I decided I needed to not just stay stagnant with the Gospel and my testimony, but to actively find ways to strengthen it. I am working on getting a habit of saying morning prayers, and not just my rushed ones over breakfast. I have also made a goal to read at least one conference talk every other night. So far so good. I want these things to become a habit, but my goal is to make it through to September 1st. I learned in young women's that it takes 3 weeks to form a habit, so by the first I should be golden! :)
I've definitely experienced a lot of trails lately, but also seen an abundance of blessings. I found this talk from this last April's general conference, and felt it was written just for me! I am so grateful for the Gospel of Jesus Christ in my life and the strength He gives me to carry on with hope and courage.
Mountains to Climb
If we have faith in Jesus Christ, the hardest as well as the easiest times in life can be a blessing.
I heard President Spencer W. Kimball, in a session of conference,
ask that God would give him mountains to climb. He said: “There are
great challenges ahead of us, giant opportunities to be met. I welcome
that exciting prospect and feel to say to the Lord, humbly, ‘Give me
this mountain,’ give me these challenges.”
1
My
heart was stirred, knowing, as I did, some of the challenges and
adversity he had already faced. I felt a desire to be more like him, a
valiant servant of God. So one night I prayed for a test to prove my
courage. I can remember it vividly. In the evening I knelt in my bedroom
with a faith that seemed almost to fill my heart to bursting.
Within
a day or two my prayer was answered. The hardest trial of my life
surprised and humbled me. It provided me a twofold lesson. First, I had
clear proof that God heard and answered my prayer of faith. But second, I
began a tutorial that still goes on to learn about why I felt with such
confidence that night that a great blessing could come from adversity
to more than compensate for any cost.
The
adversity that hit me in that faraway day now seems tiny compared to
what has come since—to me and to those I love. Many of you are now
passing through physical, mental, and emotional trials that could cause
you to cry out as did one great and faithful servant of God I knew well.
His nurse heard him exclaim from his bed of pain, “When I have tried
all my life to be good, why has this happened to me?”
You know how the Lord answered that question for the Prophet
Joseph Smith in his prison cell:
“And
if thou shouldst be cast into the pit, or into the hands of murderers,
and the sentence of death passed upon thee; if thou be cast into the
deep; if the billowing surge conspire against thee; if fierce winds
become thine enemy; if the heavens gather blackness, and all the
elements combine to hedge up the way; and above all, if the very jaws of
hell shall gape open the mouth wide after thee, know thou, my son, that
all these things shall give thee experience, and shall be for thy good.
“The Son of Man hath descended below them all. Art thou greater than he?
“Therefore,
hold on thy way, and the priesthood shall remain with thee; for their
bounds are set, they cannot pass. Thy days are known, and thy years
shall not be numbered less; therefore, fear not what man can do, for God
shall be with you forever and ever.”
2
There
seems to me no better answer to the question of why trials come and
what we are to do than the words of the Lord Himself, who passed through
trials for us more terrible than we can imagine.
You remember His words when He counseled that we should, out of faith in Him, repent:
“Therefore
I command you to repent—repent, lest I smite you by the rod of my
mouth, and by my wrath, and by my anger, and your sufferings be sore—how
sore you know not, how exquisite you know not, yea, how hard to bear
you know not.
“For behold, I, God, have suffered these things for all, that they might not suffer if they would repent;
“But if they would not repent they must suffer even as I;
“Which
suffering caused myself, even God, the greatest of all, to tremble
because of pain, and to bleed at every pore, and to suffer both body and
spirit—and would that I might not drink the bitter cup, and shrink—
“Nevertheless, glory be to the Father, and I partook and finished my preparations unto the children of men.”
3
You and I have faith that the way to rise through and above trials is to believe that there is a “balm in Gilead”
4 and that the Lord has promised, “I will not … forsake thee.”
5
That is what President Thomas S. Monson has taught us to help us and
those we serve in what seem lonely and overwhelming trials.
6
But
President Monson has also wisely taught that a foundation of faith in
the reality of those promises takes time to build. You may have seen the
need for that foundation, as I have, at the bedside of someone ready to
give up the fight to endure to the end. If the foundation of faith is
not embedded in our hearts, the power to endure will crumble.
My purpose today is to describe what I know of how we can lay that
unshakable foundation. I do it with great humility for two reasons.
First, what I say could discourage some who are struggling in the midst
of great adversity and feel their foundation of faith is crumbling. And
second, I know that ever-greater tests lie before me before the end of
life. Therefore, the prescription I offer you has yet to be proven in my
own life through enduring to the end.
As
a young man I worked with a contractor building footings and
foundations for new houses. In the summer heat it was hard work to
prepare the ground for the form into which we poured the cement for the
footing. There were no machines. We used a pick and a shovel. Building
lasting foundations for buildings was hard work in those days.
It
also required patience. After we poured the footing, we waited for it
to cure. Much as we wanted to keep the jobs moving, we also waited after
the pour of the foundation before we took away the forms.
And
even more impressive to a novice builder was what seemed to be a
tedious and time-consuming process to put metal bars carefully inside
the forms to give the finished foundation strength.
In
a similar way, the ground must be carefully prepared for our foundation
of faith to withstand the storms that will come into every life. That
solid basis for a foundation of faith is personal integrity.
Our
choosing the right consistently whenever the choice is placed before us
creates the solid ground under our faith. It can begin in childhood
since every soul is born with the free gift of the Spirit of
Christ. With that Spirit we can know when we have done what is right before God and when we have done wrong in His sight.
