What God does before faith

Every single action stands informed by the sum of exposures to all the signals an individual receives and perceives to that point. These signals consist of the experiences they have had with the world, the interactions they have had with other people, and their previous reactions to these stimuli.

Because everything we do is in response to some sort of enticement,¹ all faith begins with the actions of someone other than you. Faith is an endless chain of ideas rippling through all time and eternity. God is the source of all such ideas.

The amazing thing about faith is that no matter where you currently stand—no matter your past or your present situation—God has already done his part to initiate your next faith cycle. Whether in the experiences he has sent you, the people he has sent you, or the resources he has provided you, he has already made available to you the information you need to plant the seed of faith and water it through developing your desires, reasons, and actions until you obtain the outcome you seek or find something better to seek instead. He has done so in the way he has designed and created this earth, in the information he seeded by teaching Adam in the garden of Eden, and in the information he continues to send to the earth, whether through the insights and understanding he gives to people who seek it or through the ministry of angels.

Faith is a principle of action, and while it is all autonomous—we are free to choose—none of it is independent:

Wherefore, the Lord God gave unto man that he should act for himself. Wherefore, man could not act for himself save it should be that he was enticed by the one or the other. (2 Nephi 2:16)

Through who he was and is, and what he was and is, God provided the framework of faith. When it comes to faith, God has already acted. We exercise faith by responding to what he has already done, what he continues to do, and what he will yet do.

Before anyone exercised faith on this planet, God decreed all laws of cause and effect. Before you ever exercise the slightest faith, God has already appointed the law that guarantees the outcome, sent messengers to give you the idea of the path to the outcome, and created circumstances perfectly suited to you to ensure the greatest possible likelihood of your success. When you exercise faith, you are merely discovering and acting according to what he has already created.

Every aspect of the extensive creation, spanning all we know in both time and space, is the intentional work of Jesus Christ designed precisely and exclusively to provide us the perfect and necessary environment to exercise faith. Anyone who glances at the stars on a clear night, or contemplates the expanse of time, or the details of their life ought to be filled with indescribable awe and wonder at God’s immense and incalculable wisdom and kindness in what he has done to provide a way for us, through faith in him, to secure much greater joy than we could otherwise possess.

God transmits the ideas that form the seed of faith to us through his spirit via our minds, our hearts, and creation—including other people:

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.
23 And God also declared unto prophets, by his own mouth, that Christ should come.
24 And behold, there were divers ways that he did manifest things unto the children of men, which were good; and all things which are good cometh of Christ; otherwise men were fallen, and there could no good thing come unto them.
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; and thus it was until the coming of Christ. (Moroni 7)

It is through these “preachers”—whether they be men, angels, the spirit, or reality itself—that God speaks and injects into us the ideas from which stem every act of faith:

So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. (Romans 10:17)

Those who are receptive to faith become a conduit through which God catalyzes faith in others. The Lord uses these “chosen vessels of the Lord” to help “the residue of men...have faith in Christ.” (Moroni 7:3132) They become pipes in the network of light that flows from God to and through all things.

Jesus Christ was the perfect preacher, and, in condescending to come to earth as a man, he provided in his life and death the strongest possible contribution to our faith:

8 But because of the faith of men he has shown himself unto the world, and glorified the name of the Father, and prepared a way that thereby others might be partakers of the heavenly gift, that they might hope for those things which they have not seen.
9 Wherefore, ye may also have hope, and be partakers of the gift, if ye will but have faith. 
10 Behold it was by faith that they of old were called after the holy order of God.
11 Wherefore, by faith was the law of Moses given. But in the gift of his Son hath God prepared a more excellent way; and it is by faith that it hath been fulfilled. (Ether 12)

The Lord’s teachings and actions provide an example to us both of the pinnacle of what we can become in this life and why we ought to gladly pay any price to do so.

God’s voice is the voice of improvement. However it arrives to our perception—whether in our minds, in our hearts, in the words of another, or in the manifestation of something in the world—his voice calls us to consider the idea of outcomes better than what we previously believed possible for ourselves, others, and the world.

The recipient of an invitation toward improvement may or may not notice it, and may or may not notice that it comes from God. Every exercise of faith is inseparably coupled to Jesus Christ, whether the participant realizes it or not. He is the source of everything that makes faith possible and the source of everything that can make it better.

Faith creates light in the darkness. Just as God’s spoken word catalyzed the creative potential of the dark void to bring forth this living world, his word spoken into us generates new creative potential in our spirit. As we follow this voice, we will design and follow the actions that lead to obtaining the outcome we imagined.