22:52 reason for hurt feelings. There's example, after example, after example of this principle in the scriptures, one of the reasons faith is such a powerful thing is it's a tool that helps us overcome challenges that would otherwise overcome us obstacles to greater blessings than what we have. There's much 0:22:52 - 0:23:13 more that could be said about this. I'm not trying to make this exhaustive. I'm just running through here. Next quote. Great faith means you will have a willingness to act on information received even if it is new or strange. I'm gonna add one here. That's not a quote which is great. Faith means you 0:23:13 - 0:23:42 can recognize things of tremendous value even when they are surrounded by things of low value. This is a connected point. So to read that great faith means you can recognize things of tremendous value even when they're surrounded by things of low value. So these two are connected because we tend, we 0:23:42 - 0:24:06 tend to evaluate things, we tend to value things to appraise the value of things based on all sorts of things that have nothing to do with the value of the thing. So our approaches are not aligned with what we're after. So what's an example of this? We appraise the value of things based on how similar 0:24:06 - 0:24:30 they are to what we already have. So if I were to ask you, how do you, how do you judge whether a new thing is true or not? You'd probably say, well, I'd compare it to all the things I know are true. That's the wrong answer. If you did that, you would crucify Jesus if you lived with him at, at that time 0:24:30 - 0:24:56 , I promise you. That's how terrible that approach is. You would crucify Jesus. So what's the alternative? So, so think of how badly that's going to, that's going to uh treat you in things less than that. If that's, if that's how you're gonna respond with the best thing of all, how well will you fare 0:24:55 - 0:25:19 with much lesser things? You're going to think they're absolutely terrible. You're, you're gonna fight them, you're going to oppose them. You're, you will at least ignore them, but you'll probably do far worse. So, what's a better approach? Well, I'll get to that. So you'll know we're there when we start 0:25:19 - 0:25:50 talking about John chapter seven. Another terrible value appraisal is when uh we look at what's around that thing and assume that it's equally valuable or not. So, uh, what's an example of this? Well, again, Jesus is the perfect example. So there had been many false messiahs who came and if someone were 0:25:50 - 0:26:19 to use the, this is like that, therefore, it's equally valuable approach, then they would have cast him aside as yet another false messiah. Or maybe they treated him merely as a wise teacher or a holy man even. Well, sure, he was similar to those other people who were doing those sorts of things. He 0:26:19 - 0:26:39 was a traveling preacher, he had a cohort of followers and he was talking about God. So does that mean he's equally valuable as those folks who are doing those things? No. So how could you tell the difference? Well, it states very plainly that he taught with greater wisdom than anyone had and he performed 0:26:39 - 0:27:04 greater miracles than anyone had. So this one's interesting because we tend to clump things together even when they're not the same. In other words, this comes back to the unevenness of applying rational judgment because we're, we're using the, the color of rationality to say these things are similar 0:27:03 - 0:27:29 . Jesus is a holy man, right? He's like these other holy men or he's a teacher of the gospel and he's like these other teachers of the gospel, but we fully ignore the stark differences between them. Do you see how that works? So it's as if your task is to sum a bunch of columns in a spreadsheet. So you're 0:27:29 - 0:27:53 just trying to run a sum down the column and you sum two of them and then completely ignore all the other columns. Well, you're not gonna get the answer obviously. Right. And yet I'm telling you, you do this every single day to learn to exercise. Even judgment is extremely difficult because what's the 0:27:53 - 0:28:17 price of doing something all the time without fail compared to doing it most of the time? It's enormous. It's not a little, it's a ton. The difference is huge. All right. The, the final quote about great faith, great faith means you conduct multiple traversals through the faith cycle without resisting 0:28:16 - 0:28:36 or rejecting. Now, I'm not gonna go into what the faith cycle is in this video that it's discussed at the very beginning of the book. There's even a picture. So you should look at that. It's very important. So I just mentioned that for the sake of completion, that is the list from the book plus an extra 0:28:36 - 0:28:57 one that I just gave you on the fly. Now, the next section is on little faith and we're gonna do the same thing here. So the quote says, you have little faith when you refuse to believe, even when given sufficient reasons to, we're going to delve deeper into this in the next section of this video. Realize 0:28:56 - 0:29:26 that faith is to act on every sufficient reason. Again, it's not to do some incredible thing. It's just to do what is justified. And