Real Faith

As I read President Monson’s talk from last general conference, these words of warning stuck out to me: “May we choose to build up within ourselves a great and powerful faith which will be our most effective defense against the designs of the adversary—a real faith, the kind of faith which will sustain us and will bolster our desire to choose the right.  Without such faith, we go nowhere.  With it, we can accomplish our goals” (see here).  We don’t always talk about “choosing the right” and “faith” at the same time, and yet we really can’t have one without the other.  It is faith in God’s promises that gives us the courage to choose the right and to trust that following His commandments is of greater worth than adhering to the ways of the world.  And it is of course by choosing the right that we exercise our faith, so true faith can’t exist where there are no righteous choices.  As James would put it, “Faith without works is dead,” and we might likewise add, “Works without faith is dead” (James 2:26).  Faith will “bolster our desire to choose the right,” and making correct choices will increase our faith in God. 

                One example that comes to mind from the scriptures is that of Job.  When nearly all was taken from him, he was able to still make right choices because of his faith.  He declared, “the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.”  And the writer of the book of Job said, “in all this Job sinned not, nor charged God foolishly” (Job 1:21-22).  Even when his own wife told him to “curse God, and die” his faith still prevented him from doing so (Job 2:9).  At the beginning of Job’s story we see Satan who predicted that when Job lost his earthly possessions he would “curse [God]” (Job 1:11).  And as President Monson taught us, it was the faith of Job that was his “most effective defense” against Satan who specifically sought the downfall of Job.  Another story that I think illustrates the same principle was the one that President Monson told several years ago about Clayton Christensen and his devotion to keeping the Sabbath Day holy.  He was playing basketball at Oxford and after an undefeated season his team was playing a championship game on Sunday.  Despite the fact that he was a key player on the team, the backup center was injured, and the coach was unsympathetic towards him, he chose not to justify playing sports “just once” on the Sabbath.  He chose to forgo the game and attend Church.  What faith it must have taken to make such a decision—without a strong conviction that keeping the commandments really was important in the Lord’s eyes there’s no way he could have stood up to the worldly pressure (see here).  That’s the kind of “real faith” that we have to develop to be able to face the “faithless generation” that surrounds us (Mark 9:19).