What about the enormous power within you? Think of this: you shouted for joy9 to come to a fallen world where all would face physical and spiritual death. We would never be able to overcome either on our own. We would suffer from not only our own sins but others’ sins too. Humanity would experience virtually every imaginable type of brokenness and disappointment10—all with a veil of forgetfulness over our minds and the world’s worst enemy continuing to target and tempt us. All hope for returning resurrected and clean to God’s holy presence rested entirely upon one Being keeping His promise.11 What empowered you to go forward? President Henry B. Eyring taught, “It took faith in Jesus Christ to sustain the plan of happiness and Jesus Christ’s place in it when you knew so little of the challenges that you would face in mortality.”12 When Jesus Christ promised He would come into mortality and give His life to gather13 and save us, you did not simply believe Him. You “noble spirits”14 had such “exceedingly great faith” that you saw His promise as sure.15 He could not lie, so you saw Him as if He had already shed His blood for you, long before He was born.16
Many also made covenants with the Father concerning what they would do in mortality. In ways that have not been revealed, our actions in the spirit world have influenced our circumstances in mortality.
Perhaps it helps to emphasize—more than we sometimes do—that our first estate featured learning of a cognitive type, and it was surely a much longer span than that of our second estate, and the tutoring so much better and more direct. The second estate, however, is one that emphasizes experiential learning through applying, proving, and testing. We learn cognitively here too, just as a good university examination also teaches even as it tests us. In any event, the books of the first estate are now closed to us, and the present test is, therefore, very real. We have moved, as it were, from first-estate theory to second-estate laboratory. It is here that our Christlike characteristics are further shaped and our spiritual skills are thus strengthened.