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Paul said that God has prepared much greater blessings for us than we can presently understand. And that's the theme that's echoed throughout the scriptures. So here's a question for you. If everything has a cost and if we don't know the value of the greatest things, how do we know what prices are worth paying? It's quite a mystery. No one really talks about that. In fact, in our society, there are many voices that claim that you can get something for nothing but God will not be mocked. You reap what you sow. So, so I'd like to go over a few verses from Alma 26 which is where the sons of Mosiah are reflecting on the outcomes of their missionary labor. But I'll give you the bottom line up front. You obtain blessings greater than you can currently comprehend through faithfully following the paths to the things that you currently desire the most. You should rewind that and listen to it a couple of times, there's no mysterious left out bit between where you are and where you wanna be. It doesn't require some fantastic thing that's not already in place. The pathway to everything you want lies exactly through everything you already know about, but aren't living up to the second. And I do mean the second that you comply with the best that you know, God will give you more, he will send into your life through miraculous means, if necessary, whatever is required to take the next step, there is no such thing as waiting on God. Not really, not the way people mean it, when they say that the only thing you could connect to that, that's true is a sense that there might be more steps to what you actually want than you currently realize. And you need to be patient as God leads you through those steps. One of the, the principal blessings of the Gospel is access to outcomes that are much greater than we can currently comprehend and whose paths are beyond our current understanding. This is a chief role of angels when angels minister to us. One of the reasons they're sent is to help guide us to blessings that are greater than what we would know to seek on our own or know how to find on our own. But that's not how we live our lives. We live our lives pretending that somehow we know the way and that what we want is what we should want that somehow we know what, what we want is like before we have it. But the key to all of this is just doing what we have sufficient reason to do right now. And when you construct the path in retrospect, you can't help but see the hand of God, every step of the way, guiding you to greater things than you knew to seek or then you knew how to seek. So I'm gonna give you uh two positive examples and one negative example uh from the, from my life in addition to what we're gonna read here from the scriptures. So let's start with those examples first because otherwise I'm gonna forget them. But I'm holding the book of Mormon in my hand. So I won't forget that. So 22 examples are connected to the talk that I gave on June 19th. So from, from my perspective, I had a reason that I needed to go to Utah and I really didn't want to go. But I prayed and I said, Lord, is there anything you need me to do while I'm down there? Is there anything I can do for you while I'm down there? And he said, yes, I want you to go down there and give a talk on Matthew 2323. And I said, OK, and then my original reason for going down there became a way lower priority to giving the talk. And if that had fallen through, I would have come anyway. So then I announced that and I think two days later, I don't remember it was a Sunday. I um had received two invites from people to host me because I had put out a blog post saying that this was something I was gonna do. Is there a place we can do it? And so, uh the, the first one that worked out, um we, we set it up and I put an announcement on Sunday that, that I was going to be giving a talk the following Wednesday. And so at that talk, it was great. I had the opportunity to meet um many of you who have not met, who, who I had not met face to face before. And that was, that was fun. And more importantly, I had the opportunity to say the things I was supposed to say uh in a group and then one on one afterwards in the mingle session when everyone got a chance to get to know each other. Uh I had some really important one on one conversations with people that I think helped them. But um in one of those conversations, I got to know a man who was sharing with me some of the successes he's had as he's tried to apply some of the things I've taught about helping your Children to get to take more ownership over there, scripture study and their relationship with God. And he had asked his son to read a little slower and on his own to come up with questions that he would try to find the answers to. And then he wanted to talk to him about it. And then one of those feedback sessions , his son said that he didn't understand what Matthew 2323 meant. And that conversation happened on the same Sunday I announced to talk and I didn't know that before I went, that God was answering the prayer of this man's son through what he told me. But that happens. And if you allow yourself to be used by the Lord, he will use you to answer other people's prayers. This is not a blessing reserved for some special people. It's something that is our birthright as the Children of God to stand in his place and do what he would do if he were there up to the limit of what we're capable of. And so the question becomes, what are you willing to do? And that's the limiting factor. And then the second limiting factor is uh on, on a longer term basis, not in the moment, on a longer term basis. How much will you yield to his shaping? So anyone familiar with blacksmithing knows that the metal doesn't just come out of nowhere. There's a whole process to get the metal you start with when you start blacksmithing. Um But once you have the, the piece, you've got to heat it up, you gotta whack it a bunch of times in a very particular way with the end product in your mind from the beginning and you hammer away at this thing, you heat it and you cool it in very specific ways until it is the tool you intended to make. And each of us has a potential in God's eyes and you can rest assured that you're not there yet. If you're still kicking, he can shape you even more. And as you yield to that process over time , you wouldn't believe what he can do with you. And it doesn't matter how normal you are the, the magic of this process. Unlike blacksmithing, it's almost not totally, it's almost completely detached from what you start with. He is the creator. He's not terribly