Those
choices, hundreds in most days, prepare the solid ground on which our
edifice of faith is built. The metal framework around which the
substance of our faith is poured is the gospel of
Jesus Christ, with all its covenants, ordinances, and principles.
One
of the keys to an enduring faith is to judge correctly the curing time
required. That is why I was unwise to pray so soon in my life for higher
mountains to climb and greater tests.
That
curing does not come automatically through the passage of time, but it
does take time. Getting older does not do it alone. It is serving God
and others persistently with full heart and soul that turns testimony of
truth into unbreakable spiritual strength.
Now,
I wish to encourage those who are in the midst of hard trials, who feel
their faith may be fading under the onslaught of troubles. Trouble
itself can be your way to strengthen and finally gain unshakable faith.
Moroni, the son of Mormon in the
Book of Mormon,
told us how that blessing could come to pass. He teaches the simple and
sweet truth that acting on even a twig of faith allows God to grow it:
“And
now, I, Moroni, would speak somewhat concerning these things; I would
show unto the world that faith is things which are hoped for and not
seen; wherefore, dispute not because ye see not, for ye receive no
witness until after the trial of your faith.
“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.
“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.
“Wherefore, ye may also have hope, and be partakers of the gift, if ye will but have faith.”
7
That
particle of faith most precious and which you should protect and use to
whatever extent you can is faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Moroni
taught the power of that faith this way: “And neither at any time hath
any wrought miracles until after their faith; wherefore they first
believed in the Son of God.”
8
I
have visited with a woman who received the miracle of sufficient
strength to endure unimaginable losses with just the simple capacity to
repeat endlessly the words “I know that my Redeemer lives.”
9 That faith and those words of testimony were still there in the mist that obscured but did not erase memories of her childhood.
I
was stunned to learn that another woman had forgiven a person who had
wronged her for years. I was surprised and asked her why she had chosen
to forgive and forget so many years of spiteful abuse.
She
said quietly, “It was the hardest thing I have ever done, but I just
knew I had to do it. So I did.” Her faith that the Savior would forgive
her if she forgave others prepared her with a feeling of peace and hope
as she faced death just months after she had forgiven her unrepentant
adversary.
She asked me, “When I get there, how will it be in heaven?”
And
I said, “I know just from what I have seen of your capacity to exercise
faith and to forgive that it will be a wonderful homecoming for you.”
I
have another encouragement to those who now wonder if their faith in
Jesus Christ will be sufficient for them to endure well to the end. I
was blessed to have known others of you who are listening now when you
were younger, vibrant, gifted beyond most of those around you, yet you
chose to do what the Savior would have done. Out of your abundance you
found ways to help and care for those you might have ignored or looked
down upon from your place in life.
When
hard trials come, the faith to endure them well will be there, built as
you may now notice but may have not at the time that you acted on the
pure love of Christ, serving and forgiving others as the Savior would
have done. You built a foundation of faith from loving as the Savior
loved and serving for Him. Your faith in Him led to acts of charity that
will bring you hope.
It
is never too late to strengthen the foundation of faith. There is
always time. With faith in the Savior, you can repent and plead for
forgiveness.
There is someone you can forgive. There is someone you can thank. There
is someone you can serve and lift. You can do it wherever you are and
however alone and deserted you may feel.
I
cannot promise an end to your adversity in this life. I cannot assure
you that your trials will seem to you to be only for a moment. One of
the characteristics of trials in life is that they seem to make clocks
slow down and then appear almost to stop.
There
are reasons for that. Knowing those reasons may not give much comfort,
but it can give you a feeling of patience. Those reasons come from this
one fact: in Their perfect love for you, Heavenly Father and the Savior
want you fitted to be with Them to live in families forever. Only those
washed perfectly clean through the Atonement of Jesus Christ can be
there.
My
mother fought cancer for nearly 10 years. Treatments and surgeries and
finally confinement to her bed were some of her trials.
I remember my father saying as he watched her take her last breath, “A little girl has gone home to rest.”
One
of the speakers at her funeral was President Spencer W. Kimball. Among
the tributes he paid, I remember one that went something like this:
“Some of you may have thought that Mildred suffered so long and so much
because of something she had done wrong that required the trials.” He
then said, “No, it was that God just wanted her to be polished a little
more.” I remember at the time thinking, “If a woman that good needed
that much polishing, what is ahead for me?”
If
we have faith in Jesus Christ, the hardest as well as the easiest times
in life can be a blessing. In all conditions, we can choose the right
with the guidance of the Spirit. We have the
gospel of Jesus Christ
to shape and guide our lives if we choose it. And with prophets
revealing to us our place in the plan of salvation, we can live with
perfect hope and a feeling of peace. We never need to feel that we are
alone or unloved in the Lord’s service because we never are. We can feel
the love of God. The Savior has promised angels on our left and our right to bear us up.
10 And He always keeps His word.
I testify that
God the Father lives and that His Beloved Son is our Redeemer. The
Holy Ghost
has confirmed truth in this conference and will again as you seek it,
as you listen, and as you later study the messages of the Lord’s
authorized servants, who are here. President Thomas S. Monson is the
Lord’s prophet to the entire world. The Lord watches over you. God the
Father lives. His Beloved Son, Jesus Christ, is our Redeemer. His love
is unfailing. I so testify in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.
