God’s power is truth, and truth is God’s power. You cannot convey God’s power without conveying light and truth, and you cannot convey light and truth without conveying God’s power. God’s power is 100% based on reconciliation to truth.
To know God’s will would require you to know God’s knowledge. Since any understanding of the latter is only partial, so it is with the former. The more truth you know, the more of God’s power you will see. Jesus said: “If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you.” (John 15:7) To abide means to continue without fading. As we continue to seek greater understanding of reality (“if ye abide in me”), and remain reconciled to what God teaches us about it (“my words abide in you”), whatever we ask will be done.
When you are fully reconciled to God, you have the power to do what you sincerely believe God’s will to be. God’s power is found within God’s will, and God’s will can only be known to the extent that you have acquired truth.
26 He that is ordained of God and sent forth, the same is appointed to be the greatest, notwithstanding he is the least and the servant of all.
27 Wherefore, he is possessor of all things; for all things are subject unto him, both in heaven and on the earth, the life and the light, the Spirit and the power, sent forth by the will of the Father through Jesus Christ, his Son.
28 But no man is possessor of all things except he be purified and cleansed from all sin.
29 And if ye are purified and cleansed from all sin, ye shall ask whatsoever you will in the name of Jesus and it shall be done.
35 And by giving heed and doing these things which ye have received, and which ye shall hereafter receive—and the kingdom is given you of the Father, and power to overcome all things which are not ordained of him. (D&C 50)
Those who possess a little of God’s awareness will, when reconciled to it, experience a little of God’s power. God’s power is available at every level of truth. The more truth you obtain, the more of God’s power you will experience.
Ignorance is not bliss. In order to encounter greater manifestations of God’s power in your life, you must not only reconcile yourself to your present awareness of reality, but increase it.
How do you increase your awareness? Through faith:
20 And now, my brethren, how is it possible that ye can lay hold upon every good thing?
21 And now I come to that faith, of which I said I would speak; and I will tell you the way whereby ye may lay hold on every good thing.
22 For behold, God knowing all things, being from everlasting to everlasting, behold, he sent angels to minister unto the children of men, to make manifest concerning the coming of Christ; and in Christ there should come every good thing. (Moroni 7)
The key to unlocking God's power in your life is to believe that he is, learn how he is, and become how he is. This requires faith. Faith is the means by which God’s power is manifested.
It is through faith that you lay hold on “every good thing.” What is every good thing? If God is the source of all that is good, it is to be more like him in what you understand, believe, desire, and are. All these things come from Christ, and the way to grow towards them is through faith:
24 And behold, there were divers ways that he did manifest things unto the children of men, which were good...
25 Wherefore, by the ministering of angels, and by every word which proceeded forth out of the mouth of God, men began to exercise faith in Christ; and thus by faith, they did lay hold upon every good thing...
26 ...by faith, they become the sons of God.... (Moroni 7)
Faith comes through a greater understanding of the will of God—a greater awareness of what is good and what is evil in a more accurate estimate of reality. Paul said:
14 How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? and how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear without a preacher?
17 So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. (Romans 10)
Hearing doesn’t simply mean using your ears to receive information. It means becoming aware of something you were not previously aware of. It means noticing.
Jesus once described faith as a mustard seed, one of the tiniest seeds that grow into one of the largest trees:
31 Another parable put he forth unto them, saying, The kingdom of heaven is like to a grain of mustard seed, which a man took, and sowed in his field:
32 Which indeed is the least of all seeds: but when it is grown, it is the greatest among herbs, and becometh a tree, so that the birds of the air come and lodge in the branches thereof. (Matthew 13)
What makes the tree of faith grow? Knowledge.
Too many of us write off faith as what you have when you don’t have knowledge. In reality, faith is the boundary of our perception of reality. Faith is what we are aware of that exists beyond what we see. As Paul said: “faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” (Hebrews 11:1)
From this definition, we see that you can’t have faith beyond your awareness. You can’t have awareness very far beyond your knowledge. As your knowledge grows, then, your faith grows.