even though that sounds super basic, I, I promise you, you're far from it in your life. It's amazing to see how you can pepper people with more than sufficient reasons 0:29:26 - 0:29:45 to do something and they will not do it, they will not do it. Next quote, you have little faith when you are so concerned with immediate circumstances that you can't make decisions with respect to long term consequences. This is the marshmallow experiment. You can look it up or uh maybe a more familiar 0:29:45 - 0:30:07 version of this is just if you have a kid and you say, hey kid, I can give you one cookie now or if you wait till tomorrow, I'll give you 10. Which do you want, they say give me the cookie and you're like that too. You, you vastly prefer short term outcomes even if the long term outcome is enormously 0:30:06 - 0:30:27 greater and that it doesn't matter if we're, if we're talking about negative or positive things. Next quote, you have little faith when you fail to exercise your capacity to reason. I think we have talked about that. Uh But we'll come back to it with the next one which says you have little faith when 0:30:27 - 0:30:56 you abort the process of faith by remaining in an emotive state, failing to advance to reasoning about cause and effect. So the logical mindset also uh described as being spiritually minded in the scriptures, which may be a new connection for you. The logical mindset is the higher brain, the emotional 0:30:55 - 0:31:21 mindset is the lower brain, both are good and necessary, but there's a necessary ordering to them as well and much more could be said about this. But suffice to say, if you are emotionally motivated, you cannot be logically motivated. It, it blocks the higher brain. And this is a truth that's as plainly 0:31:21 - 0:31:46 laid out in scripture as it is in science. This is one of several issues on which the two agree completely. So let me ask you this, what happens if you are in a faith not to abuse the term? I'll just say a church, if you're in a church, a religion that teaches you that God speaks to you through your 0:31:46 - 0:32:14 feelings. What is the effect of that doctrine? The effect of that doctrine is to march you straight off to hell, to put a brass lid above you preventing you from rising higher to God. So there are people out there who preach that rationality is an enemy to God that is not at all what the scriptures say 0:32:13 - 0:32:36 . You won't find it. You'll see that the natural man is an enemy to God and that, that is juxtaposed to yielding to the spirit of God. If you get those two things backwards, then you're literally calling evil, good and good evil. And it's no wonder that the devil is your father. He's the one who you're 0:32:36 - 0:33:07 following. And thus, we see the importance of helping people trapped in these demonic faith ideas, uh religious ideas, the value of freeing them from those cages, uh ironically, perhaps in trying to do so, you'll find it's very hard, it's very hard because even when you explain to them clearly and show 0:33:07 - 0:33:34 them from the scriptures that this is not a, a true idea, this idea that your emotions equals God's voice, you will find that they do not react how they should given the, the reasonable evidence that you've provided. So you just be revealed that they actually have very little faith or as Isaiah wrote 0:33:34 - 0:33:56 their lips, speak of the Lord all the time. But their hearts are very far from Him. They do not desire God, they do not desire what is good. They do not desire improvement. They want to ST stay exactly where they are and they want to feel very good about doing so and that's their motive and you'll find 0:33:55 - 0:34:16 out very quickly that that's the case. You'll find that people who are oriented towards using reason to find out what's best and actively doing everything they know that's best. You'll find that a church is the last place. You'll find these people. It's the last place. It doesn't mean there's zero of 0:34:15 - 0:34:40 them in churches, but they don't last very long there. One way or the other, they'll either leave, get kicked out or lose that orientation in life and adopt this uh this nonsense other direction. Next quote, you have little faith when you doubt a course that was rationally designed without receiving 0:34:39 - 0:35:01 new evidence sufficient to motivate a change or to cause doubt. This describes um the process of changing your mind without sufficient reason to change your mind happens all the time. And it's one great reason for writing down your decision process and then you can revisit that if you're ever, if you're 0:35:01 - 0:35:21 ever concerned that maybe there's a better course, you just repeat the process with all your same evidence mixing in the new stuff and that'll save you from going off course for insufficient reasons. All right. Now, um I want to come back to this quote. I said, we delve a little deeper. You have little 0:35:21 - 0:35:40 faith when you refuse to believe, even when given sufficient reasons to, there are a lot of words in the scriptures that we read over and over again and we, we even might memorize the verses, but we never learn the meaning that's very problematic. So I wanna share this passage from Mark six, which is 0:35:39 - 0:36:04 really sad. So um it begins and he, he is Jesus went out from thence and came into his own country and his disciples follow him. And when the Sabbath day was come, he began to teach in the synagogue and many hearing him were astonished saying from whence hath this man, these things and what wisdom is 0:36:04 - 0:36:26 this which is given unto him that even such mighty works are wrought by his hands. Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary, the brother of James and Joseph and of Judah and Simon. Simon and are not his sisters here with us. And they were offended at him. But Jesus said unto them, a prophet is not 0:36:26 - 0:36:52 without honor but in his own country and among his own kin and in his own house and he could there do no mighty work save that. He laid his hands upon a few sick folk and healed them. And he marveled because of their unbelief. And he went round about the villages teaching what does unbelief mean? Unbelief 0:36:51 - 0:37:24 is a failure to believe even when given sufficient reasons to. But, but we have to, we have to define belief here. So it's not just something you think, it's not just something you like the idea of, it's to turn your, your thoughts, your feelings and your actions to align with an understanding of reality 0:37:23 - 0:37:56 that if you look at the Greek word pistes, that's belief or faith, that's what it is. So unbelief is the opposite of that. It's the letter A in front of the word pistes in Greek. It's the opposite of so unbelief is when you do not change based on new information. So to say, you believe in Jesus, what 0:37:56 - 0:38:20 does that mean? Well, if you're not making changes to align with a new understanding of how Jesus is, you do not believe in Jesus, you can't say that you've heard of him and you might like the idea of him, but you don't believe in him and you don't believe him because what he said was very clear about 0:38:19 - 0:38:42 the importance of following his example. You either do it or you don't. There's no partiality. The only thing that, that's different among believers in Christ is their level of understanding of how he is not their level of obedience to what they understand. That's, you're either through the gate or you're 0:38:42 - 0:39:10 not, you're born again or you're not, you're a disciple of Christ or you're not very few who call themselves Christians or any of those things now. So he was in his hometown is a small village. He had lived there for 30 years. Why were people so shocked at what he taught? Why were they so shocked to 0:39:10 - 0:39:34 hear about the miracles he had been working in other towns because they didn't start there and why did they react this way? So they were astonished but then they were offended at him. The reason is this, they had a prior understanding of how Jesus was, which was really incorrect. They could have known 0:39:34 - 0:39:58 him much more than they did. How do, how do I know that we read the account of how his mother reacted to him before this at the wedding in Ka. His mom knew a lot about him how cause she actually paid attention to what she saw and she changed, she actually acted in accordance with the sufficient reasons 0:39:58 - 0:40:20 she was given. It's not like he was teaching her private sermons that he wasn't teaching the world. He said his time had not yet come. So he said at the wedding. So how did she know? How did these people not know in a tiny village where everyone knows everything about everybody? You see everybody every 0:40:20 - 0:40:50 single day and there's no insulation in the walls. So, um, what they saw was a, was a conflict between their prior understanding of how things were and the current evidence they were receiving. Guess which one they threw away. Guess which one you throw away, you stick with the old wine bags, the old 0:40:50 - 0:41:18 garments and you throw out the new stuff, the new stuff shows you the limits of the old stuff. The new stuff should replace the old stuff where it's superior. But instead you throw away the new stuff. If it doesn't match, why did he marvel because of their unbelief, why doesn't it just say? And he noticed 0:41:18 - 0:41:49 their unbelief and it didn't surprise him because reasonable people are continuously shocked by unreasonable people. It's, it defies their ability to imagine people being so, so stupid, so insensible in the true sense of the word because it's so far opposite from what they would do in their place. And 0:41:49 - 0:42:07 so he tried his best and, and couldn't do very much. And then in the, in the verses following this, he calls other servants to go and hopefully break through where he was rejected. He went round about the villages. It literally means he made circuits through the villages because no one was listening 0:42:07 - 0:42:29 . And so he just kept making circuits trying his best. Well, maybe I can make this other argument that they haven't heard yet and maybe that will convince them because they're not changing. And that's what you're doing too. You're, you're being orbited and you're not changing, you're not acting sufficiently 0:42:28 - 0:42:50 for the evidence that you've been given. You're treating what you're hearing as if it's the same as