Finding the path
Faith is belief unto action. Action is what distinguishes faith from mere wishing. Desire can come passively, but actions are required to both discover and walk the path to obtain outcomes.
The purpose of faith is to obtain the outcomes that are obtained through it. While desire and reason form motivation, the entire purpose of desire and reason is to motivate someone to act in ways that are different or more difficult than what they would have done otherwise. Outcomes are completely obtained through actions.
Faith is a principle of power in that it yields the actions that result in outcomes that would otherwise not come to pass:
And Christ hath said: If ye will have faith in me ye shall have power to _do_ whatsoever thing is expedient in me. (Moroni 7:33)
If you want to exercise faith, you must counsel with God to find out what action is required. Every outcome in this universe occurs according to specific preconditions that are known to God:
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 predicated. (D&C 130)
14 I, the Lord, stretched out the heavens, and built the earth, my very handiwork; and all things therein are mine. 15 And it is my purpose to provide for my saints, for all things are mine.
16 But it must needs be done in mine own way.... (D&C 104)
The action step of the faith process is all about discovering, executing, and improving the actions that yield the outcomes you desire.
Asking means finding and executing the correct path
All things that you ask, believing, you will receive. Jesus said:
For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened. (Matthew 7:8)
And yet, so many people ask for so many things and do not receive them. So many find themselves without their desires fulfilled because they either do not know the way, or they do not follow it.
Why don’t you receive what you ask for? Because you ask in lust , or without regard to what actions are required to obtain what you seek.
Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts. (James 4:3)
God will give anyone anything they desire, but he is not so liberal in his definition of desire as we are. When we think of what we “desire”, we include in desire any whim or wish or fancy. But God’s definition of desire is whether you are willing to do whatever it takes to find and obtain what you seek.
Asking doesn’t mean wishing. Wishes are desires disconnected from reason or action. Desires do not dictate actions. Rather, desires are meant to stimulate you to invest the effort to discover and follow the actions dictated by reason. If you try to dictate actions through desire, you are almost always guaranteed to fail in obtaining what you seek. The actual path will remain unknown to you except through reason and experience, and it will almost always be far different than you imagined.
Asking doesn’t mean simply praying. It doesn’t mean simply verbalizing your desire for something.
God will never do for you what you are unwilling to do for yourself. The principal purpose of prayer is not to tell God what you need. He already knows what you need (see Matthew 6:8). The key reason for prayer is for you to find out what more you can do to bring about what you seek:
36 Yea, and cry unto God for all thy support; yea, let all thy doings be unto the Lord, and whithersoever thou goest let it be in the Lord; yea, let all thy thoughts be directed unto the Lord; yea, let the affections of thy heart be placed upon the Lord forever.
37 Counsel with the Lord in all thy doings, and he will direct thee for good; yea, when thou liest down at night lie down unto the Lord, that he may watch over you in your sleep; and when thou risest in the morning let thy heart be full of thanks unto God; and if ye do these things, ye shall be lifted up at the last day. (Alma 37)
If you believe that all he asks you to do is pray, you will never encounter the vast majority of good things that he desires you to have, because almost nothing he offers can be obtained just by verbally asking for it.
Asking means putting in the effort and obedience necessary to discover the path that leads to what you desire, then exercising the necessary effort and obedience to obtain what you desire.
The first part of acting is asking “what can I do?” What you can do includes developing characteristics, acquiring skills, making sacrifices, increasing effort, completing work, asking people questions, reading books, conducting research, and so on.
Effort alone isn’t enough. You must ask, seek, and knock to find, recognize, and act according to the path God provides to receive what you desire.
Don’t make the mistake of conflating work with progress. Effort that doesn’t lead to your goal won’t help you. You have to walk in the right direction.
You need to do the best you can to figure out how one obtains what you seek, using all the resources you have. The scriptures are a wonderful resource for this, as is the internet.
Only when you have exhausted the ample means at your disposal should you expect God to reveal the information you seek through revelation. Remember, he will not do for you what you are unwilling to do for yourself.
You can exert immense effort to obtain an outcome without ever obtaining it. No amount of effort will ever result in obtaining what you seek if the effort is applied on a path that does not lead to it.
