I can clearly remember an experience
I had when I was in fourth grade. When I was younger I had anxiety about going
to school, which made it really hard for my parents to get me to go to school. I
also had a teacher who was a little rough around the edges, which made her seem
like the meanest person to my very shy nine year old self. For the first couple
weeks of school, I did not want to go because I was scared of my teacher.
Looking back, she really wasn’t that bad, but at the time, it was a real trial
in my life.
That fear I felt in the fourth grade
was real and it was overwhelming. I’m sure that we have all experienced
feelings of fear and dread at some point in our lives, if not quite frequently.
The big question is: how can we dispel these feelings of fear? I have come to
find that faith is the perfect thing to counteract fear with. As I have been preparing
to leave on my mission and even while I was deciding whether or not I should
serve, I have seen both faith and fear in my life. And so today, I wish to
speak on the topic of choosing faith over fear in our daily lives.
Because this topic has been
so prevalent in my life recently, I have learned two different things.
First, I have learned that
fear works against faith. When I think of fear working against faith, I
automatically think of the story of Peter walking on water towards Christ which
is found in Matthew 14. After Christ fed the 5,000, He went up on a mountain to
pray and His disciples took a boat to cross the Sea of Galilee. When the night
came, a storm began and Christ went to go join His disciples. He walked on
water to get to the boat, which frightened some of His disciples. The Lord
settled their fears and told them it was Him. Now I want to read some verses about Peter. This is Matthew
14 starting in verse 28. It says:
“And Peter answered him and
said, Lord, if it be thou, bid me come unto thee on the water.
And he said, Come. And when
Peter was come down out of the ship, he walked on the water, to go to Jesus.”
“But when he saw the wind boisterous, he was afraid; and
beginning to sink, he cried, saying, Lord, save me.
And immediately Jesus
stretched forth his hand, and caught him, and said unto him, O thou of little
faith, wherefore didst thou doubt?”
When I imagine these verses,
I picture Peter stepping out of the boat and focusing on the Savior as he
begins his walk of faith to get to the Savior. I then picture him looking away
from the Savior for just a second, but long enough to see the storm and realize
that walking on water is much harder and scarier than he imagined. In that
moment, the overwhelming feeling of fear overcame all the faith he had and he
began to sink; all because he took his focus off of the Savior for just a
second.
Don’t we all do this
sometimes? I know I do. Whenever I am faced with a situation that requires me
to exercise faith, I often start off as Peter did, with my focus directly on
the Savior. I may even take a few steps of faith on the water. But, the moment
I lose focus of the Savior and forget that through Him all things are possible,
I realize that these steps of faith are harder and scarier than I ever
imagined. I begin to fear the storm and eventually may even start to sink.
Continuing to walk in faith
while we are in the midst of the storms of life can be challenging and
overwhelming. As I was thinking about this topic I kept asking myself the
question of, “What can I do so that when I find myself caught in the storms of
life, I can make sure I don’t let myself sink?” This question leads directly
into the second thing I’ve learned from choosing faith over fear in my life,
which is how to better strengthen my faith daily. I have come up with three
things that have proven to be the most successful in helping me strengthen my
faith.
The first one is going to
the temple. When I was at BYU this last year, I lived in the Heritage Halls
dorms, which are just a short 15-minute walk from the Provo temple. I really
think that my freshman year at BYU was when I developed my deep love for the
temple. It was a sanctuary for me and a place of peace because college is hard.
I often felt like I was caught in a storm when I would find myself struggling
to get everything done, trying to choose the right major, and had difficult
exams all the time. During these times when it felt like I was going to sink at
any moment, I was and am so thankful that I had the temple to go to and that I
was able to take my worries and fears to the Lord.
In the True to the Faith,
under Temples, there is a smaller section titled, “Blessings from Attending the
Temple.” It reads:
“When you are troubled or
when crucial decisions weigh heavily on your mind, you may take your cares to
the temple. There you can receive spiritual guidance.”
I know that that’s true. I
am so thankful that I can take worries or fears that I have to the temple and
receive peace, comfort, and direction from the Lord. I know that when I go to
the temple feeling overwhelmed and burdened down by the storms of life, I leave
with added strength and faith from my Father in Heaven. This then makes it
easier for me to go and continue taking steps of faith even when it’s scary to.
The second thing that helps
me strengthen my faith is daily prayer. I haven’t always been the most diligent
at saying my prayers but I have come to really appreciate them and I have such
a strong testimony of them. I love prayer because it allows me to share my
fears with my Heavenly Father. It’s really hard for me to express my feelings
with others and so sometimes when I am faced with a trial or am fearful of
something, it’s easy to feel alone since I have a hard time opening up.
