Of this I Know...

Ive been pondering the concept of faith lately. (Not that that should come to anyone’s surprise) Faith is a belief in something that is not seen, but is true. God asks us to have faith in Him. I find it interesting that God tells us to have faith in Him, or to believe in Him first, and then we can come to a sure knowledge of Him and His teachings. There’s a scripture in the Book of Mormon that kind of talks about this. It says …“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.” (Alma 32:27, page 289-290) Then it goes on to talk about how faith is like a seed, and when you nourish it, it will grow, similar to how your belief, and eventual knowledge of God’s existence will grow…

Having been a track athlete for a number of years, I’ve found that this concept parallels how I’ve come to know what kind of an athlete I am, or what kind of abilities I have. Like many athletes, I want to know where my limits are, or how fast I really can run. However, I have the tendency to doubt my abilities and question whether I really can run as fast as my coach or fellow teammates tell me I can, even when I would seem to do well in some races. I would stand on the starting line and ask myself, “Am I really good enough to race these people?” But then my mind would always go back to something that my mom taught me as a girl, about believing in myself. She would tell me that only those people that believe they can win actually get the prize. On the alternative outlook, she would ask me, “do you think that those Olympic track athletes ever won a race without actually believing that they could win?” She was teaching me faith. I realized that I had to have faith in myself before I could actually see what I could do. This directly relates to our understanding and our coming to the knowledge that God is real, and that He plays a role in our lives. It is only until we take that step of faith or even “desire to believe” that He will show Himself unto us. If we but “experiment” upon His words, the words of Christ, we will come to know of a surety that He is there. There is real power in coming to know God. He knows everything about us, and He knows who we really can become. Through faith, we can know, or do, anything. “…for verily I say unto you, If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed… nothing shall be impossible unto you.”