1 From whence come wars and fightings among you? come they not hence, even of your lusts that war in your members?
2 Ye lust, and have not: ye kill, and desire to have, and cannot obtain: ye fight and war, yet ye have not, because ye ask not. (James 4)
God’s promise to give us according to what we desire is null and void if we do not honestly seek and follow the path he provides to obtain it, no matter how far outside our expectations it may lie:
9 ...I give unto you directions how you may act before me, that it may turn to you for your salvation.
10 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)
Faith is the key to laying hold of the outcomes new to you, but experienced by others. God is no respecter of persons. In other words, all people are subject to the same divine laws of cause and effect. Can you find anyone else who has obtained what you seek? If so, ask them how they did it. If you don’t know anyone personally, do you know of anyone else that may have publicized enough about their lives for you to answer the question through reading or listening to their account? If you find out how someone else obtained what it is you seek, and do the same things they did, you will obtain the same result.
God will give you what you deserve
God does not respond to what you want , he responds to what you deserve. If you want to live a life of faith, you absolutely have to learn and live by the principle of justice. You will always eventually get what you deserve, nothing more and nothing less, no matter how impossible it seems.
6 [God] will render to every man according to his deeds:
7 To them who by patient continuance in well doing seek for glory and honour and immortality, eternal life:
8 But unto them that are contentious, and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, indignation and wrath,
9 Tribulation and anguish, upon every soul of man that doeth evil, of the Jew first, and also of the Gentile;
10 But glory, honour, and peace, to every man that worketh good, to the Jew first, and also to the Gentile:
11 For there is no respect of persons with God. (Romans 2)
God follows the law of the harvest. You reap what you sow:
Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. (Galatians 6:7)
If you only say you desire a harvest, but never get around to planting, you will never have a harvest. If you do not sow, you will not reap.
You only reap what you sow. You do not reap according to your fancy or your wishes. You reap according to what you have sown. If you sow peas, you will not get wheat.
You reap according to how you plant and care for what you have sown. If the effort you put forth does not match the outcome you seek, you will not reap what you intend. The effort must be the right type and quantity that leads to the outcome you seek. If you sow wheat, but do not do it in the way it must be done, you will not get the same harvest as the person who does it in the proper way.
If you are willing to do whatever it takes to obtain what you desire, you will find yourself with everything you desire. This is because God is just. This does not mean that you will have everything you desire in the minute you achieve what it takes to obtain it. In order to provide us with the opportunity to have faith, sometimes what we deserve is delayed. However, it will always come.
Some shrink at the thought of God’s justice. They recoil at the thought that they must do the works of Abraham to receive the reward of Abraham, or the works of Moses to receive the reward of Moses. However, the thought of God’s justice should cause rejoicing—that no matter where one starts in life, anyone can receive the reward of Abraham if they will merely do the works of Abraham, and anyone can receive the reward of Moses if they will merely do the works of Moses. As mere men, Moses and Abraham obtained the approval and blessing of God. If they can do it, anyone can.
Coupled with the beautiful truth that God has given all people the choice to ascend as high as the level of law they are willing to seek and obey, God’s justice becomes the pathway to every desire of a person’s heart.
It is not a light thing when God reveals to us the path to what we seek. Awareness of the path to what we seek comes with consequences for turning away. When we have access to this information, we are held accountable for it:
But he that knew not, and did commit things worthy of stripes, shall be beaten with few stripes. For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required: and to whom men have committed much, of him they will ask the more. (Luke 12:48)
3 For of him unto whom much is given much is required; and he who sins against the greater light shall receive the greater condemnation.
4 Ye call upon my name for revelations, and I give them unto you; and inasmuch as ye keep not my sayings, which I give unto you, ye become transgressors; and justice and judgment are the penalty which is affixed unto my law. (D&C 82)
Those who refuse to act on the instructions God gives them will eventually be subjected to the removal of not just the outcome that was offered to them, but even what they had before:
For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath. (Matthew 25:29)
The Lord explained this principle through the prophet Hosea by comparing Israel to an adulterous wife, whose righteous punishment not only terminated her marriage, but removed all she received through the marriage to that point:
1 Say ye unto your brethren, Ammi; and to your sisters, Ruhamah.
2 Plead with your mother, plead: for she is not my wife, neither am I her husband: let her therefore put away her whoredoms out of her sight, and her adulteries from between her breasts;
3 Lest I strip her naked, and set her as in the day that she was <u>born, and make her as a wilderness, and set her like a dry land,</u> and slay her with thirst.