everything else you've ever heard. When very clear differences are, are given to you. They're very apparent. You're being told things that no one has ever told you before. You're having questions answered 0:42:49 - 0:43:16 that have never been answered. You're having things told you that you've wandered your whole life and you didn't know and you're seeing things done that you would never do that. You've never seen anyone do and you're just treating it like it's a hobby like it's just someone else's opinion. Now, we go 0:43:16 - 0:43:36 to Mark nine. This is a very misunderstood passage. We talked about it before, but maybe I'll give you some new things here. Verse 17 and one of the multitude answered and said, master, I have brought unto thee my son, which hath a dumb spirit and wheresoever he taketh him, he tere him and he foth and 0:43:36 - 0:43:58 g nashe his teeth and pine away and I spake to thy disciples that they should cast him out and they could not. He answer him and saith o faithless generation. How long shall I be with you? How long shall I suffer? You bring him unto me. Now, the world believes that Jesus was talking to his disciples 0:43:57 - 0:44:20 . He was not, he was talking to the man. The man was the faithless one. This case was beyond the power of the disciples because they didn't have sufficient understanding. He was not upgrading the disciples for their lack of understanding. The only way he could have been chastising them at all was for 0:44:20 - 0:44:43 not bringing them to him, but he was gone. He was up praying, he wasn't around. They had brought him as far as they could, but they couldn't go up to where he was. They had to wait for him. So he was talking to the man's the the man, not the not the disciples verse 20 they brought him unto him. And when 0:44:43 - 0:45:04 he saw him, that's a lot of hymns straightway, the spirit tear him and he fell on the ground and wallowed, foaming. So they brought the sun, the afflicted sun. And immediately he had one of these episodes and he asked his father, how long is it ago since this came unto him? And he said of a child. So 0:45:04 - 0:45:23 he's building the case for why he called the guy faithless because that's the key to unlock so that the man can receive the miracle he's requested. Verse 22. And of time to cast him into the fire and into the waters to destroy him. But if thou canst do anything, have compassion on us and help us. Now 0:45:23 - 0:45:48 , this man is very unaware. He's walking right into this. I won't call it a trap, but it's a trap that Jesus built and he's walking right in and it's a rational trap. Jesus is building a rational argument to persuade this man of his sin, which is unbelief. So what this Jesus says, how long has this been 0:45:48 - 0:46:12 going on? And the man says, since he was a child, so clearly his son is older now, he had already said these terrible things happen when he has these episodes. It, it, it makes him go weird places. It tere him. He, he foam meth and gnat with his teeth. It pines away and he cast himself into fire and 0:46:12 - 0:46:40 into water to try to kill himself. Now, if this were your son, let me ask you, what would be, what price would you pay to alleviate this condition from your son? It's literally going to kill him. And it's inflicting a fate worse than that upon him. And it's been going on his whole life because this guy 0:46:39 - 0:47:08 sat around for years while he could have brought this kid to Jesus and he did nothing. And the, the question that's not answered is what he did to pray to God about it before any of that or to do whatever else he could to alleviate the problem. But its telling how Jesus treats him and what he says to 0:47:07 - 0:47:36 him. Now, the man says, if you can do anything have compassion on us and help us, which sounds like a plea, doesn't it? Except this guy had not been using everything that was abundantly available to him. So what appears to be deference to God is actually uh an extremely delayed and underpowered face 0:47:36 - 0:48:00 . Jesus said unto him, if thou canst believe all things are possible to him, that believeth. Now, that's another verse, we've read it 100 times in plain English. What Jesus said to him was your son is still suffering because of your lack of faith. And he can't be helped until you fix that problem. That's 0:48:00 - 0:48:21 what he said to him. That's what the father would have understood. Verse 24 and straightway, the father of the child cried out. That's why he cried. It had never dawned on him that this was all his fault, his poor son's suffering. His whole life was the father's fault and it was so easily alleviated 0:48:20 - 0:48:45 . It was like the ancient Hebrews. They just had to look to the brass serpent to be freed from this, this uh plague of, of venomous serpents, but they would not do it because it was too easy. So the father cries out and said with tears, lord, I believe, help thou mine unbelief, which is such an interesting 0:48:44 - 0:49:07 coupling when Jesus saw that the people came running together, which is interesting because even that wasn't enough for Jesus to say, OK, you're over the bar, I'm going to do this. It wasn't until the crowd came and there were were would have been uh