Everyone believes very easily whatever they fear or desire.
When you want so hard to believe something, you end up listening to your heart and not your head.
I've learned that loving yourself requires a courage unlike any other. It requires us to believe in and stay loyal to something no one else can see that keeps us in the world – our own self-worth.
Since we cannot fully comprehend any one of God's perfected attributes, we surely cannot comprehend them in the aggregate. But we can have faith in Him and in His attributes as He has described these to us. This is what He asks of us. We may say that this is a lot to ask, but anything less will not do.
Worldviews are curious things. They are challenging to detect because they are not things we look at but look through. Consequently, we assume everyone else sees, feels, and thinks the same way about the whole lot before us.
People, sensing my belief, wanted some of that belief for themselves. Belief, I decided. Belief is irresistible.
Faith takes work. Receiving revelation takes work. But “every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened.”13 God knows what will help your faith grow. Ask, and then ask again. A nonbeliever might say that faith is for the weak. But this assertion overlooks the power of faith. Would the Savior’s Apostles have continued to teach His doctrine after His death, at the peril of their lives, if they had doubted Him?14 Would Joseph and Hyrum Smith have suffered martyrs’ deaths defending the Restoration of the Lord’s Church unless they had a sure witness that it was true? Would nearly 2,000 Saints have died along the pioneer trail15 if they did not have faith that the gospel of Jesus Christ had been restored? Truly, faith is the power that enables the unlikely to accomplish the impossible.
The mountains in our lives do not always move how or when we would like. But our faith will always propel us forward. Faith always increases our access to godly power.
And though we typically use *receive* to mean "to acquire" something, the dictionary says that receive also means "to believe" or "to accept as true."
faith: “I believe in Christ as I believe in the rising sun—not because I can see it, but because by it I can see everything else.”
In many ways, beliefs are like other economic goods. People spend time and resources building them, and derive value from them.
Because beliefs, however, are not simply tools for making good decisions, but are treasured in their own right, new information that challenges them is unwelcome.
Being temporally prepared and self-reliant means “believing that through the grace, or enabling power, of Jesus Christ and our own effort, we are able to obtain all the spiritual and temporal necessities of life we require for ourselves and our families.”