0:00:00 - 0:00:25 This is a series on faith, hope and Charity. This is the first part of three and this presentation is on faith. Faith is a very important topic and it's uh little understood. So let's jump in. What is faith? Everybody has different ideas of uh greater or lesser accuracy and efficacy. So, uh here are 0:00:25 - 0:00:47 some scriptures that are commonly used to define faith. Paul said in Hebrews 11 1, faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. And if you're like me, you've heard this explained in 100 different ways. Um 100 different times. Another one is found in almost 3221 where it 0:00:47 - 0:01:06 says faith is not to have a perfect knowledge of things. Therefore, if you have faith, you hope for things which are not seen, which are true. So substance of things hoped for evidence of things not seen, the hope for things which are not seen, which are true. Um Well, it turns out that these are properties 0:01:05 - 0:01:27 of faith, they're not actually definitions of faith. Um So this sort of thing can be used to see if you've got it or not. I suppose, but it doesn't really help you to get it in the first place. Here's a definition. Faith is complete trust or confidence in something or someone. This is right out of the 0:01:27 - 0:01:51 dictionary. Uh, and it happens to fit very well. Now, when we're talking about faith in God, God is the something or someone, um, and his word is, well, he's the, someone, his word is the same. Um, but faith is actually a general principle. It's not just a theological principle. You could have faith 0:01:50 - 0:02:15 in uh your alarm clock. So every night when you set your alarm, you are exercising faith because you are trusting that that alarm is going to go off at the set time. Um We won't go into general faith in this presentation but realize that uh faith as a general principle is something that directs action 0:02:14 - 0:00:00 in every aspect of your life. Um But this presentation is gonna focus on faith in God. So to have faith in God, you need two things. You need knowledge about God and you need trust in God. It's really, it's that simple. Um Faith is unconditional trust in God coupled with knowledge about or from Him. 0:00:00 - 0:03:10 So faith in God uh is sometimes placed or based on knowledge about Him and sometimes it's based on knowledge from Him about something else. So if you want um faith, what you need to do is obey everything that God tells you. There's no exceptions there, you also need to learn everything that God will 0:03:09 - 0:03:38 teach you. Oh, that's good. So when there's no faith we're told in Hebrews 11 6, it is impossible to please God. So why is it impossible to please God without faith? Well, uh coming back to the previous slide, faith requires knowledge about or from God and that requires trust in God. If you lack trust 0:03:37 - 0:04:05 in God, and if you lack knowledge about or from God, then what you learn from Him will necessarily be limited. Therefore, your ability to become like Him will be limited. Therefore, your ability to accomplish His purpose, which is for you to become like Him will be limited. And therefore, it is impossible 0:04:04 - 0:04:35 to please Him. God is pleased in as much as we uh accomplish His purpose, which is to bless us. And the means by which we are blessed are uh through acquiring his character and his knowledge and his will. Nether 1212, we read God can do no miracle among people with no faith. Uh There are plentiful examples 0:04:34 - 0:05:01 of this in the New Testament we're told at one point, uh Jesus could do no mighty miracle among a people who had little faith. And he frequently references that during his ministry. So why can't God do a miracle among those with no faith? Um That seems like a simple question, but actually, it's quite 0:05:00 - 0:05:26 complicated. I think the short version of the answer would be something like everything that God does is based on laws that He follows. And if you are not aware of those laws, uh certainly, if you do not fulfill those laws, you cannot obtain the blessing that's predicated on those laws. And so this is 0:05:26 - 0:05:50 a cause and effect situation. And if you do not fulfill the cause, you cannot obtain the effect. But uh I won't pre pretend like that's a fully fleshed out answer. We're just trying to touch on how big a deal it is to not have faith. Ok. Maroni 70, I don't have the verse here. Um says no man can be saved 0:05:50 - 0:06:17 without faith. And that is a really big deal. So faith is required for salvation. It's actually the means of salvation. It's impossible to please God without it. And God can do no miracle if you don't have faith. So it's pretty important. Ok? So zoom in on miracles for a minute in Ether 1216, it says 0:06:17 - 0:06:38 all they who wrought miracles, wrought them by faith. And so we see that faith is the means of working miracles. Um That's not surprising. And maybe if you can put together what we've already talked about, you can, you can already see that because faith requires the acquisition of further knowledge from 0:06:37 - 0:07:04 and about God and trusting God. Uh What you'll do if you exercise faith is you'll acquire more information about how it is that, that God works and you'll be able to apply those same laws and obtain the same results. Ether 1218 says neither at any time hath any wrought miracles until after their faith 0:07:03 - 0:07:32 . So