4 And I will not have mercy upon her children; for they be the children of whoredoms.
5 For their mother hath played the harlot: she that conceived them hath done shamefully: for she said, I will go after my lovers, that give me my bread and my water, my wool and my flax, mine oil and my drink.
6 Therefore, behold, I will hedge up thy way with thorns, and make a wall, that she shall not find her paths.
7 And she shall follow after her lovers, but she shall not overtake them; and she shall seek them, but shall not find them: then shall she say, I will go and return to my first husband; for then was it better with me than now.
8 For she did not know that I gave her corn, and wine, and oil, and multiplied her silver and gold, which they prepared for Baal.
9 Therefore will I return, and take away my corn in the time thereof, and my wine in the season thereof, and will recover my wool and my flax given to cover her nakedness.
10 And now will I discover her lewdness in the sight of her lovers, and none shall deliver her out of mine hand.
11 I will also cause all her mirth to cease, her feast days, her new moons, and her sabbaths, and all her solemn feasts.
12 And I will destroy her vines and her fig trees, whereof she hath said, These are my rewards that my lovers have given me: and I will make them a forest, and the beasts of the field shall eat them. (Hosea 2)
Live so that the outpouring of God’s justice renders blessings to you. When you are searching for the path to obtain the outcome you seek, you should always ask yourself: “what set of actions would be sufficient so that someone could say they deserve this?” And then you should do all of those things.
Being open-minded
God knows all things. It is his guidance you require to find the path to what you seek:
5 Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding.
6 In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths. 7 Be not wise in thine own eyes: fear the Lord, and depart from evil. (Proverbs 3)
If you truly believe that God knows more than you, it would be no struggle to anticipate him instructing you to do what you would never have otherwise considered when you ask him how to obtain what you do not already have.
It is far too common to constrain the search for the path for what you seek to such an extent that you cut yourself off from it. Unwilling to consider the required path, you remain without what you seek.
Jesus said, “all things are possible to him that believeth,” (Mark 9:23), but he didn’t limit what would be required. In fact, he plainly taught that to receive all things from God, you must be willing to actually receive all things from God. Nothing can be off limits. The price of everything is everything, and the greater the blessing you seek at his hand, the greater the price will be.
All outcomes have a path to obtain them, but often only the path or the outcome is desirable, not both. Outcomes you desire will almost always require paths you do not desire, and paths you desire will almost always fail to lead you to outcomes you desire. It’s best to desire outcomes, not paths, because this is the only way you can be sure you will do whatever it takes to obtain what you seek.
Before you ask the Lord for something in prayer, you ought to prepare yourself to accept any path the Lord presents to you to obtain it. The answer to your prayer may come in the form of information that makes you uncomfortable or causes you pain. It may come in the form of invitations that you find repulsive, embarrassing, or difficult. It may even come as a fundamental challenge to your ideas of right and wrong, or your concept of who you are.
Often, he will send you exactly what brings the thing you ask for, but you won’t recognize it. It is astonishing to witness how directly God can answer prayer without the recipient noticing that their exact request has been fulfilled and placed right before them. At other times, he mercifully withholds what he knows you will reject out of hand because it doesn’t fit your preconceived notions, and because he knows that your knowing and not doing would cause you harm.
It is easy to ask and answer the question: “what do you want?” It is critical to understand that this is the same question as asking, “what are you willing to do to get it?” An outcome is inseparable from what it takes to obtain it. You can’t have one without the other.When you are considering a particular outcome, consider what you are willing and not willing to do to obtain it. If there are things you are not willing to do to obtain an outcome, realize that any one of those things may permanently prevent you from obtaining what you say you seek. Likewise, if something required is not on your list of what you are willing to do, realize that omission will guarantee you never obtain what you say you seek. If you are not willing to do what is required to obtain an outcome, you can’t honestly say you desire that outcome—at least, not as much as you desire whatever you aren’t willing to displace.
The Lord used the mission of Ammon to bring thousands of people to abandon their murder and other wicked practices, but Ammon had to be completely committed. Many others had attempted to convert the Lamanites, but Ammon was the only one who was successful. The others failed because Ammon was willing to a pay a price they were not. Not only did he abandon the throne he was set to inherit from his father, he said it was his “desire to dwell among this people for a time; yea, and perhaps until the day I die.” (Alma 17:23) He did not expect honor and glory from them, but volunteered to be a lowly servant (see Alma 17:25).
