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.