Faith

It's interesting to note the way the Lord works in our lives. Several months ago I was studying the topic of faith. I read a few scriptures on the matter and read a few Ensign articles. In fact I have several pages of notes and thoughts on each. Today in Relief Society we had a lesson on Faith and I had just happened to have my journal with me. Knowing I had several pages of thoughts on Faith I just whipped it out! I was so happy with myself. But in anycase this is what lead to today's thoughts on Faith.

Hebrews 11;

Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. Faith is an action. Faith can accomplish many things.

Alma 32:17-42;

Faith is not a perfect knowledge. In fact, that is exactly what Faith is not. Faith is the hope for things which are not seen, which are true. Have faith in all of God's word. For His word comes to men, women, and children (families) through personal revelation if we but listen. His word is later supported by wise men (researchers and those who are educated in their area of study) because it is the Truth.

Begin gaining faith a little at a time. Faith evolves into a prefect knowledge. We must exercise faith so that it will strengthen and so that we can know.

Perhaps begin by experimenting on God's word. Test out a commandment of God by obeying it. That is exercising a particle of faith.

Faith is a seed. You test the seed to see if it is good by planting it and watering it to see if it will grow. Water by the Holy Ghost and obedience. Just to test the seed. But obedience and following the Holy Ghost leads to keeping the plant growing. The seed was only an experiment to see if it was good. Now it requires work for it to continue producing good fruit.

Ether 12:6-22;

You don't have a perfect knowledge until after the trial of your faith. Miracles occur because of faith, without faith there is no miracles. Having faith so strong that you cannot be kept within the veil. By faith promises are received.

Joseph Smith-History 1:11-20;

If you want wisdom act in Faith and you'll receive it. Draw near the Lord in your heart. Have Faith.

Today with the missionaries we were discussing faith for a little bit. How can your faith effect others? Well, you can be an example, you can share the gospel with others, etc. But I had a thought. You having Faith in the Lord is the strongest foundation of anything. You having such faith in the Lord creating the strongest foundation causes you to be a stronger foundation for your friends. You become someone your friends can rely on.

Faith in the Savior. What a wonderful thing it is.

My Brother's Assignment

My brother, Benjamin, is off at BYU-Idaho and has sent us an assignment of his. It's impressive. His teacher gave him a 100% and told the rest of his class to look at it. My brother is quite proud. And so am I. I love my brother.

"In life there are numerous opportunities to learn, whether it comes from an experience shared on TV or a classmate talking about the mountains of homework his/her teacher is assigning to get the students familiar with the material. The difference between an educated person and a normal person is the will to learn more than what is expected of him/her. Eliot A Butler says, 'An educated person is one who by his or her own initiative and discipline is consciously, vigorously, and continuingly learning.' According to Eliot, the person with a mountain of homework would quickly get on top of the pile and get ahead of it maybe by reading into the next section the teacher is planning on talking about the following day to be prepared with any questions or to give insight for what the teacher is talking about for the other students.

"Alexander Calandra told a story about a student who didn't want to be held back by procedures of how to do stuff. This student thought 'outside the box' and had no end to his ideas. It is important for an educated person to constantly apply what has been learned in different situations to figure out what direction to head would be best for a given predicament.

"The more a person learns in the right spirit the more he/she is humbled. The reason behind this is that the more a person knows about a particular topic the more a person can do with what has been learned. For instance, a person may know only how to do basic math problems consisting of dividing, multiplying, adding, and subtracting but all they may use it for is for is dividing up 12 apples between 4 people while if they had learned a littler geometry they can now figure out how to build buildings with support beams that will allow the structure to stay standing longer in addition to what could be done before. This continues to happen until a deeper insight of the subject causes a realm of ideas of what can be accomplished to be flowing toward it's pursuer. Eliot quoted Will Durant who said, 'Sixty years ago I knew everything; now I know nothing; education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance.' The more we learn the more we realize we haven't learned.

"Many may wonder why they ought to be as educated as they can, Eliot has pointed out that in D&C 88:80 it reads 'That ye may be prepared...'. Our wisdom and knowledge are two of few things that we get to keep after death, so building ourselves an abundance of knowledge and wisdom would help us be prepared for whatever waits for us after we return to live with God. Besides, God has commanded us to be educated, isn't that a good enough reason in itself?

"Some advice given by Thomas G. Plummer of how we can be more educated is as follows: We should keep a journal to 'find [our] own voice, [our] own thoughts'; We should take a second opinion on an important matter and 'study it out in your own heart' (D&C Section 9); We should take a break once in a while to idle our thoughts. If we are always under pressure it would be hard for us to not make a mistake, getting back to work after taking a break from all the pressure is like getting a jumpstart in your own heard.

"Unfortunately many of the outspoken criticizers in the world today are the people that know the least about the matter (Eliot Butler). If a person were truly educated they would to tell the world that they are because they'd aso have a considerable amount of realization of the stuff that he/she doesn't know. An true educated person would be open to all ideas and suggestions on a topic and not just rely on his/her own wisdom/knowledge because they would know that there are more things that they do not know than they do know."

Talk: Service and Obedience

So I gave a talk today! Yay! First one I've given for a few years. Apparently I was pretty good. Yay me! But of course, I had a ton of help from the Lord. My talk would not have been successful in the least without Him.

TALK on SERVICE and OBEDIENCE:

When I was assigned this talk on Service and Obedience I was very excited. I felt that I knew a lot on both subjects and would be able to come up with a talk just like that. However, I soon came to the realization that I wasn’t sure how the topic of Service and the topic of Obedience were connected. I had absolutely no clue. I’ve learned that combining two simple things can become very complicated in my head. So I asked some of my friends from college on their suggestions.