inhibited by where you start. So, um it's very important for us to yield to the, the instantaneous opportunities for him to use us, which, which the barrier is almost always embarrassment, risk of failure, emotional investment. It's impossible to love people without giving them weapons to hurt you more effectively. But that's the, that's the game we play. That's those are the costs of the process. And then also the long term shaping to yield to him as he, his voice is a voice of improvement. As he calls you into your potential and your willingness to do those two things will dictate how often and to what ends, he can use you to answer the prayers of other people. So I didn't know that this man's son was gonna get an answer to his prayers through what God told me to say. But I yielded to the sufficient reasons I had to go and say what he told me to say. And in that process, I used all the shaping that God has put me through to this point to deliver the best I could to the people that heard it and the people that will listen to it. And hopefully more than once on the internet because I posted the audio. So it, it's called the weightier matters if you haven't heard it yet. But part of my reason for going was that I knew that there was a man who's been praying for a very long time, years for a certain blessing. And it's a blessing that I know the path to because I've received it in spades. And maybe two thirds of what I said in that talk could be directly applied to this man's situation. And if applied, it would absolutely lead him over every barrier preventing him presently from having what he seeks. And much more than that. II, I, in his particular case, I easily gave a lifetime worth of things to, to apply. He wouldn't run out of it, but that man didn't go. And so one person might look at this and say, well, one of the main reasons for you coming and, and you know, driving 16 hours round trip in two days, um, didn't happen. Isn't that disappointing? Well, sure. I mean, in a very real way I care about this man, but was it a failure. No, God leads us to do what we need to do for the best possible outcome through what we want and how we see things right now. This, you just can't break this. It really is true. Uh Last example, from my own life, I want to share with you a story from my friend and we're gonna anonymize this a bit. He had some reasons to believe that boy, I don't know how much I can anonymize this. He had reasons to believe that there is a place that he should move and there are simple reasons. They're probably the same reasons all of you have for moving or should have, but it didn't look like there was any possibility to move and still have a job. So he found one business that does what he does in the place he wanted to move to and there are excessively long odds that there was not going to be a job opportunity there. They didn't have any openings posted. Um, and it, you know, just a small business. So he contacted, he cold called this place and he said, hey, I'd really like to live there. Um If you guys have any openings, can I give you my information? You keep me in mind? And they said, oh, actually, we have a person who's getting ready to retire. I, I hope I'm getting all the details correct here, but it's close enough, if not. Um, we're getting, we have a person that's getting ready to retire and they're in your same position where you are right now. So let me forward you to the higher ups and we'll get you on the list. This guy wanted to move his family, not interested in moving, not at all. He brought it up. They were not at all interested and most people will look at that and say, well, this is an insurmountable barrier. This is dead in the water. I'm not even going to move forward on it. But this guy has faith by faith. What I mean is he's willing to do what he has sufficient reason to do. And so he said, look, I'm not committing to moving by calling this business. I'm not committing to moving by sending my resume. I'm not committing to moving by interviewing. He eventually got an interview and those were all just small sacrifices. It wasn't a big deal with a potentially enormous payout whose full magnitude he could not know from the beginning. It was just sufficient reason to take the next step. So another obstacle appeared, which was the enormous timeline that this occurred over is months and months. And for some reason, the company is dragging their feet like crazy. But there was no cost for my friend to just keep driving on in his normal life. He already had a job, he already had a place to live. And this was just something on the back burner no big deal checking in every couple of weeks, kind of thing. And again, almost free, almost free as far as what it took to, to look at. Now, I, I do just want to make a lateral side note here. It's very important. People who are living emotionally check to check. They are absolutely maxed out in their present life will not do anything like this because even just having this possibility in their head will absolutely overwhelm them and they won't move forward even if it's almost free to do. And so it is really important to develop a surplus in capability, the ability to do more things without getting overwhelmed, greater order in your present life. So you have surplus to handle things that you're not expecting or to investigate opportunities for improvement, even if you feel like you don't need them right now because you can't know ahead of time what things are gonna prove to be absolutely vital in the future. So you always have to do everything you can to be the best that you can. So continuing back into the story. So it took a lot longer than it should have. But finally, the head Honcho gets back to my friend and says, hey, uh so we're gonna give you an offer and we're gonna send it to you on paper and make it official. But you know, we'll just parse out some details here before it comes. So you say yes and make sure that this is something that you're still excited about and that the terms fit what you want. And he said by the way, which, which was a victory of faith because, um from the beginning, there were some reasons to believe that that maybe the financials of this situation were not going to work out. And so my friend was very upfront, this job would have to pay X for me to take it. And so the, the head Honcho knew from the beginning and then they kept walking forward with that. And that guy had faith too because he wasn't sure he was going to be able to, to make that amount work. But, you know, back and forth and they're moving forward and they're really excited. Uh, he's a great guy. I, I don't blame them. I'd