THE STRENGTH OF FAITH

 

Stop Doubting and Believe by Mindi Oaten

True faith can never show its strength in the absence of resistance. Resistance comes when nothing is going right, when your pain is at its highest level, when fulfilment of God’s promises is slow in coming, when your friends sew doubts in your mind, when God seems far away and you feel abandoned…..

Resistance comes when your trust in God needs to be tested. I discovered that you can have faith in God and His existence and even in a multitude of proofs of His love but you can still waver in your trust of Him. For fifty years since I joined the Church, I thrived in my faith in God  and then my health was taken away and the real test came. The resistance manifested itself through trust. I had to ask myself many times if I trusted in everything I believed about Him.

In Lecture 3 of Lectures On Faith, Joseph Smith said that “three things are necessary in order that any rational and intelligent being may exercise faith in God unto life and salvation”: 1. The idea that He actually exists; 2. A correct idea of His character, perfections, and attributes; and 3. An actual knowledge that the course of life which he is pursuing is according to His will.

Some years ago I decided to follow up on this advice and studied the Book of Mormon that year looking for the Saviour’s attributes and traits within its pages. I wanted to know Him. I wrote what I came across in the margins of the book. When I had finished I flicked through the book and I found two particular attributes on just about every page. They told me that the Saviour was merciful and that He always fulfils His promises.

Trusting the mercy has been an easy one but fulfilment of promises is much harder, for two reasons…..1. we do not know HOW  He will fulfil His promise as our ways are not God’s ways (Isaiah 55:8) and 2. We do not know WHEN the fulfilment will come as the Lord works on a different time schedule for ‘all is as one day with God and time only is measured unto men’ (Alma 40:8).

When the promised something is not happening, especially when you are in dire need, the resistance steps in whispering doubts. I have been there, I know. Instead of stepping up my faith in the face of resistance, my faith has wavered through questions such as: do I really know Him? Do I really trust Him? Does He really love me? Does he want the best for me? Well, yes that last one could go either way. He always wants the best for you and you might not know how that best is going to play out in the fulfilment of his promise. Another consideration is that His priority is our eternal ‘best’ opposed to the ‘best’ here and now.

I have a testimony that the strength of our faith indeed brings about rewards from heaven. When I was going through my divorce some years ago, I was in terrible emotional pain. It felt like it was going to rip my chest open. That was the time I delved into the scriptures and studied about the Atonement because I was convinced that only God could take that pain away.

For weeks I prayed ‘through my faith in Jesus Christ and the power of the Atonement’ for a healing of my broken heart. Every time I experienced a wave of pain throughout the day, I would utter the same prayer calling upon the power of the Atonement to heal me. Never once did I think it could not happen or that it would not happen. My faith was infallible despite the unrelenting pain.  I persisted and persisted and after some weeks the pain was gone. All my negative emotions towards my ex-husband disappeared and I was able to embrace him and his new life and move on with mine.

Some years ago I was going through a difficult time and as I was studying the scriptures one day, looking for answers, into my mind came a voice which said: “You were fearless in your pre-mortality.”  I was rather stunned and answered: “It was easy then. Here it is harder because I have to walk by faith.” The voice came back: “Nevertheless, this is what is needful. This is why you are here. You cannot become gods without faith which creates reality.”

- CATHRYNE ALLEN 

THE WISH

 

I look back on my upbringing years in Croatia during the 60s with great fondness. A large part of my gratitude goes to the Catholic Church for giving me my foundation of faith in God. I cannot separate my memories of my country from my Catholic upbringing. It was so much a part of my youth. I was the one in my family that attended Church services and confessions. It was an entire culture of my upbringing and all I knew of life.

At the end of the street we lived in was the cemetery with our local church. That cemetery with the church was the focal point of our neighbourhood. We had to walk through it to get to three other streets. In one of those streets was my school so the cemetery and the Church became my daily visit. School was divided into two shifts, the morning shift and the afternoon shift. The afternoon shift didn’t end until 6 pm. In winter, when the sun went down early, it was an interesting walk home….

I never looked at the cemetery with morbid attitude. I am a poet and I feel deeply. I knew graves with poetic and heart rendering prose on the gravestones. I knew where children were buried and I knew which graves were visited often. All Saints Day was one of my favourite times of the year. The cemetery came alive with visitors coming and going all day and at night the place was alight with candles. It was magical.

The cemetery was also our playground with luscious grass to configure the clouds in our minds and to simply get together with friends and play. This is where we smelled the first sign of spring with the violets and new flowers born after the snow had melted. It also heralded one of my favourite times of the year – Easter. Easter Sunday found us at Church with our baskets of food for the priest to bless. Christmas was another. Buying presents was not the custom I was ever familiar with. What I looked forward to the most was the nativity scene in our Church. Christmas was all about Jesus.

When my family moved to Australia in my early teens, my world changed. As I saw beyond my little Croatian town, my thinking and wondering went into overdrive. By the time I was 16, I was asking serious questions like, ‘what is the purpose of life?’ and  ‘why am I here on this planet?’ I realized that the Catholic Church did not have a lot of answers.

I found the answer to my purpose in life when I was 17 years old, in the doctrine of a church I had heard about, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It is called The Plan of Salvation. It blew me away with its simplicity and truthfulness. It taught me that I lived with God in pre-earth life as a spirit and that I was born into mortality to one day be resurrected to immortality and live with God again. And not just to live with Him but to become like Him, who is a resurrected, exalted God.

