By default, the value we impute to things is arbitrary. Desire in its most naïve form is some mix of maximization of pleasure subject to minimization of pain. Unfortunately, the paths of greatest joy include massive pain. Through the exercise of reason, desire can transcend immediate cost and benefit and become the powerful tool towards good it is intended to be. For example, it is through desire seasoned by reason that a mother chooses to endure nine months of discomfort, hours of pain, and potential death in order to have a baby.
The greater the outcomes we believe will occur, and the more we value them, the greater the actions we will undertake to obtain them. The stronger the benefit you perceive, the more power you will have to obtain it. As others have stated, with a strong enough why , you can endure any what.
Valuing something through faith occurs in the reason step of the faith process. This is where you use your intellectual abilities to delineate the benefits and costs of potential courses of action and make the choice to adopt one or none of them.
What an honest person desires is based on the value they attach to it. Value is assessed through reasonably enumerating available options, assessing the pros and cons of each, and choosing the objective choice of greatest value.
Assessing the pros and cons of different outcomes requires listing the pros and cons of each. The more important the subject, the more critical it becomes to take sufficient time to research and explicitly examine the situation. In the most important matters, it is important to actually write out the pros and cons, in detail.
The choice of greatest value is calculated by measuring the net impact of each option. In general, the benefit of a situation will primarily consist of the outcomes, while the cons will primarily consist of the cost required to obtain them. Without this exercise, people tend to shy away from paths of great price. This is unfortunate, because the price of an option is not relevant in and of itself. What matters is the net benefit: what is left of the pros when the cons are subtracted out? It is a very simple question: are the pros greater than the cons, or not? Among multiple options, it is only slightly more complicated: which option yields the greatest net benefit? This is the path to follow until or unless something better becomes apparent. It’s really that simple.
As you assess value, don’t forget that the outcome is not the only thing you will get out of the path. The greatest value might not be what you get , but what you become in the process. Your outcome might be something that comes and goes. Who you become will endure and continuously bear fruit.