If you can’t describe what you believe in detail, do you really believe it? Could you explain your reasons to others? Can you make a coherent, cogent case as to why you expect these actions will generate the outcome you seek?
One reason some struggle to believe is that they have not done the work to lay out a plausible path to the outcome they seek. As described elsewhere in this book, the more audacious your objective, the less likely you are to know all the details of how it will actually come to be (see, for example, Figure 2). However, if you can’t describe one way that it might come to be in such a way that it is plausible to believe it could happen, you are highly likely to fail to act sufficiently to bring it to pass.
As you learn more details through acting, you can and should revise your best understanding of a plausible path to your outcome.
The more vivid your expectations, the more motivating they will be. Details can pull you through almost any obstacle.
If you don’t have details, you will never have strong enough desires to achieve the outcomes you desire. If you don’t have details, you will never have strong enough reasons to persevere through obstacles that tend to increase in frequency and intensity commensurate with the value of the outcome. If you don’t have details, you will never make all the right choices necessary for the outcomes you seek, which tend to increase in frequency and importance commensurate with the value of the outcome.
Details are not without cost. The more vivid your expectations, the more you will be tempted to be disappointed when you are proven wrong. Don’t be. Every additional piece of revelation is a step that brings you closer to what you seek. Being correct from step one does not yield your outcome. Learning where you need to improve to get there does.
#Chapter 8: Faith Exists by Degrees
Reading descriptions of faith such as those found in Hebrews 11 may lead a reader to think that faith is a binary attribute that you either have or don’t have. That is not the case.
Faith is not a binary attribute. Faith is a continuous attribute. It exists by degrees. You can have a little, or you can have a lot, or anything in between. This is why faith is described variously as great or weak, sufficient or lacking.
Different people have different amounts of faith. Everyone has some faith. Faith is inseparable from action. All actions happen through faith. Having no faith at all would rob you of the ability to act of your own volition. You would merely be acted upon.
You have yet to meet a single person who has no faith, no matter how evil they may be, and no matter how much of an enemy to God they are. Even Satan is full of faith:
Thou believest that there is one God; thou doest well: the devils also believe, and tremble. (James 2:19)
His faith, like ours and like God’s, is the source of his power. You can’t have power without having faith.
Faith varies in which aspect of the faith cycle it is manifested and in degree. You can have great or small desires, great or small reasons, or great or small actions. In concert, these will determine the greatness or smallness of the outcomes you receive.
Those who are “more faithful in keeping the commandments of the Lord” will be “favored of the Lord,” receiving manifestations of his power such as answered prayers and miracles (see Mosiah 10:13).
For it was by faith that Christ showed himself unto our fathers, after he had risen from the dead; and he showed not himself unto them until after they had faith in him; wherefore, it must needs be that some had faith in him, for he showed himself not unto the world. (Ether 12:7)
Great faith makes it possible to receive great outcomes. For example, the brother of Jared saw the Lord many years before his birth because of his “exceeding faith” (see Ether 3).