Whenever I’m feeling this way, I love to pray to my Heavenly Father and share
with Him every emotion that I’m feeling at that time. These are spiritual
experiences for me as I feel of Heavenly Father and the Savior’s love for me. There
is a quote by President Hinckley that reads:
“Never assume that you can
make it alone. You need the help of the Lord. Never hesitate to get on your
knees in some private place and speak with Him. What a marvelous and wonderful
thing is prayer. Think of it. We can actually speak with our Father in Heaven.
He will hear and respond, but we need to listen to that response. Nothing is
too serious and nothing too unimportant to share with Him.”
President Hinckley is right.
We can’t make it through the storms of life alone. We need help from Heavenly
Father and we get that help by communicating with Him through prayer. I know
that as I draw near to Heavenly Father through my personal prayers and share
with Him my personal fears, I feel Him drawing near to me and giving me
strength. Prayer is such a vital thing to me when I am trying to replace my
fears with faith.
The third thing that I have
found that strengthens my faith is personal scripture study. We have been counseled by both leaders
of today and leaders from the scriptures to study the scriptures every day,
individually and as families. In 2 Nephi 32, we read how Nephi told his
brethren to “feast upon the words of Christ.” In John 5, we are told to “search
the scriptures.” Howard W. Hunter once called scripture study, “the most
profitable of all study in which we could engage.” When I was at BYU, I
developed a love for scripture study. It was no longer a thing that I had to do
just so I could check it off my list. I actually looked forward to it. Through
studying the scriptures, we can gain knowledge and answers to prayer. Whenever
I’m trying to choose faith over fear, it helps me to study and read stories
about faith and how the people in the scriptures overcame their own personal
fears. These stories are inspiring to me and help me walk in faith as I read
about people who felt the same way I do sometimes.
Recently, I’ve been studying
missionary work in the Book of Mormon in preparation to leave on my mission.
I’ve also been praying that I can be the best missionary I can possibly be.
When I study my scriptures with missionary work in mind, I find that Heavenly
Father is answering my prayers. I’ve read so many stories about missionaries in
the Book of Mormon and have read about what qualities they had that made them
great missionaries. Whenever I feel inadequate and fear that I won’t be able to
teach the gospel well enough, it helps to go read these missionary stories and
see that even missionaries in the Book of Mormon felt inadequate at times. Even
they felt fear at times. But they went and with the Lord’s help, they were
molded into great missionaries. These stories help me replace my feelings of
inadequacy and fear with faith when I know that with Christ by my side, I can
be molded into a great missionary, as well.
Even though these three
faith-strengthening things are really simple, they have been the most effective
in my life. Choosing to walk in faith and not letting metaphorical storms
overcome us can be so hard and I know that. Like I said earlier, this has been
such a huge theme in my life lately as I have been deciding to go and preparing
to go on a mission.
My decision to serve was not
easy and required me to place a lot of trust in Heavenly Father and take steps
of faith even when I was scared to. I want to share my experience with you
today in hopes that it may help someone.
For any of you who know me
well, you know that I am a planner. I always have some sort of life plan for
myself. Something that was never in my plans was a mission. It was never
something I even wanted to do. When the age change was announced in 2012, I
didn’t receive an overwhelming feeling that I would serve a mission, like a lot
of girls I know did. I was a junior in high school at this time and if you
would have told me that three years later I would be serving a mission in
Missouri I probably would have laughed at you. It was not something I saw
myself doing. Fast forward to my senior year when a lot of my friends were
getting ready to leave on their missions and some of my girlfriends were
beginning to talk about putting their papers in; my heart was definitely
softened and I became more open to the idea of a mission. I finished my senior
year and moved to Provo so that I could attend BYU. My freshman year at BYU is
the best year of my life up to this point. I grew so much and I credit that to
the fact that it did not go as I planned it would. Before I went to BYU, I had
a vision in my mind of what my freshman year would look like: I thought that I
knew for sure what I was going to major in and thought that I would be in and
out of college in 4 years because I had this great academic plan for myself, I
pictured myself having the perfect job, and I could even somewhat picture what
my roommates would be like. I’m here to tell you that my freshman year did not
go as planned. I changed my major five times in two semesters, had to force
myself to go to work everyday, and my roommates were nothing like I expected.