In this Church, I found Christ. He was no longer someone out of my reach that I believed died for me but a personal Saviour of my soul, with a kinship going back to the life I lived before. My association with Him deepened over the years. The more I learnt of Him, the more of an idol He became. I know I wanted to be like Him before I was even born because He was and is the path to my eternal existence.

I know who He is, He is ……the bread of life (John 6:31,51), the light of the world (8:12), the good shepherd (10:11,14), the resurrection and life (11:25), the way, the truth and the life (14:6). He is also the potter and we are the clay in His hands (Isaiah 64:8). He makes of us what we can never become on our own. He is the Master builder and the Master healer of our souls. He is our only hope of salvation and there is none else (Isaiah 43:10-11; 45:5,6,14,18,22; 46:9; Deut 4:35,39; 5:8; 1 Kings 8:60; D&C 76:1; 2 Nephi 25:20; 31:21; Moses 6:52)

I had a memory from my pre-earth life some time ago. I was sitting with the Saviour and He was saying to me: “I will save you and I will make up for everything.” When I cry my tears, it’s a memory to hold onto.

 

When in the realms of heaven

You asked me what in mortality

I wanted to be,

It was so easy, I said I wanted

To be like Thee.

 

You warned me of the suffering

That would have to equal in measure

To what you would suffer for me;

That my life would not be easy

But that You would

make up for everything.

 

Now I am here,

I fear the refiners’ fire of the kiln

When Your potter hands are moulding me

But I try to be the woman I was who said

She wanted to be like Thee.

 

Some days I want to change my wish

I am not worthy to bear my suffering,

But then I notice the chains

around my heart are broken,

and I remember:

You will make up for everything.

 

- CATHRYNE ALLEN 

(Art: Spring of Life by Chris Brazelton)

Chris Brazelton - Official Website

A GOD OF MIRACLES PART 1

"A small congregation in the foothills of the Great Smokies built a new sanctuary on a piece of land willed to them by a church member. Ten days before the new church was to open, the local inspector informed the pastor that the parking lot was inadequate for the size of the building. Until the church doubled the size of the parking lot, they would not be able to use the new sanctuary.

Unfortunately, the church with its undersized parking lot had used every inch of their land except for the mountain against which it had been built. In order to build more parking spaces, they would have to move the mountain of the back yard. Undaunted, the pastor announced the next Sunday morning that he would meet that evening with all members who had 'mountain-moving faith'. They would hold a prayer session asking God to remove the mountain from the back yard and to somehow provide enough money to have it paved and painted before the scheduled opening dedication service the following week.

At the appointed time, 24 of the congregation's 300 members assembled for prayer. They prayed for nearly three hours. At ten o'clock the pastor said the final 'Amen'. 'We'll open next Sunday as scheduled', he assured everyone. God has never let us down before, and I believe He will be faithful this time too.'

The next morning as he was working in his study there came a loud knock at his door. When he called 'come in', a rough looking construction foreman appeared removing his hard hat as he entered. 'Excuse me, Reverend. I'm from Acme Construction Company over in the next county. We're building a huge new shopping mall over there and we need some fill dirt. Would you be willing to sell us a chunk of that mountain behind the church? We'll pay you for the dirt we remove and pave all the exposed area free of charge, if we can have it right away. We can't do anything else until we get the dirt in and allow it to settle properly'. 

The little church was dedicated the next Sunday as originally planned and there were far more members with 'mountain-moving faith' on opening Sunday than there had been the previous week."

- Author Unknown

Gilbert Fowler White summed up his understanding of Albert Einstein's conversation with David Reichenstein as such: "There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is." In context of this theory, readers of the above story would be divided into believers in faith and miracles and believers in coincidences only. Some would believe that it is a fictional story and some would believe that this is an account of true events. What group you would fall into would very much depend on your level of faith in an unseen God. It would also depend on your understanding of God. It is one thing to believe that God exists and another to know God. The Lectures on Faith state that for a man to exercise sufficient faith in God unto salvation, he needs to have a correct idea of God's character, perfections and attributes (Lecture 3).

In Mormon chapter 9, Moroni points out two things about the character of God; one is that He is an unchangeable being and another, that He is a God of miracles (vs 9). For God to be changeable it would mean that He would be eternally progressing and adding onto His knowledge and power. This is an erroneous theory. If God was constantly learning new truths our salvation would be in peril for He would constantly have to revise the Plan of Salvation and Redemption. There would be no certainty in His dealings with His children. (See Maxwell, Neal A., "All These Things Shall Give Thee Experience" p 14-15). If God was an ever learning personage, He would be an ever changing God. If God was ever changing, we would never know for sure what He was like and could not exercise faith in Him. Miracles are born out of steadfastness of character, both God's and ours. His steadfastness is grounded in never changing power, omniscience and love for His children. Our steadfastness is grounded in faith. God can do nothing without our faith; faith of the mind, faith of the tongue, faith of actions, "for if there be no faith among the children of men God can do no miracle among them....." (Ether 12:112).

What are miracles? To some a miracle is something as grand as 'the burning bush' or Jesus walking on water, while to others it can be the smallest of things coming about in miraculous ways, our faith being a good measure of our perception. What some of us may deem a miracle may be just an answer to a prayer for others. The crucial element of this phenomenon is that we believe and acknowledge that God is involved in our lives, that He answers prayers and that all good things come to us from Him. Failure to acknowledge such, breeds ungratefulness and dullness of faith.We do not need to know 'how' a miracle we have asked for will happen, we only need to know that it will. In whatever form they come, and through whatever channel, miracles are creations of faith, the righteous exercise of our agency, the end product of our belief in the God of Miracles.