This week I was reading the account of the angel Gabriel visiting the Virgin Mary telling her that she would be the mother of the Son of God and she just accepted it, she didn't argue that she wasn't worthy, she didn't present an argument about how anatomy worked or that God could and would work a miracle in her life and for all of Israel, she simply said let it be as you've said it will be. She had faith and acted on the faith that nothing was impossible with God. Because she believed there was no impossible with Heavenly Father there was no impossible. She was named highly favored because she went with the impossible and trusted that Heavenly Father would provide away, even knowing the law, knowing being pregnant out of wedlock could mean death, even knowing it could break Joseph's heart, she trust the Lord to do the impossible, so she saw the impossible.
Heavenly Father does His best work in the impossible and that is why Satan is working so hard to convince us to be skeptics, he pushes an agenda and steady diet of doubt, questioning, misbelief, disbelief, and misinformation. This skepticism can come in many forms, sometimes it comes in outright attacks, people question "why do you need God, why would He care about you, why do you need a God, can't you do things on your own?" Sometimes those attacks come more subtley "miracles like that don't need to happen in our day, why do we need angels, we have the restored gospel?" And sometimes that skepticism manifests itself in doubt, pure and simple, " why would the Lord do that for little old me, that couldn't be a miracle?" Some of these forms of skepticism may seem more destructive than others, but I assure you they all block belief. Satan doesn't care so much which level of skepticism gets you, he just wants to keep you away from belief because he knows belief brings you to the miracles.
So often in the world today and in the world today I hear people scoff at the idea of angels, scoff at the idea of miraculous occurrences, for people who believe the heavens are open we can be rather closed minded. Why don't we believe that miracles can and will happen in our lives? I'm not suggesting for us to be sign seekers, perhaps it isn't part of our individual journey to have the angel Gabriel appear to us and tell us we are well favored of the Lord, but I do know that the Lord has so much more for us than we are currently accessing for ourselves.
We are children of the Most High God, we are children of a creator that makes us creators in training, that means we need to practice. As children of the Most High we have access to the powers of Heaven, we have the birthright to do the miraculous, that doesn't just mean it will come in the next life, the more we tell ourselves that our inheritance only comes in the next life the more we miss out on opportunities to make the next life even greater and make this life more powerful.
Satan knows that on a steady diet of self-doubt and skepticism we will always see ourselves as the "average joe" not fit for anything amazing or powerful. When we limit ourselves we also limit Heavenly Father. As Elder Holland says, He only has us, as imperfect and flawed as we are, to work with, but He makes do and He wants to do wonders. We have already entered the last days (in the year 2000 Pres Hinckley said the seventh seal had opened) as we come closer to the Second Coming of our Savior Satan has and will continue upping his game. As Latter-Day Saints we can't expect to get a free pass or say that All is Well in Zion, all is not well and Heavenly Father needs us to step up and to believe so that He can preform His work and His glory and His miracles in the world today. He needs a people who believe in prophecy and will tell Him, let it be as you have prophesied it will be, He needs a people who are and will be peculiar and who aren't limited by false beliefs about Heavenly Father and themselves. As Harold B Lee said, this is a generation of sleeping giants. We are the spiritual giants of the last days, but we must claim that power or the work needed of us will pass us by.
With God all things are possible, especially for those who believe.
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