be excited too. So then the head Honcho says, by the way, we actually just had a surprise retirement in the position above this. And I've gotten to know you through these interviews and everything and I know what your resume is. You're definitely qualified for that job. And if you'd like, I can't make any promises, but I'd like to include you in the search for that. And if you end up getting that offer, you should take that job instead. And my friend said, yeah. Sure. Yeah. Sure. Ok. Could my friend have known, would he have any reason to expect that, that he would get an opportunity to apply for that higher job in applying for this lower job. Do you see the chain of long shots here, uh, indeterminate outcomes? But he just kept putting his hat in the ring because he said there's sufficient reason to do what it takes to take the next step. That's all it was all along yet. I look at my friend as a tremendous example of faith, tremendous because I know a lot of people who wouldn't do any of that, who wouldn't have even taken the first step. You know, the kinds of people who won't even write Amazon reviews. I, I'll never stop picking that scab. So, um but it's, it's an easy tangible thing. So it's, it's half joking, it's half very serious. Um So that's what faith is like. And if you wanna learn more about this, you should read through faith book I wrote. But let's go to the scriptures. We don't do that enough. And just so, you know, that's mostly for time. Um I know people are overwhelmed already. So I just try to spit out what I need to say as fast as I can believe it or not. OK. So this is Alma 26 and I, I want you to pick out the same patterns of what we've been talking about that you don't know ahead of time what the outcomes are gonna be. But as you step into the, the things that you do understand as far as you understand them, you, the doors will open and you'll see in much greater detail that the, the worth of the best outcomes and, and also the path to them. That's what through faith is all about the book. You really should read it if you haven't, um you should read again even if you have. Ok, so I just want to pick out a few verses from this. So Ammon is, is speaking here and he starts to describe the conditions before they made their trip. So they, him and his brothers were, were uh a couple of thugs and they went around doing thuggish things, but then they changed their, their tune, they cleaned up their act and they thought, you know, they were princes, they said, you know, instead of being the king of this place and, or princes under a brother, we wanna just let all that go and we'd actually like to have much greater meaning in life. And instead of ruling over all these things that our father, grandfather set up, we wanna march straight into the most dangerous place on earth for us, our, the land of our mortal enemies and see if we can't do something about establishing peace between our people and we'll probably die. And that's OK. And that's just what we're gonna do. So, uh he says, could we have supposed, when we started from the land of Zerah Hela, which is where they're from, that God would have granted unto us such great blessings. That is a very important question because the answer is no, they didn't know upfront what the outcome would be, which the outcome was that they converted thousands of people. And they, they single-handedly did what great armies could not do in creating peace between two people that hated each other, two groups of people that, that absolutely hated each other. And, and more importantly than that, they led those thousands of people to the Lord and they were deeply converted. That isn't what they set out to do. They set out to do much less than that. They were happy dying. They, all they wanted to do was do the best that they could to make up for the terrible people. They had been, they knew that their lives were forfeit , that they deserve nothing from God, let alone to be kings in a righteous land. And so they let all that go and they marched straight into Laman night territory preaching the gospel. And the most likely thing was for them to be imprisoned and killed so, um quickly, but if they were lucky, they'd be tortured first. Ok. So then he recounts what these blessings were, which I already mentioned. And then he says, I find this part. I didn't underline this ahead of time. Um Oh, I can't find it. Now when they were, when they were setting out to do what they were going to do, everyone laughed. At them. Not only did they think it was a terrible idea. They actually laughed at them and yet they had every reason to take the steps that they did because of that. He says our joy is full, we will praise our God forever. So joy, joy comes from value. And like I said, you can't know ahead of time what something is worth that lies beyond your comprehension I have not seen. So how do you come to see? It's only through faith, you can only obtain the things of greatest value through faith. Once you obtain them, if you do it right, you will know what they're worth. And it's only then when you have the thing and you know what it's worth that you will have a fullness of joy. You can only have a fullness of joy through faith. You can gain a sense of the value of something in some other way. But you're not gonna have the something to keep. That's the snag. If you know that something's tremendously value, only because you had it and lost it, you will not be full of joy, you'll be full of sorrow. It's only through faith that you can get and keep the greatest things. So I hope that you think about the application of what we've talked about here to your own life when you have sufficient reason to do something. When your rational process is suggested that a certain option has the greatest likelihood of the most enduring greatest outcome, you should go and do that thing and you shouldn't stop until that changes no matter how hard it is. The question isn't, how hard is this? The question is, is it worth it? And we do a lot of things that are easy and not worth it. Whatever you do when you're looking at your potential options, do not throw things out just because you don't see the final outcome. People who do that, people who need to see the whole path before they take the first step are miserable. They do not encounter lasting positive outcomes. They have terrible lives and they have terrible afterlives because they have no faith. This, these skills are not negotiable in life. Everything you want is absolutely coupled to your ability to exercise faith. So I highly encourage you to master this skill in your own life and read through faith a couple of times.