Learning as you go
You will learn as you act. You don’t always have to wait until a final outcome to start learning. Often, information starts manifesting early on. It is important to honestly assess this information.
As you execute the actions you enumerated in the reason step, you will begin to convert faith into knowledge:
If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself. (John 7:17)
Your actions will reveal the accuracy of your reasoning as outcomes manifest that align with or contradict your expectations. As Jesus said, “wisdom is justified of her children.” (Matthew 11:19)
It takes great skill and practice to learn to learn. On the one hand, it is easy to ignore clear signals that your reasoning was limited or incorrect. On the other hand, it is easy to exaggerate indications for improvement as a sign of total error when it’s still too early to say.
New information can change your desires and invalidate your reasons. However, don’t make the mistake of upgrading difficulty or discomfort to the same stature as new information. Faith requires you to confide in your conclusions until given sufficient reason to change them. You never, ever surrender unless you are given sufficient reasons to—which isn’t surrender at all, but improvement.
What you currently think is the path from where you stand to where you want to go is likely to be incorrect or incomplete. The more audacious your intended outcomes, the more likely you are to imperfectly know the path to obtaining them from the outset. This is not surprising, and it shouldn’t dishearten anyone.
If you aren’t failing to perfectly guess the path beforehand, you are being far too miserly in your desires. Remember, the good things God has prepared lie beyond your wildest imagination. If you don’t yet comprehend the outcome, it’s likely you don’t yet comprehend the path, either. The question is not whether you will fail, but how many times you are willing to fail in order to fine tune your path sufficiently to obtain what you desire. If the number of times you are willing to fail is less than however many times it takes, you are cutting yourself off from outcomes God desires for you.
Be prepared for your new perspective to reveal that what you sought is harder to obtain than you thought. Don’t be disheartened by this. Simply re-evaluate your original reasons for wanting what it is you seek, and ask yourself if it is still worth it.
From time to time, you have to revisit your understanding of the path you are on and the outcomes you seek. As you learn more about yourself, the world, and God, your understanding of what is required will change. Can you honestly say that you are doing what it takes to deserve what you seek? If not, what changes do you need to make to what you seek or what you are doing to bring them into alignment?
Many times, extra effort is justified by the revelation that the outcome sought is even better than imagined. For example, the people of Limhi were faithful and patient, but were willing to increase their exercise of both in order to secure a faster delivery from bondage:
And it came to pass that so great was their faith and their patience that the voice of the Lord came unto them again, saying: Be of good comfort, for on the morrow I will deliver you out of bondage. (Mosiah 24:16)
God helps us gain the desire for what we should be asking for by revealing to us the pain and insufficiency in all other things. Abraham would not have desperately desired a son capable of rising up to the point of comprehending Abraham for all he was if he had not already tried unsuccessfully to share what the Lord had given him with hundreds of other people.
Only in acting to obtain what you think you desire will you find out if you really want it. As you learn more about what it will actually take to get what you desire, and as you learn more about what it is you thought you desired, you may find that you don’t actually want what you thought you wanted. You may find what you originally sought isn’t as glamorous as it once seemed. Rather than see this as loss, see it as a blessing, because it takes you closer to what you really want. Only in learning the limitations of your current bearing can you steer more accurately toward your goal. Desire is a zero-sum game: it is only through seeing a decreased value in other things that you can gain a perception of value in others. And, because you are seeking and submitting to an improved accuracy in your valuation, whatever changes occur in your perception are leading you to what is of greater value than whatever you sought before. It’s a wonderful thing!
Over time, we all come to the realization that we may not be willing to commit the long, hard sacrifices required to fulfill singular dreams. We may be unwilling to endure the maltreatment from others, who reliably seek to persecute those who strive beyond the norm. We may not be willing to carry both the ever-increasing load of what it takes to accomplish our dreams—the understanding of which expands as our experience unfolds—along with the growing persecution of others—which tends to increase proportionally. This, too, is a blessing. Why waste time seeking what we don’t really want? God is gracious enough to lead us to what we are willing to receive, free of any pretense of what we think we might want, but aren’t willing to receive.