much more substantial negative consequences of no 0:49:07 - 0:49:33 excuse me, not acting that he, he did what he did. He rebuked the foul spirit saying unto him, thou dumb and deaf spirit. I charge thee come out of Him and enter no more into him. So analyze this passage and compare it to yourself. What needs do you have that? You know about that? You have not taken 0:49:32 - 0:49:59 to God. What things do you want that you have not approached God to receive? How badly do you think you want them? Versus how badly are you showing that you want them? And what things, what resources has God placed in your life all over the place where just with a tiny bit of faith, you could reach out 0:49:59 - 0:50:21 and grab it and see if it solves your problem. See if it gets you the thing that you say you want or are you sitting on your butt and pretending to trust God and love God while fully rejecting and ignoring all these things. He's trying to send you to solve your problems, to help you out, to give you 0:50:21 - 0:50:50 what you say you want. All right. This is the last section. Here's a very important principle. We like to think that we can sit where we stand or, you know, stay where we stand from, from our vantage point, we can perfectly judge the value of all things. This is an absolutely absurd perspective. I can't 0:50:50 - 0:51:18 make the full case for that with the time we have now. But what I want to help you see is that this is an incremental process and you won't see the value of something truly accurately until you've tried it for yourself. That's the key point I wanna make here because if I were to ask you, why do you have 0:51:18 - 0:51:34 such little faith? You'd probably say, I don't know. Actually, you probably fight me and say, you don't have little faith, but I've just made a long case for why you do. So. Now if you believe me and I say, look, you have very little faith and, and that you really need to address this because the time 0:51:34 - 0:52:06 is getting on and it's not enough for what's coming. You might say, help thou my own belief. How do I fix this? And I would say you need to do what you have sufficient reason to do. That's the solution. You won't know plainly the value of what God offers until after you've done it. Now, the good news 0:52:05 - 0:52:32 is that distortion. It's not in relative value if you have a problem and there's a reasonable thing you could do to try to solve it. That's an easy thing. That's not hard to decide whether you should do that. Right. And the bigger the problem, the easier it is to do extreme things if need be justified 0:52:31 - 0:53:07 things, but extreme things, high intensity things to try to address that problem. But there's a difference between um knowing what is best and knowing by how much it's better. And only the first of those two is promised to us by God. Our rational capacity has the ability to show us what is better but 0:53:07 - 0:53:26 not by how much. And I say what is best because if you have more than two choices, which you almost always do, it's not good enough to just find something that's better than something else. You have to look at what's best and all the options, you know, and you actually have to look into what the options 0:53:25 - 0:53:48 are. You can't just say, hey, someone put these two things right in front of my face. That's the choice. No, use your eyes, use your brain, use your ears, look at what's available. It might not be what everyone else is doing because the crowds are not going to lead to God. All right. So in Malachi three 0:53:47 - 0:00:00 , I won't read this but this nice passage verses 13 through 18, it talks about how, what God's path, God's value. It's not super obvious right now. It's, it's intentionally obfuscated and we have the tools to discover it, but it won't be apparent until after he establishes his kingdom here on earth. 0:00:00 - 0:54:39 That's when he makes up his jewels. When, when he makes obvious what has the greatest value among all things, situations, objects, people, all of it, ideas, all of it that has not happened yet. But the process of getting from here to there is one of exercising faith. The first step in that is to look 0:54:39 - 0:55:02 at your life and say, what changes should I make? That? I already have all the reasons to make in John seven, we read Jesus answered them and said, my doctrine is not mine but his that sent me if any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God or whether I speak of myself 0:55:01 - 0:55:25 , he that speaketh of himself seeketh his own glory, but he that seeketh his glory that sent him the same is true and no unrighteousness is in Him. What on earth does this mean? You've probably read this a bunch of times if you stopped and parsed it out and asked God, what what it means? Why is it important 0:55:24 - 0:55:49 to know that the doctrine of Christ is not his? But his that sent Him? Because if you live it, you will draw nearer to the father. Well, what, what does that mean? What you don't have to look at this in some kind of weird uh specifically spiritual way, like talking about some kind of experiences in heaven 0:55:49 - 0:56:10 or something. That's not why Jesus shared this. He's saying it should be really clear if you're