But, my freshman year was the best year. It was not a picture perfect year and
because of that, I had to learn to rely on the Savior like never before. I felt
like I was constantly having to take steps of faith when things didn’t turn out
the way I had thought they would. While this frustrated me at the time, I am
grateful that I had to learn how to choose faith over fear because it helped
prepare me for the months ahead.
In February of this year, I
was forced to make a decision about whether I would be going on a mission or doing
another semester at school since I had to start finding an apartment for the
next year. So many of my friends were choosing to serve and I thought it was
awesome, although I hadn’t received any sort of confirmation that a mission was
right for me at this time. I decided I would go another semester of school,
prayed about it and felt good about it, although a mission was always on my
mind. I still decided that school would be the best option for me so I signed
an apartment contract and signed up for Fall 2015 classes. I was so excited
about it but, the thought of a mission never left my mind. I moved home in
April and continued to watch my friends leave on missions. My heart soon
developed a special place for sister missionaries especially, as many of my
close girlfriends were leaving. I was excited for them but also was so excited
that I would be going back to school in August. On May 26, I was talking with
my sister about life and life plans and all of the sudden had a very distinct
impression that I would serve a mission. You can imagine how caught off guard I
was since my plan was to go back to BYU for at least another semester and I
didn’t think a mission was anywhere in the near future. But, I couldn’t deny
the impression I had gotten so I went and talked to my Dad about it and told
him I wanted to leave in December after I did a semester of school. As I was
leaving his office, he asked me what I would think about putting my papers in
ASAP and trying to leave in August. Even though that decision wasn’t what I had
planned for myself at all, I once again felt a strong impression that it was
right. I started off, as Peter did, confidently taking steps of faith with my
focus on the Savior and began my mission papers. I was so excited, but, as I
got closer and closer to submitting my papers, I began to realize how hard and
scary a mission can be. I wondered why I was trading in BYU, which is
comfortable, for a mission, which is way out of my comfort zone. My faith
waivered and I began to fear. I took my focus off of the Savior and instead of
walking in total faith, began doubting my decision and the timing. This was not
the plan I had for myself and instead of exercising faith I was letting fear
win. It got the best of me and caused me to doubt my decision up until right
before my papers were supposed to be submitted. One Sunday I had been praying
for faith and strength to align my will with Heavenly Father’s, and
confirmation that this timing was right. I went to Sunday school and looked up
at the board, which had a quote on it. I see that quote every week but read it
anyway. The quote said, “When we put God first, all other things fall into
their proper place or drop out of our lives.” This statement hit me. It was
confirmation from my Heavenly Father that serving a mission is what He needs me
to be doing right now. I said a prayer and thanked my Heavenly Father for
helping me. Once I was totally able to align my will with His, I was able to
understand that His plan for me is greater than my plan for myself. I was given
added strength and was able to continue walking in faith even though it was
scary for me. I finished my papers and a few weeks later received my call.
There have been moments since I’ve had my call that I have felt fear, but I now
know that if I will keep my focus on the Savior, I can walk in faith no matter
how hard or how scary the situation may be.
My decision to serve a
mission wasn’t easy for me and it tested my faith. I had to turn to my Heavenly
Father through prayer and scripture study to strengthen my faith so that I
could submit my will unto His. I’ve had to learn to overcome fear and choose
faith instead, even when it’s hard to. I found a quote by President Hinckley
that I think sums up all that I’ve been talking about today really well. It
says:
“Put your trust in God, and
move forward with faith and confidence in the future. The Lord will not forsake
us. He will not forsake us… If we will put our trust in Him, if we will pray to
Him, if we will live worthy of His blessings, He will hear our prayers.”
I know that that’s true. I
saw it in my life while I was deciding whether or not to go on a mission. I
also know that this quote is true for all of us. Whether we are asked to face a
difficult health challenge, or are scared to go to fourth grade, or are asked
to do something that wasn’t in our life plan. Heavenly Father cares about all
of our fears. If we will turn to Him and keep our focus on Him, He will help
strengthen us so that when storms arise in our life, we may be better able to
walk in faith.
I want to bear my testimony
that I know this Church is true. I know that Heavenly Father knows each of us
individually and cares for us. I know that families can be together forever and
I am so excited to go share that knowledge with the people of St. Louis. I know
that Christ lives and died for us so that we can repent and become better each
day. I am grateful for my Father in Heaven and for the plan He has for each of
us. I am so grateful for the opportunity I have to go share this beautiful
gospel with the people of St. Louis. I want to thank this ward family and my
family and friends that have been such great examples of faith, have given me
strength, and have helped me get to this point in my life. I am forever
grateful for all of you.
I say these things in the
name of Jesus Christ, Amen.
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