It is like the thin layer of liquid water that always appears on the edge of an ice block. Ice doesn’t melt from the inside out. Only the outer layer melts. Faith exists just past our knowledge. Since knowledge is expansive, the greater our knowledge, the greater the faith that can exist just past it.
Faith is the medium through which we acquire more knowledge. God reveals new truth to us in the realm of faith, and by acting on it, it becomes knowledge.
If you are to maintain—let alone grow your faith—work is required. Growth in faith requires expanded awareness. Moses did not attempt to part the Red Sea out of the blue. Instead, his parting the sea was completely aligned with his current sincere awareness of God’s will. God had previously told him that he had power to do exactly what he did (see Moses 1:25).
Faith is not and never has been a guess of what God might want you to do. Instead, it is the solid, sincere application of your knowledge of God: the present situation weighed against all your previous experiences with good and evil. You must grow in your knowledge of good and evil as your awareness grows.
The Lord said:
20 There is **a** law, irrevocably decreed in heaven before the foundations of this world, upon which **all** blessings are predicated—
21 And when we obtain **any** blessing from God, it is by obedience to **that** law upon which it is [all things are] predicated. (D&C 130)
This law is the truth, the light, and the word. It is your discrete level of reality awareness and discernment of good and evil. The fullness of this law is the level of light and truth possessed by God:
11 ...the light which shineth, which giveth you light, is through him who enlighteneth your eyes, which is the same light that quickeneth your understandings;
12 Which light precedeth forth from the presence of God to fill the immensity of space—
13 The light which is in all things, which giveth life to all things, which is **<u>the</u>** <u>law by which all things are governed, even the power of God who sitteth upon his throne, who is in the bosom of</u> eternity, who is in the midst of all things. (D&C 88)
To the degree that you possess this, you can know and do the will of God:
36 ...the rights of the priesthood are inseparably connected with the powers of heaven, and that the powers of heaven cannot be controlled nor handled only upon the principles of righteousness.
41 No power or influence can or ought to be maintained by virtue of the priesthood, only by persuasion, by long-suffering, by gentleness and meekness, and by love unfeigned. (D&C 121)
It is an illusion to believe that your faith can stay in a childlike state. To do so would require a static awareness. But, unless you are mentally retarded, your awareness will automatically grow as you age. Your increased observations of reality will rob you of faith unless you search in the light of Christ to develop a more sophisticated and advanced idea of good and evil. Most people do not engage in the study and prayer required to grow their understanding of good and evil. These people are very easy to pick out. They are the ones who say things like “how can God be real if babies die?” These people are almost always intellectual, yet while they readily acknowledge the sophistication of temporal knowledge through the years they spend in academic pursuits, they expect that spiritual knowledge—a domain that is greater because it encapsulates temporal knowledge—can be obtained through no effort whatsoever.
A child can have powerful faith because a child has experienced very little. Their awareness is so small that it is easy to reconcile reality to it. If they simply believe that God likes to heal people, and have a simple definition of love, they can pray with faith that a loved one will be healed, and it will happen. Even at the childlike level of awareness, most never get to the point where they are really reconciled with what they know, and therefore they lack any fruit of God’s power in their lives.
For most normally intelligent adults, reconciliation is orders of magnitude more difficult. They know that God’s love is complicated. In his wisdom, he allows suffering. Their faith must somehow reconcile all their past observations to each other, and then that perspective must be applied to the present in such a way that doubt is completely resolved. This is no passive event. This is no simple thing. Those most effective in their exercise of faith are those who have spent the most effort working through their perspective, which certainly includes study of the scriptures and prayer.
If adult faith is so much more challenging than child faith, why bother growing beyond the faith of a child? After all, great miracles can be worked by those with childlike faith. There are popular evangelical ministers who, for example, heal everyone they pray for. This is according to their simple, child-like view of God’s love and God’s will. While they are to be commended for greater faith than most of their more spiritually intelligent fellow Christians, the good they do is not the greatest good they could do.
Advanced understanding is harder. However, it also yields greater fruit. It is greater because it is more correct, and it is more correct because it is closer to God:
1 I am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman.
2 Every branch in me that beareth not fruit he taketh away: and every branch that beareth fruit, he purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit.
