You know, sometimes the inner missionary in me just gets really excited and wants to stand on a podium and just shout for joy to the whole world like in this picture above. However, the only audience that I actually as this picture was taken was my own companion, Elder Hochkirch, who was holding simply the camera, and as dramatic as I tried to make my pose look, we rarely ever did something like this. Man, I look cool, though!! Yesterday, I heard a truly inspiring devotional like we usually do every Tuesday at 11:00 am at BYU. It got me so excited, that I was considering busting out the comb to sport the missionary part again. Oh, yeah, I know you'd love that, Mom! I didn't though. However, I always love making connections with people of all other faiths, and since the Elder Hutchinson within me is feeling a giddy as and excited as a dog is over a piece of bacon, I've decided to touch a little bit on something that all people of all beliefs (including Atheists) know something about.
Faith
Let’s talk about what many people know as the first
principle of the Gospel:
faith. Faith, that’s easy! That’s just believing in something that we
can’t see! Hold on, partner, that’s only
part of it. I hope that we all have
faith in God in that aspect. We can’t
see him, but we have faith that he exists and that he loves us. If you can believe, or even just have a desire to believe, it's a good start.
BUT faith isn’t just believing. In fact, that’s not even HALF of it. It’s also DOING. James 2:17 “Even so, faith, if it hath not
works, is dead, being alone.” What does
that mean? I’ll give you an
example. If I have faith that I can get
a job, I will LOOK for a job. If I have
faith that my children can be respectable human beings, then I will teach them
to be respectable human beings. If I
have faith in God, I will do what He commands me. If I have faith that I can get an A on a
test, then I will STUDY ENOUGH for the test to get an A. (Note to all college students: have you opened that textbook yet?) In the Book of Mormon, there is a chapter, Alma 32, where the prophet Alma compares faith to a seed: we need to plant the seed, nourish the seed,
over a long period of time so that it may grow.
Now what happens if it’s a good or “true seed”? Well, it grows and we find joy in it. And if it’s a bad seed or and "untrue seed", it simply doesn’t
grow no matter how well we’ve taken care of it.
But what if we don’t nurture the seed over time, or what happens if we
don’t even plant it? Well, we can
believe that that seed is going to healthily and happily grow all by itself,
but without our nourishment, care, or action (in other words actually DOING
something), it never will.
So, let’s act people!!
“Jesus said unto him, If thou canst believe, all things are possible to
him that believeth.” (Mark 9:23) Yes,
you read the scripture right that said that “all things are possible”; it was
Jesus who said it, not Barney, so I believe we should take his word for
it. You can literally do anything with
the Lord’s help if you have enough faith.
What kind of things? Let’s think
of some really simple things that one can accomplish this: becoming a doctor, raising 5 children in one
house all at the same time, going from poverty to becoming a multi-millionaire, going from being completely filthy of the most heinous of sins to becoming a clean angel in the Lord’s eyes, mending a relationship or marriage that has
gone southward, and overcoming a learning disorder to become a straight A
student. Ok, Christian, why don’t you
add parting the Red Sea, and feeding 5,000 people with 5 loaves of bread and 2
fish to that “simple” list of yours? Ok,
I will! These are clearly extremely
difficult tasks, but what else do they all have in common? They have all been accomplished by people that
I either personally know or that I know of (AKA Moses and Jesus). And they all were accomplished not by magic, but by faith.
How can I have faith in something that I don’t know? I might want to be a doctor, but I don’t know
if it’s right. That’s the thing; you
can’t have that knowledge until you have exercised your faith. (Alma
32:26-34). Can you know if a cake tastes
good without trying it? Have some faith! Take a good-sized bite out of the cake (not a
tiny nibble) and see if it’s good. If
you like it, have some more. You’ll
never know until you actually put it to the test. For example, as many can already see, I’ve
been making references to two different testaments of Christ: the Bible and The
Book of Mormon. Yes, I believe that they
are both true, but the only reason that I can say that is because I read them
and put them both to the test. Had I not
read the Book of Mormon or the Bible, and prayed about them sincerely and
diligently to know if they were true, could I even say that I knew that they
were true? Coming to a conclusion on
something that I haven’t tested myself is about as intelligent as flipping a
coin to decide who I should vote for to be the President of my country (no
offense to any of you that have possibly done that). So, if you don’t know if something if right
but it’s at least worth a shot, GIVE IT a shot.
Don’t be a bird that never learns to fly because he’s too timid to take
a leap.
"If you are persistent, you will succeed." -Thomas S. Monson
Speaking from what I observed since being a missionary, I
believe that true faith in the Lord Jesus Christ is one the rarest Christlike
attributes to find these days. Don't get me wrong; I think that most people actually have a rather solid belief in something divine, and I know several people from many other religions who have extraordinary level faith in God that I would love to have myself. But most of us tend to do more believing than actually acting upon the beliefs that we claim. The days
of Isaiah’s profecies have unfortunately come: “Forasmuch as this people draw
near me with their mouth, and with their lips do honour me, but have removed their
heart far from me…” (Isaiah 29:13). In
other words, in the world, there’s a whole lot of talking but very little
walking. This is a pretty scary thing
because faith one of the most crucial requirements to enter His kingdom. We can’t just “be good” and we’ll
automatically be saved. “Being good” is
important for God AND Santa Clause, but the difference is that Santa doesn’t
expect as much as God does. He asks us
to have faith in Him and in all that is good and true. “For by grace are ye saved through faith…”
(Ephesians 2:8).