A more accurate idea of what it takes to truly and lastingly fulfill your desire can be a fantastic channel for coming to see and avoid sin. Temptation is nothing more or less than an inaccurate idea of the cost and benefit of a potential desire or action. If you can honestly reconcile to your best idea of the true cost and benefit of something, keeping in mind that the actions required to obtain a desire are part of the cost, you can avoid sin.
Actions that generate miraculous outcomes
Faith is what makes one seek what no one else is willing to seek and to find what no one else has found through doing what no one else will do.
Miracles are rare today, but God hasn’t changed. Miracles are just as workable today as they ever were. They are worked through the same mechanism they always were. They require the discovery of and practice of the underlying actions that generate them.
Miracles are rare today only because the people who are willing to pay the price required to work them are rare. Miracles work on faith, just as everything else that God does.
There is nothing magical about miracles. What makes the outcome more than ordinary is that the actor is willing to consider actions that others will not.
Obtaining outcomes that would otherwise not have come about can’t start from exerting effort in the same way anyone else would. The same path walked by others will always lead to the same outcomes everyone else receives.
People who turn to God in all things will have a radically different life than those who do not. This is not because they curry greater arbitrary favor from God than others. Instead, it is because they apply more effort in seeking direction from him, and more obedience in following it.
It was not the fact that Alma and his people prayed for his son that caused God to send an angel, but the fact that he prayed with greater faith than others might have:
And again, the angel said: Behold, the Lord hath heard the prayers of his people, and also the prayers of his servant, Alma, who is thy father; for he has prayed with much faith concerning thee that thou mightest be brought to the knowledge of the truth; therefore, for this purpose have I come to convince thee of the power and authority of God, that the prayers of his servants might be answered according to their faith. (Mosiah 27:14)
It was not the prayers of the sons of Mosiah that resulted in such great miracles, but the fact that they had sought for and were willing to do much more than their countrymen:
And now behold, Ammon, and Aaron, and Omner, and Himni, and their brethren did rejoice exceedingly, for the success which they had had among the Lamanites, seeing that the Lord had granted unto them according to their prayers, and that he had also verified his word unto them in every particular. (Alma 25:17)
Faith requires acting for as long as it takes. Most stories of faith in the scriptures spanned a long time—sometimes more than a single lifetime! If you want to obtain outcomes beyond what others have obtained, you must be willing to search or act for as long as it takes.
Where you are now matters in the path to get to where you want to go. Every journey starts with one step. Reason helps you accurately estimate where you are and what specific path can get you to the outcomes you desire. Faithful action requires taking one step at a time along that path and going back to reason by updating the path as you learn more through experience.
Part of faith is learning to freely desire things without limiting your dreams by what you think is possible. If you find you are much further away from where you thought you were—which is more likely the more valuable the outcome—you may decide that what you seek has a higher cost than what you are willing to pay.
If you limit what you consider to be possible to where you are right now, you will be extremely limited. This is why it is critical to divide this process into discrete steps. You have to be able to separate imagination of what is possible from thinking about what it would be worth and what it would take to get there.
Your distance from your goal is not relevant to your ability to obtain it. The possibility of your success relies only upon your ability to discover the path and your willingness to walk it.
It isn’t difficult to desire more than the outcomes obtained by those around you. People tend to live far below their potential in temporal and spiritual things alike. Very few have obtained even a fraction of what God plainly offers in terms of joy, love, and fulfillment. If the outcome you seek is so rare that you can’t find anyone who has obtained it, you will have to discover the path without human aid. Use the gift of revelation to apply to God directly for your answer. If you have an open mind, are doing all you can by keeping all his commandments and searching what resources you have available, and you believe he will tell you, he will:
`Do ye not remember the things which the Lord hath said?—If ye will not harden your hearts, and ask me in faith, believing that ye shall receive, with diligence in keeping my commandments, surely these things shall be made known unto you. (1 Nephi 15:11)`
What is possible is not so much defined by what we consider to be possible as it is by what we consider to be actionable. There is a path to every outcome, but whether we choose to seek, find, and follow that path is another question altogether.
Faith requires doing all things in your power. If you really desire something, you have to get it with all your ability. It is ok to desire something less than totally, but be intentional with what you set ahead of it, and also be aware that some outcomes will not take second place: if you don’t want them more than anything else, you will not be able to obtain them.
