I've been pondering lately about faith and how we can build our faith. As I've reviewed my previous posts I've noticed a running theme, I talk about the love of Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ a lot, I talk about their attributes and caring and I've noticed a pattern. Trust is the basis of faith, when we trust someone we have faith that they will follow through. In order to trust someone you need to get to know them and know that they are dependable and trustworthy. The more I have learned of my Savior and my Father in Heaven the more I realize just how much they can be trusted and that they will follow through.
When I am feeling frustrated or hopeless I think back to a night in the MTC when my heart was breaking, I was missing the young man who sent me out and said he'd be there when I got back and more significantly was questioning whether he would be there when I got back. I knew this was not a productive place for my mind to go, yet I couldn't help myself, I was so afraid that I would lose him. My companion shared with me a significant allegory called the maze. I've shared it before and it's true, we go as far as we can with the information we've been given and we keep going until the information changes. I've had to follow that a lot, as I prayed about a mission, prayed about a boy, told to do both, then ended up coming home early due to health issues and not to marry boy for two and a half years, then went for med school prep for two years only to be sent back to history. Sometimes my life just feels confusing and a bit messy, but what I've learned through it all, Heavenly Father does answer prayer.
That night in the MTC I had a companion telling me the story would probably change, that the young man would move on and I would be just fine. For years I heard that, but the Spirit continued telling me to have faith in the promise He'd given me, that young man. Revelation can be a tricky thing, it is easy to misinterpret or place our desires over God's, but when we seek him with an open heart and a desire to do whatever He has for us he will speak to us, He will guide us and when He does we need to listen, we need to obey and we NEED to trust that He can and will keep His promises.
If I have learned nothing else these last four years, I've learned that He listens, I've learned that He answers, I've learned that it's a cycle. It takes faith to go to the Lord in prayer, it takes faith to ask Him what he would have us do, it takes faith to ask where you fit in His plan, then it takes trust and faith that when everything opposes He will come through, He will support us. That night in the MTC I had to accept that whatever happened would happen, but I had to align that with the fact that I knew what I had felt and I new I had to trust it as far as it would go.
We have to accept that sometimes life won't go our way or won't get there as fast as we want it to and then other times we have to trust that what the Lord has said we'll get we really will get. There is always hope, there is always joy and peace, we find them when we trust the Lord that He'll do what he said he'll do. This means going to him for answers and counseling with him, not expecting Him to do our bidding. Together we succeed.
Sometimes we just have to hope that the desires of our heart really can come true. I think we'll be surprised by how often they do, just remember to be open to having the desires of your heart change, Heavenly Father has a way of magnifying them.
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