But why is it so rare these days? What keeps so many of us, including myself,
from having the faith that we should? To
every good thing there is it’s opposite.
To God, His opposite is the devil.
And to faith, its opposites are doubt and fear. But can doubt and fear really impede one from
experiencing greater happiness or are they just natural feelings that we all
feel? Yes... They are just natural feelings, and yes they CAN impede us from
experiencing greater happiness. Let me
share a personal experience from my mission with you as an example.
As missionaries of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day
Saints, we teach God’s commandments and the commitments that one must make
before joining the church through baptism.
One of the requirements is to commit to regularly pay a full tithe to
the Lord (10% of income) as explained in Malachi 3 in the Old Testament. My companion and I were teaching a “golden
family”. They were all amazing people, they
new that everything we taught them was true, and they had such an eager desire
to join the church and be baptized.
However, when we taught the law of the tithe, fear and doubt crept in to
hedge up this family’s spiritual progression.
From then on, instead of thinking of the blessings that would come from
paying tithing or from joining the church, they focused on their fears of
losing 10% of their income. Instead of
becoming happier and happier every time we taught them, they became sadder and
sadder because they could not keep their focus off of their doubts. It’s quite understandable that they had some
fears and doubts. They were a beautiful
family, but they lived in very humble circumstances. Not everyone can seamlessly give up 10% of
their income just like that. However, we
explained to them that the Lord will ALWAYS provide for those that follow this
law, even if it seems impossible to keep it. He says “Bring ye all the tithes
into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house, and prove me now
herewith, saith the Lord of hosts, if I will not open you the window of heaven
and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive
it.” (Malachi 3:10) My companion and I
told them of countless true stories in which we saw the Lord fulfill this VERY
promise. We gave our personal
testimonies of the truth of God’s promises.
We even promised them as representatives of the Lord Jesus Christ that
the Lord would never leave them without what they needed if they simply chose
to obey this law and come unto him. God has never broken a promise, and He never will. However, fear and doubt can win over even the best of
people. This beautiful family chose not
to exercise the faith necessary to receive the abundant blessings that could
have been. We stopped seeing them, so much, and I don't know what has happened since. They didn’t even give paying
tithing a legitimate chance.
I’m not a crying man for the most part (although Remember
the Titans gets to me), but I tell you that I can only remember one thing
that has consistently broken my heart: when I know with a surety how happy
someone can be doing one thing, and he or she chooses not to do that thing
because of a fear and doubt... I mean, I’m a
pretty outgoing, energetic, excited guy, so it’s not easy to get me down. But it's easy for this to break my heart. It is
something that I saw too many times during my mission, and I have unfortunately
continued to see it happen after my mission.
These are good, righteous people. Most of them are quite virtuous, loving, and humble…
but they lack ONE essential thing: faith.
These people could be SO HAPPY doing something more, but they are too
scared to because the father of lies and misery fools them into not even
planting that seed of faith or to stop taking care of it. If he
continues to succeed with these people, then their seed will eventually die just
like all faith and hope. You cannot have
faith or exercise it without planting that seed and taking a “leap of faith.” A wise prophet named Moroni once said, “Wherefore,
dispute not because ye see not, for ye receive
no witness until after the trial
of your faith.” That “trial of
your faith,” ladies and gentlemen is the uncertain leap that you have to take
in order to succeed. One of the people
closest to God that I’ve ever met is my mission president’s wife. She told me once about how she was faced with
a matter where she was just completely uncertain how to react. She said looking back on the matter, “I took
my leap and have been happy ever since.
Yes, there were some bumps and have been since, but He has always taken
care of me… I know we have to leap and leap often. There have been so many
leaps in my life, and they are all the building blocks in my beautiful
life. You will never learn how to trust God,
yourself, or anyone until you do this.”
With faith, the fear
goes away.
So faith. Easy,
right? It may be simple: believing and doing. But it is NOT easy to have. I don’t know what your personal circumstance
may be... Maybe you just need a little
more faith so that you can get an A in your classes. Maybe you don’t know if God exists and you
just need the faith to ask Him if He’s there.
Maybe you were about to make a commitment to something good and true but
became frightened or simply unsure at the sight of something, just like that
wonderful family and tithing. If you
need to learn more about faith, I recommend you go to the Book of Mormon in
Alma chapter 32 to read about it. And I
leave you with a simple plea. Please,
have that faith. Please, I beg of you. The Lord says, “Look unto me in every
thought; doubt not, fear not.” (Doctrine
and Covenants 6:36). I can promise that
if you just have faith, it’s going to be all right. Take whatever leap necessary in your life to
accomplish what God would have you do.
You may be uncertain of what he actually does want you to do, but you’ll
never know until you act. After you take
that first leap, if you pray everyday for his help and guidance, there is no
way that you can fail without him catching you.
Just because you haven’t had faith before doesn’t mean that you can’t
have it now. You must act quickly. You may not know what day it will be too late
for you to try to develop your faith, but you DO know that you can act TODAY so
that you have it BEFORE that dreadful day comes. I join with Dieter F. Uchtdorf in saying, “Please,
first doubt your doubts before you doubt your faith.” Have faith, and the fear will go away.
Hope you have a great week!
Christian.