that's interesting in these are 1229 we read that uh God worketh unto the Children of men according to their faith or proportional to their faith. OK. So uh what is the mechanism of faith? So faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the word of God read that in Romans 1017 and in 1014, Romans 1014 0:07:31 - 0:07:54 , it says, and how shall they believe in Him, of whom they have not heard and how shall they hear without a preacher? So, uh again, like the verses we read on faith that are used as a definition of faith, but are not actually a definition. They describe the property of faith, properties of faith. These 0:07:54 - 0:08:20 verses uh sometimes are used to try to explain how to increase faith. And uh it takes less of a logical leap for that than the, the former application. But uh these still aren't super clear. Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God. And the word of God comes through preachers quote unquote 0:08:20 - 0:08:47 . Well, faith, it turns out it's not just based on preachers and it's not just based on things that someone can say to you. Uh faith, it's actually based on information. Now, information can be relayed in many different ways. It can come through observation, it can come from the light inside of you or 0:08:46 - 0:09:06 your conscience. God can speak to you directly in his own voice. He can give you impressions. He can give you dreams. He can give you visions. He can speak to you figuratively through the words of another person. And that's what Paul was describing, but it's certainly not the only means. Uh you can pick 0:09:06 - 0:09:28 up information through reading books, uh particularly the scriptures, but obviously any book that's good will have information in it. Uh And so on. By your own reason, you can generate information using the intelligence that God has given you. So here's an example of uh conveyance of information from 0:09:28 - 0:09:49 Ether 12 and how it relates to the exercise of faith. Uh We read that there were many whose faith was so exceedingly strong even before Christ came, who could not be kept from within the veil, but truly saw with their eyes, the things which they had beheld with an eye of faith and they were glad, let's 0:09:48 - 0:00:00 pause. Uh In Stanley, if you're familiar with the story, this is about someone named the brother of Jared, uh who had a miraculous experience with the Lord. So what does it mean to behold something with an eye of faith while this is the conveyance of information in the face where it's just a belief, 0:00:00 - 0:10:31 it's not knowledge. And that dichotomy, by the way confuses a lot of people. They say, well, this isn't faith because it's knowledge or this is knowledge and it's not faith, just hang in there. And I, I think we'll cover that ground. But here in eye of faith means that uh these people who are referred 0:10:30 - 0:10:58 to, they received information about something that was not necessarily in the, the physical witness of cause and effect. So they, they had a belief, a hypothesis about something and they, they had an experience which could be many things that I have already referenced that gave them the idea that something 0:10:57 - 0:11:16 could be true. All right. Anyway, so they beheld these things with n of faith and they were glad and behold, we have seen in this record that one of these was the brother of Jared for so great was his faith in God that when God put forth his finger, he could not hide it from the sight of the brother 0:11:16 - 0:11:37 of Jared because of his word, which he had spoken unto him, which word he had obtained by faith. So, in a nutshell, what happened was this brother of Jared had an experience where God told him something. It doesn't tell us what the mechanism of his telling him was. So could have been he read something 0:11:36 - 0:12:08 . It could have been that uh God spoke to him or God spoke to him through another person who knows, but somehow or another he obtained God's word to him that said that um nothing would be withheld from him. So because of that, when he had this experience that is referred to um the second experience he 0:12:08 - 0:12:38 was able to exercise his faith and believe that what he was told before meant something about what would happen in his, his uh his future. So that example is kind of long and detailed, but we can go through a bunch of the short examples that are given uh in Hebrews 11 and look at uh the, the text says 0:12:37 - 0:12:58 that by faith, certain things were done and there's a long list of these things. And so we'll just hit on a couple of them. What I want you to think about is the, the, the um well, are the two questions? One, what was the information that the faith was based on? And two, how is trusting God manifested 0:12:57 - 0:13:18 ? So remember you need knowledge about God or from God and I'm calling that information here and you also need uh to manifest trust in God. So these are the two ingredients and I want you to think about those ingredients as we read these points. So in Hebrews 11 4, it says by faith, Abel offered unto 0:13:17 - 0:13:46 God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain. So if you remember the story, Abel offers up um AAA sacrifice, an animal sacrifice and Kane offers up a sacrifice of the fruits of the field, his crops. And uh so Paul says that, that Abel's sacrifice was more excellent than Cain because of His