LDS Quotes on Trials
“Obedience gives us greater control over our lives, greater capacity to come and go, to work and create. Of course, age, accident, and illnesses inevitably take their toll, but even so, our obedience to this gospel law enhances our capacity to deal with these challenges.”
| Obedience Brings Blessings, April 2013 General Conference
“Instead of explaining our suffering, God shares it.”
So far as I am concerned, I say, let everything come as God has ordained it. I do not desire trials; I do not desire affliction . . . but if . . . the powers of darkness are let loose, and the spirit of evil is permitted to rage, and an evil influence is brought to bear on the Saints, and my life, with theirs, is put to the test; let it come, for we are the Saints of the Most High God, and all is well, all is peace, all is right, and will be, both in time and in eternity.
| (John Taylor, Journal of Discourses, Vol. 5, 115-116)
| “Your Sorrow Shall Be Turned to Joy,” Ensign, Nov. 1983, 66.
Your trust in the Lord must be more powerful and enduring than your confidence in your own personal feelings and experience.
To exercise faith is to trust that the Lord knows what He is doing with you and that He can accomplish it for your eternal good even though you cannot understand how He can possibly do it. We are like infants in our understanding of eternal matters and their impact on us here in mortality. Yet at times we act as if we knew it all. When you pass through trials for His purposes, as you trust Him, exercise faith in Him, He will help you. That support will generally come step by step, a portion at a time. While you are passing through each phase, the pain and difficulty that comes from being enlarged will continue. If all matters were immediately resolved at your first petition, you could not grow.”
| “Trust in the Lord,” Ensign, November 1995, p. 17
A pebble held close to the eye appears to be a gigantic obstacle. Cast on the ground, it is seen in perspective. Likewise, problems or trials in our lives need to be viewed in the perspective of scriptural doctrine. Otherwise they can easily overtake our vision, absorb our energy, and deprive us of the joy and beauty the Lord intends us to receive here on earth.
| “Finding Joy in Life,” Ensign, May 1996
I too believe that God will always make a way where there is no way. I believe that if we will walk in obedience to the commandments of God, if we will follow the counsel of the priesthood, he will open a way even where there appears to be no way.
“We need strength beyond ourselves to keep the commandments in whatever circumstance life brings to us. … The combination of trials and their duration are as varied as are the children of our Heavenly Father. No two are alike. But what is being tested is the same, at all times in our lives and for every person: will we do whatsoever the Lord our God will command us?”
| "In the Strength of the Lord," Ensign, May 2004, 17
“Recovering from suffering is not like recovering from a disease. Many people don’t come out healed; they come out different.”
| The Road to Character