Here are some of their responses:

“Well. If you are helping others you are obeying the Lord’s commandment.”

“Service makes you feel better! No joke... Sometimes when I am feeling sad or something, I do service and it always make me feel good. I LOVE service! It is one of my favorite things.”

“When we serve, we are being obedient. I’m not sure where in the scriptures, probably New Testament, but the Lord commanded us to feed his sheep.”

“There are different types of commandments that the Lord has asked us to obey and if we obey them, in many cases, we are serving other people.”

I love friends.

Anyways, with all these suggestions I decided that I was going to make a list of the common things in between Service and Obedience.

Service is obeying the Lord.

Obedience is serving the Lord.

Service is attached to expressing Love.

Obedience is an action taken to show you Love your Heavenly Father.

Service blesses the lives of others, and yourself.

Obedience blesses your life, and the lives of others.

It turns out that they are more intertwined then I had originally understood.

We are all asked to serve others. When I was young, every once in awhile my family would pick a park to visit for Family Home Evening and we’d go around with the plastic bags from the grocery store and pick up trash. Our ward helps clean a school and a cemetery yearly. I remember when my family’s house was being built, and our neighbors’ houses as well, and having people move in and out of the ward throughout the years and having my dad and brothers and occasionally the rest of us help. I remember all through my years having messages on our phone asking for my parents help with a sister in the ward who just had a baby, or a brother in the ward who was in the hospital, or how so-and-so might like it if we helped them in their yard for a mutual service project.

We are asked to serve others. And we do. Sometimes we are asked by the Spirit to serve in ways that we never would have supposed. We all try our best to serve and grow.

I’ve learned that obeying the Lord is serving the Lord. We each have our agency and what we do with that agency determines what kind of life and legacy we leave. But because we have agency we have a choice to NOT serve and to NOT obey. When we chose to obey the Lord, to give our Will willingly to the Lord, we are serving him.

This brings me to the next connection between Service and Obedience. Love. We serve others because we Love them. We care for them. We wish them the best. We truly wish to serve them because we Love them. Sometimes there are times when you don’t particularly care for someone, but when you begin to serve them, you begin to Love them.

Up at BYU-Idaho my second semester, my roommates and I had a very interesting FHE group. They put us all into “families” so that on Monday nights we can have Family Home Evening together. Well, this second semester we had some very interesting people in our group. One apartment of girls did not much care for the rest of us. My roommate truly struggled with this problem because she was what we call the Family Home Evening Group Leader, or “FHE MOM”. She was in charge of helping to arrange our Family Home Evenings; the lesson, and the activity, and the treat (because not very many starving college students would show if there was no treats). Generally, she was just supposed to help get people together and be a sort of family with Love and HomeTeachers and even annoying Brothers. It was difficult however with 1/3 of the girls not liking everyone else. So my roommates decided that they’d respond and attack with the master plan of Loving Them To Death. The agenda? Serve them by making them cookies, inviting them over for pizza, helping and asking for homework help, etc. Amazingly, by the end of the semester, they didn’t seem to not like us as much as they used to not like us. We will probably never be the closest of friends without further work, but I can say that I did end up loving them.

When we Serve and Obey the Lord we are expressing our Love for the Lord, for all He has done for us that we can never repay because every time we try we just get more in return.

Obeying the commandments that the Lord has given to us, we are blessed with more abundant blessings, even if they are not readily obvious. Let’s take a commandment we all know and love. The Word of Wisdom. We all obey the commandment because we are told to and we do what we are told because we Love the Lord and have Faith in Him. The blessing is being healthy. Sometimes, by obeying this commandment we are an example to others in our lives who notice and we may help them on their way to learning more about the Savior. That’s a rather simple example, but it shows how when we obey a commandment it helps us and others.

When we Serve others we are obviously blessing others, but often through serving others we are serving ourselves. My roommates and a couple of my neighbors, every Sunday at 3:30, would go to the nursing home and visit this wonderful lady, Anita. We began this little tradition because we all wanted to serve together and some of our friends worked there at the nursing home and so we chose to visit on a day that we could all regular make it. She was fabulous. We truly loved her. None of us were from the area, nor knew her prior to our first visit. But she taught us so much. She could never remember us from the week prior and sometimes she would repeat a story that she had already accounted to us, but Anita and my friends and I grew and learned and loved each other. There were days that were hard for her to enjoy because of pain and struggles and regrets, but when we’d visit she was always ready to impart to us a new piece of knowledge. We gained so much knowledge and wisdom from a lady who, when first married, lived in a tent during the Depression while her husband built a highway, who, with her sister-in-law whom she didn’t like much, began riding her bike everyday because it was a good form of exercise and would also help her understand this sister-in-law and force this sister-in-law to exercise because it was good for her. This sister shared her wisdom gained from the experiences of her life as we had served her by visiting. Often I think that my friends and I were served more by her than we served her.

One of the greatest examples where Service and Obedience are joined and intertwined and have much in common is in Luke 22:42 when Our Lord, Our Savior, Our Elder Brother, knelt down in the Garden of Gethsemane and prayed saying “Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me: nevertheless not my will, by thine, be done.”

What an ultimate source of Service for all of us. What a magnificent example of Obedience to Heavenly Father. Such an exemplary act.

How I love my Savior. How I love all He has done for us. It is hard to express in words. I know, with all my heart and soul, that our Father in Heaven, and His Son, Jesus Christ, knows each of us. Knows all of who we are. Who loves us in spite of ourselves. Who will help us overcome our imperfections so that we may return to our Father. I have a testimony of the importance of Service and of Obedience in my life to express the Love I have for Them in return.