“faith and truth cannot be separated; if there is to be faith . . . there must first be truth”
| Mormon Doctrine. Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1966.
Faith
LDS Quotes on Faith
“Petitioning in prayer has taught me, again and again, that the vault of heaven with all its blessings is to be opened only by a combination lock. One tumbler falls when there is faith, a second when there is personal righteousness; the third and final tumbler falls only when what is sought is, in God’s judgment – not ours – right for us. Sometimes we pound on the vault door for something we want very much and wonder why the door does not open. We would be very spoiled children if that vault door opened any more easily than it does. I can tell, looking back, that God truly loves me by inventorying the petitions He has refused to grant me. Our rejected petitions tell us much about ourselves but also much about our flawless Father. By inventorying our insights, from time to time, it will surprise us what the Lord has done in teaching us. What we have learned in the past can help us to persist in the present. By tallying the truths and keeping such before us, we can also avoid lapsed literacy in spiritual things. If we will let Him, the Holy Ghost will bring all the important insights to our remembrance.”
| “Insights,” New Era, April 1978, p. 6
“If patience is worth anything, it must endure to the end of time. And a living faith will last in the midst of the blackest storm.”
“How can I tell when I’m being prompted by the Spirit?…Quit worrying about it. Quit fussing with it. Quit analyzing it. You be a good boy, you be a good girl, you honor your covenants, you keep the commandments; and I promise you in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ that as you press forward with faith in Christ, your footsteps will be guided. As you open your mouth, it will be filled, and you will be where you need to be, and most of the time, you will not even have any idea how you got there.”
After the Lord worked with the brother of Jared to resolve each of his concerns, He then explained, “Ye cannot cross this great deep save I prepare [a way for] you against the waves of the sea, and the winds which have gone forth, and the floods which shall come.” The Lord made it clear that ultimately the Jaredites could not make it to the promised land without Him. They were not in control, and the only way they could make it across the great deep was to put their trust in Him.
| Consistent and Resilient Trust
Trust God to lead you, even if that way looks different than you expected or is different from others.
Meanwhile, ultimate hope makes it possible to say the same three words used centuries ago by three valiant men. They knew God could rescue them from the fiery furnace, if He chose. “But if not,” they said, nevertheless, they would still serve Him! (Dan. 3:18)
Unsurprisingly the triad of faith, hope, and charity, which brings us to Christ, has strong and converging linkage: faith is in the Lord Jesus Christ, hope is in His atonement, and charity is the “pure love of Christ”! (See Ether 12:28; Moro. 7:47.) Each of these attributes qualifies us for the celestial kingdom (see Moro. 10:20–21; Ether 12:34). Each, first of all, requires us to be meek and lowly (see Moro. 7:39, 43).
Faith and hope are constantly interactive, and may not always be precisely distinguished or sequenced. Though not perfect knowledge either, hope’s enlivened expectations are “with surety” true (Ether 12:4; see also Rom. 8:24; Heb. 11:1; Alma 32:21). In the geometry of restored theology, hope has a greater circumference than faith. If faith increases, the perimeter of hope stretches correspondingly.
Just as doubt, despair, and desensitization go together, so do faith, hope, and charity. The latter, however, must be carefully and constantly nurtured, whereas despair, like dandelions, needs so little encouragement to sprout and spread. Despair comes so naturally to the natural man!
| Elder Neal A. Maxwell, Conference Report, October 1994
“It is not as a child that I believe and confess Jesus. My hosanna is born of a furnace of doubt.”
“Like children, we adults also want our most pressing questions answered, not multiplied. So it is not surprising that we look to religion, the great comforter, to ‘resolve us of all ambiguities,’ in the words of Dr. Faustus. But perhaps providing conclusive answers to all of our questions is not the point of true religion.”
Trust God to lead you, even if that way looks different than you expected or is different from others.