faith. Well, if 0:13:45 - 0:14:10 you again, the story is that, that God rejected Cain's offering. The reason is it didn't fit the prescribed format, right? God operates by law. Cain's sacrifice was not according to his law, Abel's was, well, how did Abel manifest trust in God? He did what God had told him to do? He followed the instructions 0:14:10 - 0:14:32 , right? What was the information? It was the order of sacrifice. How does this work? Right? Kane did not have trust in God because he decided to do something else instead of what God had told him to do. And so he turned away from that information. He didn't follow it. Hebrews 11 7 says that by faith 0:14:32 - 0:00:00 , Noah being warned of God of things not seen as yet moved with fear, prepared an ark to the saving of his house. What was the information God told Noah that there would be a worldwide flood? Um He told him also told him how to build an ark that would survive the flood. How is this trust manifested? 0:00:00 - 0:15:14 He spent a very long time and a lot of effort building this ark uh while being ridiculed by the people, he tried to save Hebrews 11 8, Abraham by faith, Abraham when he was called to go out into a place which he should after receive for an inheritance, obeyed. And he went out not knowing whither he went 0:15:13 - 0:15:38 , what was the information Abraham Abraham was told to leave his home and wander through certain areas uh as a stranger. How is his trust manifested? He did it. We've got some more Hebrews 1117 by faith Abraham when he was tried offered up Isaac, what was the information that Abraham should sacrifice 0:15:38 - 0:16:02 his son? How his trust manifested? He went through with it. Depending on the tradition. Uh An angel stopped him or he went through with it and Isaac was brought back to life either way, his trust was certainly manifested in Hebrews 1127 by faith, Moses forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king 0:16:02 - 0:16:27 for he endured as seeing him who is invisible. Uh Moses fled from a station of great power and renown in Egypt in order to embrace a calling that God had revealed to him. So that was the information and that was the trust in Hebrews 1128 by faith, Moses kept the Passover and the sprinkling of blood lest 0:16:27 - 0:16:48 he that destroyed the firstborn should touch them. This is referring to when God told Moses that he would kill all the first born in Egypt. And that the way to prevent this was a house um should have blood painted over the lintel of the door on the Passover. And, and they obviously, they kept that, that 0:16:48 - 0:17:09 practice and uh those who did had their first born spared in Hebrews 1129 by faith, the Israelites passed through the Red Sea as by dry land which the Egyptians are saying to do were drowned was the information. Well, God told Moses that he would have power over the waters. And then when he was in a 0:17:09 - 0:00:00 position where to accomplish the revealed will of God, he had to part the Red Sea. He did it. So he manifested his trust in God's word by leading the company of Israel directly to a place where, where they would not be able to cross without that. And then obviously, you know, raised up his arms and, 0:00:00 - 0:18:02 and, and did it. So how do we get more faith? Well, I, I hope I've shown that faith is not a desire. You don't get more of it by simply wishing harder, right? And I think this is the common belief. It's, it's not an effective belief to carry, if you want more faith, the only way to get it is by exercising 0:18:01 - 0:18:31 greater trust in God and or uh obtaining a greater awareness of the object of your faith. And that means God, either who and how he is or what He knows. Trust in God has a maximal value. You can get to the point where you unconditionally trust Him. This is different than trusting everything you know 0:18:31 - 0:19:00 about Him. It's a blank check. And you're saying no matter what God tells me, I will trust it because I trust Him without exception, awareness. On the other hand, does not have a maximal value, you can never be done learning from God. So what this suggests is, although you should try to do both these 0:19:00 - 0:19:25 things. There is a, a finish line for trust, there's no finish line for awareness. So in alma 32 there's a nice passage on faith and here is a segment of it and I think we can get something out of it. It says in thus, if you will not nourish the word. So remember faith comes through information, looking 0:19:24 - 0:19:47 forward with an eye of faith to the fruit thereof, you can never pluck the fruit of the tree of life. So in this analogy, um the information is a seed and nourishing. That seed is uh having trust in God. So that that would be manifested by acting in accordance with the information that that is a part 0:19:46 - 0:20:05 of this. But if you will nourish the word, yeah, nourish the tree as it begin to grow by your faith with great diligence and with patience. Looking forward to the fruit thereof, it shall take root and behold. It shall be a tree springing up unto everlasting life. And because of your diligence in your 0:20:05 - 0:20:22 faith and your patience with the word in nourishing it that it may take root in you, behold by and by you shall pluck the fruit thereof which is most precious, which is sweet above all that is sweet and which is white above all that is white. Yeah, and pure above all that is purer and ye