One main reason for the Restoration of the gospel of Jesus Christ is to increase faith in the world (Doctrine and Covenants 1:21). However, many people incorrectly believe that faith leads to power directly. Part of this misconception comes because of misunderstanding of the beautiful imagery taught by our Savior such as in Matthew 17: 20. From that scripture, many infer that if one's faith is great enough, mountains may part just as the waters did for Moses. However, this fails to take into account both God's will and also man's actions since "faith without works is dead" (James 2:17-18). Perhaps, the mustard seed scripture would be more well understood if it read as follows, "...if ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed [and a shovel, a pick ax, and enough time], ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; an it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible to you." It's not about a result. It's about doing the impossible with the tools you have.
That brings me to Alma 32:27-29, which teaches about The Faith Cycle, a cycle that shows us what man is in charge of and what God is in charge of. It reads as follows.
27 But behold, if ye will awake and arouse your faculties, even to an experiment upon my words, and exercise a particle of faith, yea, even if ye can no more than desire to believe, let this desire work in you, even until ye believe in a manner that ye can give place for a portion of my words.
28 Now, we will compare the word unto a seed. Now, if ye give place, that a seed may be planted in your heart, behold, if it be a true seed, or a good seed, if ye do not cast it out by your unbelief, that ye will resist the Spirit of the Lord, behold, it will begin to swell within your breasts; an when you feel these swelling motions, ye will begin to say within yourselves-- It must needs be that this is a good seed, or that my word is good, for it beginneth to enlarge my soul; yea, it beginneth to enlighten my understanding, yea, it beginneth to be delicious to me
29 Now behold, would not this increase your faith? I say unto you, Yea; nevertheless it hath not grown up to a perfect knowledge.
The color coordinating, then can correlate to the image below:
Man can only control the first half of the faith cycle, also known as the action side; the desire, giving it place, and not casting it out. If we complete our side, God will bless us with the power side of the faith cycle which ends in faith being increased. We control the actions and the Lord will never hold us accountable for what we cannot control. Thus, faith is in what we do. It is in showing God how serious we are.
The beautiful thing is that the faith cycle can be applied to many of our desires in life whether it be language learning, weight loss, or member missionary work.
The first time I really began to apply the faith cycle to myself was when I was on my mission. Some days we would look at our agendas and have no set appointments scheduled for the day. On the mission, that means a day of finding. Before I got a testimony of how important finding was, it was difficult for me to leave with the faith that we'd find a new investigator that day. Of course I'd still go out, but maybe I was a little bit sluggish leaving the house right on time or I'd be super willing to go back in the car to drive to someplace else.
On one such day, I consciously decided to put my faith in the Lord and to go out and find a new investigator. I desired getting this because we desperately needed new people to teach. I gave it place because we went out and did finding activities. The hardest step, then, was to not throw it out. We went through and met some interesting people that day, definitely. We ended up, first of all, in a rich white area (which is not very conducive to finding hispanics in California typically). Then we found a party house of people who needed us but weren't desirous to listen.
Finally, the new missionary I was training received a spiritual prompting to take a left on the last road of the main street in that area. I wanted to teach my new missionary to be able to receive and act on spiritual promptings, so we did it.... and ended up on the most industrial street you've ever seen, a place full of cement buildings and not a single person wandering around to talk to. That is, no one except the fruit stand man on the corner. Since he was the only person we possibly could talk to on that street, my new missionary pulled over the car and jumped out to talk to him. After I took the keys out of the ignition and shut her door, I joined her. He accepted a Book of Mormon that day and promised us he'd read the introduction.
We kept on going back about once a week. For as long as I was in that area, he never did give us his address because his marriage was at a scary spot and he didn't want to do anything to possibly tip the scale in the wrong direction. However, I later heard a story of a dream he had six months before he met us.
In this dream, he looked at his fruit stand and it was practically empty with very little ice. The fruit that was there was rotting and he was depressed, not knowing how he was going to provide for his family. He looked away from his fruitstand and saw, on the sidewalk walking toward him, two angels. He then looked back to his fruitstand and suddenly it was flourishing and he was ready to go sell it all.
That dream that he had six months before prepared him for the day that we met him, a day when we followed a revelation that lead us to a street that probably no other missionary would have found themselves on. That fruitstand man was baptized a few months later and his wife was also listening to the missionaries.
I know that the faith cycle was working on me that day, because I felt an increase in faith that the Lord is preparing people to receive us. This, then, enabled me to continue and have even more desire to find people to teach the next day and my faith continued to augment.
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