Relative difficulty compared to others is irrelevant. Whether it is harder or easier for you compared to another person is completely independent to whether it is possible for you .
Determining both worth and actionable steps has to involve dispassionate research and introspection. If you try to do that without the required effort or try to integrate that into the creative step of imagining what is possible, you will prematurely remove good and possible outcomes from the realm of possibilities.
Those with faith live a life filled with things that are difficult and unlikely. Their lives are an unbroken chain of long shots. In absolute terms, they have missed many more shots than normal people. But their success in life is not the ratio of wins to losses, which is much worse than normal people’s, but rather the sum of their wins. People with faith fail more, but they are the only ones who ever bother trying what other people consider impossible. Because they try, they discover that many impossible things are only difficult. In trying what others dismiss as impossible, and by pushing past where others quit, they encounter experiences and outcomes that others never see.
When to act and what to act upon
The time to act is as soon as you have reasoned as much as needed to be convinced. If you know what you need to do, it is time to act.
If you delay action, the belief will fade, the desire will fade, and even the reasons will fade. Delaying doesn’t change the facts, but it will change your belief. Light cleaves to light. If you resist or delay acting to conform yourself to your beliefs, you will lose light. Your belief will diminish.
Get moving now—no matter how small the first step. If you do small things now , you will do great things later . If you don’t do small things now, you won’t do even the small things later.
But how do you know when your reasons are sufficient to act?
One dimension of faith is the degree of action in response to the degree of signal. How well do you have to understand the outcome before acting? Do you act once the outcome is obviously beneficial, or do you wait until you have a perfect knowledge of it? Remember, a perfect knowledge is not faith, and requiring that degree of detail will preclude many desirable outcomes which can’t be had by playing it safe. Something can be rationally justified even if the reasons are small or faint, and this can be the case even when the implications are enormous: “by small means the Lord can bring about great things.” (1 Nephi 16:29)
If you follow the faith process, the Lord will always show you what is right (see 1 Nephi 15:11 and Moroni 10:5). However, God is only required to show you a sufficient reason. He makes no promise to show you the full implications of the decision, or to present the evidence in as compelling a light as the implications merit. In fact, we are told the opposite: “by small and simple things are great things brought to pass; and small means in many instances doth confound the wise.” (Alma 37:6) The greater the action in response to lesser signal, the greater the outcomes possible.
One example of this is the outcome that resulted from the mission of Ammon and his brothers, who made the decision to go based on far smaller expectations of outcome:
1 And now, these are the words of Ammon to his brethren, which say thus: My brothers and my brethren, behold I say unto you, how great reason have we to rejoice; for could we have supposed when we started from the land of Zarahemla that God would have granted unto us such great blessings?
2 And now, I ask, what great blessings has he bestowed upon us? Can ye tell?
3 Behold, I answer for you; for our brethren, the Lamanites, were in darkness, yea, even in the darkest abyss, but behold, how many of them are brought to behold the marvelous light of God! And this is the blessing which hath been bestowed upon us, that we have been made instruments in the hands of God to bring about this great work.
4 Behold, thousands of them do rejoice, and have been brought into the fold of God.
5 Behold, the field was ripe, and blessed are ye, for ye did thrust in the sickle, and did reap with your might, yea, all the day long did ye labor; and behold the number of your sheaves! And they shall be gathered into the garners, that they are not wasted.
6 Yea, they shall not be beaten down by the storm at the last day; yea, neither shall they be harrowed up by the whirlwinds; but when the storm cometh they shall be gathered together in their place, that the storm cannot penetrate to them; yea, neither shall they be driven with fierce winds whithersoever the enemy listeth to carry them.
7 But behold, they are in the hands of the Lord of the harvest, and they are his; and he will raise them up at the last day.
8 Blessed be the name of our God; let us sing to his praise, yea, let us give thanks to his holy name, for he doth work righteousness forever.
9 For if we had not come up out of the land of Zarahemla, these our dearly beloved brethren, who have so dearly beloved us, would still have been racked with hatred against us, yea, and they would also have been strangers to God. (Alma 26)
It is of utmost importance, therefore, to pay attention to the information you have access to, and interpret it honestly! Whether through the intervention of others or your own experience, you aren’t likely to listen when presented with signals that contradict the outcome or paths you desire.