shall feast 0:20:22 - 0:20:41 upon this fruit even until ye are filled that ye hunger, not, neither shall ye thirst. Then my brethren, you shall reap the rewards of your faith and your diligence and patience and long suffering. Waiting for the tree to bring forth fruit unto you. We could talk about this for a long time, but I'll 0:20:41 - 0:21:09 try to keep this very brief. Uh You can think of this tree analogy in terms of a specific instance of faith. So faith in a certain principle and uh in that case, you would plant the seed by getting the information, you would nourish the tree by having trust in God and applying what you've learned in 0:21:09 - 0:21:32 your actions, your desires, etcetera. And then eventually, maybe soon, maybe later, um you will find that you have obtained the fruit or the, the promised outcome, the expected outcome of that principle. And uh in doing so, if you obtain the fruit, you've, you've proven that that your faith was not in 0:21:32 - 0:21:54 vain, it was effectual, but there's another application which is faith in God in general, right? And if you think about that as the tree, then planting the seed is, you hear something about God, that's more than what you know, or more than what you've um trusted before and you decide to trust it and 0:21:53 - 0:22:17 act according to it. And then you begin to eventually to receive the fruit of this belief. And that should be something that's uh if not tangible is something that's obvious to you and real and uh that will strengthen your trust in God, which is a very important concept described in other material on 0:22:16 - 0:22:39 my blog, other videos, books, etcetera. It's interesting that the analogy of a tree is used because if you are hungry, planting a tree is not the first thing that you would think of, right? This is a long term process. Um Fruit trees take at least five years to bear fruit. Typically uh nut trees can 0:22:39 - 0:23:05 be seven or more years. So this isn't like going to the fridge and opening the fridge and getting a sandwich, right? So, um I think it's important to, to notice the emphasis here on time on diligence, effort, patience, et cetera. And uh that the reward is worth all the trouble. But this is how we do 0:23:04 - 0:23:32 it, this is how we grow our faith. It's how we get more. This is why we do it because of the fruit that it bears. So I already mentioned this briefly. But um if you want to practice greater trust in God, how that actually manifests in your obedience to Him. The briefest way to describe this is being 0:23:31 - 0:23:55 true to your conscience. Each of us has a light inside of us that comes from God. And sometimes people call it your conscience. It can be much more than that, but that's a great way to think about it. And people can usually relate to that trust in God means full, unconditional obedience to Him. If you 0:23:55 - 0:24:18 find yourself deviating from your, your most sincere understanding of God's will. That is a sign that you lack trust in Him. And the way to fix that is to increase your trust in Him. Obedience is a decision and trust in God is a decision. It's not something that someone changes in you, you have to decide 0:24:18 - 0:24:44 . So that's good news and bad news. It's good news because if you want more, all you have to do is choose to have more. It's bad news because it's no one else's fault and no one else is gonna fix it for you nor could they. So if you want more knowledge from him or about him, then the way to do that is 0:24:44 - 0:25:10 to exercise greater effort in learning so that the dial that you turn to increase that is the effort dial. But talk about some ways to do that in other videos. Ok? Once you learn something or you have more trust in Him, you put these things together by reconciling your character, your actions, your desires 0:25:10 - 0:25:34 to what you learn. It's not the point of this video, but I just want to put a plug in here. You can change your character. You can change who you are deep inside. And uh you must, if you want to obtain greater blessings in this life and you want to become more like God, is there a limit to how much faith 0:25:34 - 0:26:06 you can obtain? Well, remember, faith requires knowledge about God or from God and it requires trust in God. Um You never get finished acquiring knowledge, but you can come to completion of trust in God. And when you do this is called unshaken or perfect face. So what is this unshaken face? If nothing 0:26:06 - 0:26:34 can happen in this world, that will cause you to trust God less then completely, then your faith is unshaken or perfect. Now, there's, there's a caveat here. You can only make this assertion as far as your awareness extends. So for example, if I were to retire and I had done the math and I said, well 0:26:33 - 0:26:59 , I have enough money that I can pay my bills for the rest of my life. So I'm going to retire. That calculation is based on my uh awareness of what my needs will be until I die. What if that awareness is incorrect or incomplete? What if I'm assuming that the inflation rate will be 2%? And it turns out 0:26:59 - 0:27:19 that one year it's 10%. What if I'm assuming that I'll be relatively healthy? But I get cancer along the way. What if I'm assuming that I will only have to take care of myself. But in the process of retirement, one of my Children has a massive stroke and because of their situation, I'm the one that needs 