moving closer to God or not. And if you do what I'm teaching and you move closer to God, then that's how you can know that what I'm teaching is true. That's He, that speaketh, speaketh of himself, seeketh 0:56:09 - 0:56:27 his own glory, but he, that seeketh his own, his glory that sent him the same is true and no unrighteousness is in Him. How would you know if someone seeks the glory of the Father or not? Because you don't know what the glory of the Father is? Well, you can detect if you're moving closer to it or not 0:56:27 - 0:56:53 . How, because the voice of God is the voice of improvement. The only question is, does it make you more like God than any alternative? If the answer is yes, it's from God, the answer is no, it's not. But the alternative that is, that's from God. You see. So anytime you ask this question, you get the 0:56:53 - 0:57:15 answer and then the question becomes, is that what you're doing or not? Because if it's not, then you just uh a rung closer to heaven. A latter rung just materialized in front of you. And now you have the opportunity to react to that. And in your reaction, you'll either take that step and draw closer 0:57:14 - 0:57:36 or ignore it or reject it or delay. It doesn't matter. All three of those will take you further from it and make it even harder to do in the future. So does it make you more like God than any alternative? And the same question rephrased without the word God in it would be, does it make you better than 0:57:36 - 0:58:03 any alternative? Would it is that simple? This is what is discussed in the book Mormon when it says it's given to us to know with a perfect knowledge as the daylight is from the dark night. That's how clearly we can know good from evil. How I just told you everything which invite us to do good is from 0:58:03 - 0:58:28 God. You can know with a perfect knowledge. Now, good, you have to be explicit and say what's best if you choose what's good but not best. That is not choosing God. You are out of the way. You always have to choose what's best. Does it make you the best you could possibly be or does something else? Some 0:58:28 - 0:58:49 alternative option make you better? So you can read through moon I seven if you want more of that. Of course, I did a series of videos on that if you haven't watched it and you can find those on this channel. Finally, I would just want to refer you to Alma 32 versus 27 through 33. We have this uh allegory 0:58:48 - 0:59:14 of faith as planting a seed. And what's clear from this is that it doesn't take some astronomical thing to plant the seed. It's just if someone gives you seeds. All you gotta do is put him in the ground. It's not a big deal. Be that, that, that's not the equivalent of doing something that any old person 0:59:13 - 0:59:39 suggests, no matter how crazy it may seem. That's, again, that's not what we're talking about here. It just means experimenting on what is sufficiently justified. That's it. And when you plant the seed and it grows, then you know that it's good, but you can't know if it's good until you plant it. This 0:59:38 - 1:00:07 is a really important theme. And I will tell you from my personal experience, it's God is very serious about this. He's very serious. You don't know until you try to grow it. And if it doesn't grow, then you can know with a surety that it's not good. So I invite you to have greater faith. The time is 1:00:06 - 1:00:35 getting short. There are so many resources that the Lord has queued up right in front of your face. It's never been easier to access them. He's going to provide much, much more when he does. Those who have been faithful in little will be most prepared to receive more, but those who have done nothing 1:00:35 - 1:01:02 with the little, they will absolutely not get the extra part, the better things, the more important things, the the sequential subsequent things because that's like saying, hey, a time is coming when you need to be able to bench press £300 and that seems overwhelming to anyone who doesn't lift weights 1:01:01 - 1:01:27 seriously. But there's a time to prepare. Unfortunately, there's just enough time. So if you slack off or you don't do your workouts, you don't eat right, you don't sleep right. You're not gonna get there. And when the time comes to lift £300 you're gonna be stuck at 30 or 50 and it's going to crush 1:01:27 - 1:01:50 you when it should be this celebration, this victory. And so if you're looking at the £20 weights saying, oh, I don't feel like it, I got better things to do. This isn't important. This is the same old stuff as before when it's definitely not the same old stuff as before. It definitely is important and 1:01:49 - 1:02:12 it definitely is not. Um, I forgot what the third thing was. Sufficient. Evidence has been shown you that the things that are before you are much more important than what that was it than whatever it is you're doing in life. It's that simple. And if you don't make the time to get into these things and 1:02:12 - 1:02:31 you don't make use of them by changing your life, you're behind the curve. And the likelihood that you're gonna magically do 100 times more than you're doing right now is basically zero. So please make use of these things and learn to have greater faith.