Humans don’t want to hear the truth. They don’t want to hear the way to obtain something better. They want to hear that what they are already doing is good enough, that what they have is all there is to have, and that the evidence that these things are not true is a figment of their imagination.
It takes faith to believe that what God has is superior. It takes faith to notice the information he gives you, and to trust in reason rather than what you wish were true.
Do the best you know, and pay attention to adapt to any new information as it comes.
Courage
Dictionaries define courage variously. In the faith framework, we can define courage as a willingness to act according to honest reason.
Courage is nothing more and nothing less than preferring reason to the senses. It is to do something for mental reasons in spite of negative physical sensations. It is to act toward a rationally expected end in spite of the presence or expectation of fear, pain, grief, anxiety, depression, or sorrow. It is to persist in a well-reasoned path no matter how far away the desired outcome is in time, appearance, or experience.
One way of living courageously is: Do everything that is worth the cost. Due to limits on resources, this probably also implies: Don’t do anything that isn’t worth the cost.
Courage, as defined here, is one and the same as trust in God. Trust in God is not some kind of superstitious willpower, despite the vast number of people whose beliefs limit it to that. Trust in God is a rational affair: do you have sufficient reasons to believe? If so, are you willing to follow them in action and desire, even when it requires actively changing how you feel about the issue at hand? Are you willing to reframe your perception of reality according to the evidence you possess? Or do you choose to embrace what your experience has shown is not true?
Some describe courage as an ability. Some describe it as a quality. In reality, it is a choice. Anyone can choose to be courageous.
The choice is not an optional one. Normal people consider courage an admirably rare trait. In reality, courage ought to be as common as breathing, as it is just as essential to a successful life. While ceasing to breathe requires contradicting what is quite the natural impulse, the exercise of courage requires doing what most people choose not to do. It is not automatic, and it is not easy, but it is absolutely essential.
It is impossible to have great faith without great courage. Great faith will consistently lead you in paths that require courage.
The receipt of the benefits of the rational process almost always rely on the exercise of courage. What feels good is only sometimes what is actually good. Were it not so, the rational process would yield no benefit over sentimentality, whereas in reality it is the distinction between the natural man and the spiritual man. Because our feelings have no obligation to follow reality—and even tend to do quite the opposite— courage is the conduit to achieving a higher order life than what could be obtained otherwise.
Courage and reason reinforce each other. Courage is needed when the cost benefit is not solely sensory. The rational process most clearly defines both cost and benefit outside the realm of the physical senses.
Courage is strengthened with the perceived worthiness of the cause, while the rational process provides concrete arguments for a cause’s worthiness. Courage drives action, which increases observations, which fuel further analysis with reason.
Courage is self-reinforcing. The more you trust God, the more he will prove himself worthy of your trust. As you trust him more and more, you will find yourself more and more willing to trust him in all things. He will never give you any reason not to trust him. He will never fail you.
Acting under uncertainty
The faith cycle involves rotating between desire, reason, and action until the outcome is achieved or abandoned. Following the faith cycle provides a way to find the best action given your present understanding, as well as providing a path to learn more about more effective future actions.
Faith does not require you to know the end from the beginning. In fact, faith is designed to enable you to act in the present for greatest future benefit in spite of the fact that you don’t know all things pertaining to the future.
God knows the end from the beginning:
My name is Jehovah, and I know the end from the beginning; therefore my hand shall be over thee. (Abraham 2:8)
The faith cycle is the means he has provided us to make use of his knowledge by obtaining outcomes whose paths lie beyond our present understanding.
The faith cycle provides a way of merging the best understanding you have now with the best understanding you may have later, through present action. For example, when Nephi was commanded to build a ship, he exercised his current knowledge and sought additional understanding when doing anything less than this would have been insufficient in obtaining the outcome he sought:
2 Now I, Nephi, did not work the timbers after the manner which was learned by men, neither did I build the ship after the manner of men; but I did build it after the manner which the Lord had shown unto me; wherefore, it was not after the manner of men.
3 And I, Nephi, did go into the mount oft, and I did pray oft unto the Lord; wherefore the Lord showed unto me great things. (1 Nephi 18)
Note that he needed more information often.
It is not infrequent that we don’t know the whole path from where we are now to the culmination of the desired outcome. Actually, it is the exception that we know the whole path.