0:27:19 - 0:27:40 to take care of them. Um There are many things that can happen that I'm not aware of or assumptions that I've made that turn out to be false and all of those will affect us. So you can say that uh you have that nothing in this world could shake your trust in God, that there are no conditions to your 0:27:39 - 0:28:06 trust in God. But um life has a way of showing you that there are. And this is where trials and afflictions come in, which can be a massive blessing from God to help us progress farther than we otherwise would in our trust in Him. So, uh when we have trials and afflictions, typically, they will manifest 0:28:05 - 0:28:26 to us the limits of our trust in God. And this, this can be immensely valuable. And so that these things turn into blessings if we have the right attitude. But um so, so while you could feel that nothing could shake you from your face, there's no guarantee that you're right. Um It's, it's all subject 0:28:26 - 0:28:48 to your awareness, but it's good. It's a, it's a very good thing to strive for. And uh you can leave it to God to show you if you're on the right track or not. But I want to underscore that unshaken faith is unconditional trust in God. It's a blank check. Um There are no limits and here I, I wrote the 0:28:48 - 0:29:14 note not even spit. And what I mean by that is if you look at the Ministry of the Savior in the New Testament, did some very odd things and I will talk about this more in a series I'm going to do on, on healings eventually. Um in healing the sick. There were times several times where Jesus, he spat on 0:29:13 - 0:29:40 people. Uh in our culture today, spitting is, is not regarded as a good thing. But in uh ancient Israel like culture, it was the most offensive thing that you could do without sinning. So it, it was very high up there on the offense scale. And uh the only things you could do that were worse than that 0:29:39 - 0:30:07 were probably um involving, you know, some sort of sexual transgression in public or I don't know, some, something like that. Uh It, it was a really big deal. So if someone was, was holy in the eyes of the people, this would be the least appropriate thing for that person to do without sinning. And Jesus 0:30:06 - 0:30:43 used this as part of the mechanism for healing people. One of the reasons he did this was to um manifest, I don't want to say test because God knows all things before they happen to manifest the humility of the individual. So if we have expectations of what righteousness is, which we all do and our expectations 0:30:42 - 0:31:12 of righteousness are incorrect or incomplete, which in every case, they are compared to real righteousness, which is God and everything He is, then he can show us and he frequently will that our faith is more limited than we think by sending us situations that offend us that violate our sacred cows that 0:31:12 - 0:31:37 don't fit the mold we've created in our minds. And we just have to remember that his ways are higher than our ways as it says in Isaiah. And uh that he knows so much more than we do. And this can be a very fertile ground for increasing our faith. So here's an example of the usage of this word in Jacob 0:31:37 - 0:31:58 46, we have wherefore we search the prophets and we have many revelations in the spirit of prophecy and having all these witnesses, we obtain a hope and our faith cometh unshaken in so much that we truly can command in the name of Jesus and the very trees obey us or the mountains or the waves of the 0:31:58 - 0:32:25 sea. So here faith precedes the miracle. And we also have the mention of hope which we'll talk about in another video in this series. And you can see that they came to the unshaken face through obtaining more information. They searched the prophets, they had many revelations from God. They had the spirit 0:32:24 - 0:32:48 of prophecy and all these things in combination in a, in a, a repeated cycle of increasing faith resulted in perfect faith or unshaken faith. Second E 59, we read and he cometh into the world that he may save all men. If they will hearken unto his voice for behold, he suffer the pains of all men. Yeah 0:32:48 - 0:33:09 , the pains of every living creature, both men, women and Children who belong to the family of Adam. And he suffer this, that the resurrection might pass upon all men that all might stand before him at the great and judgment Day. And he commande all men that they must repent and be baptized in his name 0:33:08 - 0:33:29 , having perfect faith in the holy one of Israel where they cannot be saved in the kingdom of God. So we see that this idea of having perfect faith, it's not optional. It's absolutely required for salvation. If you don't have it, you can't be saved in the Kingdom of God. This is because you can't live 0:33:29 - 0:33:52 in the Kingdom of God unless you obtain the same knowledge, glory power, uh Dominion, et cetera that Christ has. This is what it means to become a co heir with Jesus Christ. If you want to obtain the happiness and joy that He has the only way to do that is to obtain the character that He has. And that 0:33:52 - 0:34:16 requires perfect faith in Him. In conclusion, faith is in God is complete trust in God and you obtain more faith by being more obedient to God and exerting greater effort in learning more about and from Him, I hope this has been beneficial for you. And I invite you to check out parts two and three.