What Will You Do When Your Faith is Challenged?

What will you do when your faith is challenged?  Faith can be challenged in many ways – not just a challenge to your testimony of God and His Church.  The Savior’s faith was challenged in three different ways after He had spent 40 days fasting and getting ready for His 3 year ministry.  His faith was challenged by His appetite first.  He was challenged by a dare, and then challenged by ambition.

It’s fine to think we’ll just hold on when challenges arise, but I remember thinking I could hold onto a rope swing while swinging out of a tree like Tarzan without sitting on the stick.  It didn’t work, I found out when I lit head first into a pumpkin!  You need to do more than just hold on.  You need to prepare.

When the heat hits the plants in the garden, if I don’t weed around them, deep water them to establish deep roots, fertilize, and soften the soil, the bugs will get to them or the plants will be stressed.  If they survive, they will likely produce little fruit that is of any good.

What can we do to “prepare for the evil day” then?  In my life I’ve had a number of different challenges to my faith.  One was as a senior in high school.  A former student, who was then at the University of Utah and a member of Students for a Democratic Society, came to speak.  I got permission to go listen to him.  I got up at the front of the classroom, so I could ask questions.  When the chance came I did.  I can’t remember what I ask, but after that question, he wouldn’t call on me again.  He said that Brigham Young was a tyrant, and that our parents were misguided – sincere but misled by “the foolish traditions of their fathers,” and that we should become enlightened.  I was frustrated that he would not let me challenge him, but that night as I said my prayers, I suddenly stopped and asked, “Are you there, or am I just talking to the ceiling?”  I then got a definite impression from Him that He was there, and He cared about me.  There were other similar experiences in my teens and younger, in prayer, in service, in study, in music, that helped develop a relationship with my Father in Heaven, so that when challenges came on my mission, my roots were deep enough to handle the heat.

When I first went to college before my mission, there came a time when I thought things were not going right with a number of people I cared about.  I felt it wasn’t fair, and, though I don’t remember all the details now, I actually got mad at God and decided to quit praying, I guess to “show Him!”  How foolish, right!  As one more crisis came I began to think to whom else would I turn?  Where else would I find the truth?  Before nightfall, I humbly begged forgiveness from Him and repented of my pride.

The biggest challenge on my mission was not having a sufficient work ethic.  I wasn’t used to having to work hard, and I struggled with the demands of learning a new language and doing work that wasn’t fun or interesting.  That challenge would take time to overcome, and had I not developed a relationship with God, I would have looked for excuses to leave.  But I do remember that He stayed with me even in my weakness, and when I cried out to Him in my honest despair one night, I felt His presence.  It seemed like He picked me up and held me, comforting me, then set me down again to continue my struggles.

Another challenge came from a minister in another faith.  I told him, among other things that he ignored, that priesthood authority from God was necessary to perform ordinances.  He challenged me back by saying that all that was necessary was to live the commandments, one of which was keeping the Sabbath “on the seventh day,” and that since I was worshipping on the first day of the week, I was not keeping the commandments and therefore had no authority.  I could not answer him at that time, though I can very well now.  But because I had studied the Book of Mormon, I knew it was true, and if it was true, then Joseph Smith HAD to be a prophet, and the instruction to him about priesthood authority was also true.

Sometimes Satan lets you go a long time between challenges, so that you will let your guard down.  I had been ward clerk and then stake clerk for well over 10 years.  As stake clerk I had drawn the lines for ward divisions and even our stake division.  I felt pretty important.  When we were released, everyone in the stake leadership got new callings – everyone except me.  I was suddenly sitting in the back of the chapel on a hard chair, where for the previous 9 years I had set up front.  I had participated in all the callings and workings of the stake, and now I was nothing, I thought.  I was tempted to wallow in self-pity.  This is partly where covenants are such a strength to us.  I had made covenants with my Father in Heaven, and I knew He lived, so I just kept keeping on, going to church, praying, serving however I could, little as it might be.  I kept working on my weaknesses, repenting of things like wrong attitudes and hurt feelings.

Your prior preparation will make all the difference, particularly on our modern changing battlefield.  It isn’t just study that will do it.  No, it takes developing your spiritual self with spiritual virtues such as patience, long suffering, diligence, forgiveness, dependability, etc.  If we take time in our prayers, and pray throughout the day, to discuss our development, we will be given situations that will develop and prepare us for what will come our way.  Then we will be ready to stand, and having done all, we WILL stand in the evil day.

--> One of the biggest things that kept me on my mission and helped me through all of these challenges was that I loved my family: my parents, my younger siblings, and later my wife and children.  I did not want to hurt them or cause them to falter.  Included in that was that I loved my Father in Heaven as well.  It is my prayer that in the day of preparation, you will each prepare, which means continuous repentance to become ready for the challenges great and small, to cleanse ourselves, that through the sacrifice of our Savior, Jesus Christ, we will find ourselves becoming like Him and therefore able to live in His presence.  Don’t be afraid.  He will lead you by the hand, guide you, comfort you, and never forsake you.  Trust Him, for after all He is the only name on whom we can trust to bring us back to our Heavenly Parents eternally to go no more out.  I love them.  I love you.  I want us to be happy – together.