3 Now ye are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you.
4 Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in me.
5 I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing. (John 15)
What does it mean to purge the vine? It means to reveal a higher level of understanding, which shows that something better than the previous fruit is available. The greater the awareness we obtain, the greater will be the manifestation of God’s power in our lives.
When we obtain greater awareness, we move past the childlike answers to complex questions. If God is the greatest, then we become better by being more like him. If he has more knowledge than us, then we become more knowledgeable by learning what he knows. For example, instead of assuming God will heal everyone who is sick, we grow in our understanding of his knowledge by recognizing that he did not heal everyone, and therefore neither should we. We seek for and obtain the reason why he does what he does, and then we grow in our capacity to do good beyond the capacity of a child.
By growing in our awareness, we grow closer and closer to the point that we will not ask that which is contrary to his will. Historic personalities that reached this point received the power to do many great miracles. One such person was Nephi, son of Helaman. To him, the Lord said:
4 Blessed art thou, Nephi, for those things which thou hast done; for I have beheld how thou hast with unwearyingness declared the word, which I have given unto thee, unto this people. And thou hast not feared them, and hast not sought thine own life, but hast sought my will, and to keep my commandments.
5 And now, because thou hast done this with such unwearyingness, behold, I will bless thee forever; and I will make thee mighty in word and in deed, in faith and in works; yea, even that all things shall be done unto thee according to thy word, for _thou shalt not ask that which is contrary to my will_.
6 Behold, thou art Nephi, and I am God. Behold, I declare it unto thee in the presence of mine angels, that ye shall have power over this people, and shall smite the earth with famine, and with pestilence, and destruction, according to the wickedness of this people.
7 Behold, I give unto you power, that whatsoever ye shall seal on earth shall be sealed in heaven; and whatsoever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven; and thus shall ye have power among this people.
8 And thus, if ye shall say unto this temple it shall be rent in twain, it shall be done.
9 And if ye shall say unto this mountain, Be thou cast down and become smooth, it shall be done.
10 And behold, if ye shall say that God shall smite this people, it shall come to pass. (Helaman 10)
What did the Lord mean when he said that Nephi would not ask anything contrary to his will?
The first possible meaning is that whatever Nephi would ask would be according to God’s will. In other words, In other words, Nephi’s knowledge was advanced enough and his understanding was sufficiently aligned with God’s that the two would decide situations the same way. That Nephi’s awareness of good and evil was extensive is evident from the powers that God grants to him. He gives him power to seal on earth and in heaven, power to destroy buildings, power to move mountains, and power over famines, diseases, and wars. In combination with God’s statement that Nephi would not “ask that which is contrary to [his] will,” we can see that Nephi had gained sufficient awareness that his understanding of what God would do in these significant matters was reconciled with God’s full knowledge. Thus we see that the more you know, the more you will be able to do.
The second possible meaning is that Nephi would refrain from asking anything from God that was not perfectly in alignment with his sincere, best understanding of God’s will. Nephi exercised great restraint to avoid asking anything for which he lacked sufficient knowledge to say, with surety, that what he was asking was reconciled to what he knew about God. Once someone surpasses the ignorance of awareness possessed by children, they must admit that they have no idea what God would do and why in a majority of situations. Though they can go to the scriptures and use these questions to drive an advancement of their understanding of God, they must admit that their present knowledge does not reveal to them what God would do in many situations. Therefore, they do not occupy their prayers with requests for certain outcomes in these areas, and while they probably can’t freeze their actions in all these areas, they do not attach their trust in God to any particular outcome of these events. It takes a great deal of faith to restrain one’s desires and petitions to the meager understanding you have of God’s will.
Notwithstanding your ignorance, you can exercise a fullness of faith. If you have done all you can to know him, and reconciled your life perfectly to what you know, you can exercise perfect faith in what you ask. The Lord is obligated to respond, because your reconciliation to your awareness is how you do what he says, and “I, the Lord, am bound when ye do what I say; but when ye do not what I say, ye have no promise.” (D&C 82:10) If you only act in accordance with your knowledge, like Nephi, you will never ask anything contrary to God’s will.