Strong Foundation of Faith

 

In our April 2020 Conference, I was so inspired.  Each talk was extradordinary to me.  I have been listening to one talk a day since then, and I think I have heard them all at least 4 times!  They are a wonderful start to my day, along with my Come, Follow Me and Book of Mormon study.  I feel like these are essential to keeping my mind clear and focused on the Lord.  I also try to read a chapter of The Divine Power of the Atonement by Neil L. Anderson, as we are studying that in our Stake's Institute.  Even with all this, I can see the pull of the world through social media, tv, talking, government and politics, etc.  

I had my phone in the night, and the light from it was the only light in my room.  I could barely see ahead of me as I walked without much light.  Then I reached a light switch and turned on the overhead lights, and amazingly, I could hardly even see the phone light.  I had a moment of clarity!  The world's teachings can give us some weak light, but not much or overall to see everything.  Fortunately, the Lord and his servants can give us astronomically greater light than the light from the world, so that it is not even necessary or noticed!  I want to have on my overhead light, my scriptures and words of the prophets, at all times so I don't need to rely on a faulty light source to try to see what is going on.

One talk that was special to me this morning was the one by Elder Gary Stevenson "A Good Foundation against the Time to Come".  I feel like this applies to my point above.  He spoke of the foundation of the Salt Lake Temple that is being reinforced to withstand things to come.  And he gave the example below as to why we have faith in the Lord Jesus Christ to sure up our own foundations, in speaking of a faithful woman who had succumbed to cancer recently:

"On one of her social media posts, she wrote that someone had asked her, “How do you still have faith with all the heartache that surrounds you?” She replied firmly with these words: “Because faith is what gets me through these dark times. Having faith doesn’t mean nothing bad is going to happen. Having faith allows me to believe that there will be light again. And that light will be even brighter because I have walked through the dark. As much darkness as I have witnessed over the years, I have witnessed far more light. I have seen miracles. I have felt angels. I have known that my Heavenly Father was carrying me. None of that would have been experienced if life was easy. The future of this life may be unknown, but my faith is not. If I choose to not have faith then I choose to only walk in darkness. Because without faith, darkness is all that is left.”¹⁰

Her unshakable testimony of faith in the Lord Jesus Christ—in her words and in her actions—was an inspiration for others. Even though her body was weak, she lifted others to be stronger."

I am so grateful for the words of such faithful leaders, and faithful examples others show me.  We are none of us perfect, but we can be faithful to the Lord, and let our light shine that they may see Him through us.