For example, after fleeing Jerusalem in obedience to God’s command, Nephi was commanded to return to obtain a copy of the scriptural record. He knew why it was so important that they have a copy of God’s word. He knew his first action was to return to Jerusalem. He did not know when he left—or even after he arrived—exactly how he would obtain the scriptures. His first attempt failed, but he had confidence in the outcome and reason for it, even if he still did not know the action he should take. He said: “I was led by the Spirit, not knowing beforehand the things which I should do.” (1 Nephi 4:6)
Particularly with more valuable outcomes, it is almost always the case that we will require frequent revisions of our idea of the set of actions that will be required to obtain the outcome. This is because we obtain more of God’s knowledge line upon line and precept upon precept. Even when we obtain what seems to us a vast tranche of information all at once, it is merely a drop of what God knows, and it is limited in breadth and scope.
Knowledge has prerequisite requirements. These include receiving, believing, and obeying all prerequisite knowledge upon which the next increment depends.
Those who await perfect confidence and perfect detail in expected outcomes will miss out on much of what is available in the gospel. There are far more outcomes that require action under uncertainty than those that offer perfect initial clarity. From Abraham leaving his homeland “not knowing wither he went” (Hebrews 11:8) to Mormon abridging the record of his people “according to the workings of the Spirit of the Lord” yet admitting he did “not know all things” (Words of Mormon 1:7), many of the great products of faith in this world only exist because of the willingness of people to act decisively in tentative situations.
Switching contexts
Being able to switch contexts from desire to reason to action and back again is a monumental test of faith. To honestly focus on the appropriate step requires setting aside the natural way of considering how we feel, what we do, and how we think—which is not to consider them at all!
Switching from a passive approach to life to an intentional one is not easy. It requires the ability to relentlessly focus on the specific task at hand while smoothly pivoting to reason or desire when there is appropriate new information to update previous perspectives.
Consider the journey of Moses, which consisted in three forty-year periods, each concentrated enough to fill a full life:
23 By faith Moses, when he was born, was hid three months of his parents, because they saw he was a proper child; and they were not afraid of the king’s commandment.
24 By faith Moses, when he was come to years, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter;
25 Choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season;
26 Esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt: for he had respect unto the recompence of the reward.
27 By faith he forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king: for he endured, as seeing him who is invisible.
28 Through faith he kept the passover, and the sprinkling of blood, lest he that destroyed the firstborn should touch them.
29 By faith they passed through the Red sea as by dry land: which the Egyptians assaying to do were drowned. (Hebrews 11)
Moses never lost faith. Through his monumental faith, he was able to manage both surreal spiritual situations as well as so many daily challenges along his lengthy life’s work.
Noah spent a very long time building the ark and was able to balance between the long-term goal of building the ark and the short-term actions of each day. Imagine juggling the responsibility for the welfare of the human race with the intricate and mundane details of building an enormous boat, without the aid of technology or power.
The temptation to mismanage context switches is constant. You will want to switch contexts when there is insufficient reason to, because it will seem more pleasant than digging in and completing the difficult task at hand. You will want to avoid switching contexts when given a sufficient reason to, because it will seem easier to keep barreling along with what you are doing, thinking, or feeling than to make changes. These constant struggles provide ample opportunity for you to learn to rely on intentional faith rather than passive plodding. Paul called this walking by faith, not by sight (see 2 Corinthians 5:7).
Finite steps on an infinite path
Faith gives you the means to deliberately progress along any path, no matter how far away the outcome may be. There is no such thing as a task too big for someone with faith. Before one has power to move mountains by speaking, one must have faith to move mountains one shovel at a time.
Faith chops interminable challenges into discrete, daily, consistent progress. Faith is what enables a person to face infinite challenges while knowing their finite limits. Faith transcends all terminal tasks.
Faith is not only the key to particularly difficult or lengthy paths. Faith is required to bridge the gap between finite action and infinite outcomes. Faith gives you the means to derive finite actions from any outcome, no matter how grand it might seem in scope, timeline, or probability:
These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. (Hebrews 11:13)
Faith is the only means to keep moving in the face of an unending journey. The gospel is an infinite journey. Following God’s will requires walking in unending paths, as this is what the “eternal” in “eternal life” means.