Choose Faith

As I was studying faith today to talk about with my family, I thought that faith works with Step Three. You need faith to trust God. In the The Family A Proclamation To The World  and it said, "Successful marriages and families are established and maintained on principles of faith,... Notice that faith was listed first. So I'm going to study it some more.  I read two articles in the November 2010 Ensign. I'll focus on the first one today: Faith the Choice is Yours by Richard C. Edgley. I liked that he put the responsibility for having faith or the lack of it on us. It requires effort to get and keep. We  need to "nurture" it.  He lays out Alma's formula for developing faith.

1. Humbly approach God with a broken heart and a contrite spirit.
2. Choose to exercise a particle of faith--experiment on his words (John 7:17).
3. When logic, reason or personal intellect come into conflict with sacred teachings and doctrine or conflicting messages assault your beliefs--choose not to cast the seed (faith) out of your heart by unbelief. Remember we receive not a witness until after the trial of our faith. (Ether12:6)
4. Choose to nurture it with great care (Alma 32:37). It  needs constant nourishment through scripture study, prayer and applying His word.

A lot of action words. It requires effort on our part. Then he quoted Matthew 17:20, "If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove". Then he tells of seeing mountains of doubt and despair removed and replaced with hope and optimism. Witnessing mountains of sin replaced with repentance and forgiveness. And mountains of pain being replaced with peace, hope and gratitude. I had never thought of it like that before but I felt a real peace after reading it. I know as my faith increases, so does my ability to handle the tough times. So I really see the wisdom of nurturing my faith.