What I learned - Fourth Floor, Last Door

God “rewards those who earnestly seek him,” so we need to keep knocking. Sisters, don’t give up. Seek God with all your heart.

Oh how I loved this talk by President Uchtdorf.  He reminded me of the importance of faith. He reminded me that we might not see or know our own worth.  

"Faith is a strong conviction about something we believe—a conviction so strong that it moves us to do things that we otherwise might not do. “Faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.”

While this makes sense to believing people, it is often confusing to nonbelievers. They shake their heads and ask, “How can anyone be certain of what they cannot see?” To them, this is evidence of the irrationality of religion.

What they fail to understand is that there are more ways to see than with our eyes, more ways to feel than with our hands, more ways to hear than with our ears.

It’s something like the experience of a young girl who was walking with her grandmother. The song of the birds was glorious to the little girl, and she pointed out every sound to her grandmother.

“Do you hear that?” the little girl asked again and again. But her grandmother was hard of hearing and could not make out the sounds.

Finally, the grandmother knelt down and said, “I’m sorry, dear. Grandma doesn’t hear so well.”

Exasperated, the little girl took her grandmother’s face in her hands, looked intently into her eyes, and said, “Grandma, listen harder!”

Oh, if it were only as easy as listening a little bit harder!  Faith for me is something that is necessary.  It is something that I feel and that I think and that I believe.  It is a natural to me a breathing.  It doesn't mean that I don't doubt things every once in a while.  But it does mean that I trust where to get my answers.  

I loved that President Uchtdorf talked about how faith will not violate the free agency of another.  That was a lesson hard learned in my own life.  Sometimes, what we want feels so right!  And if someone else could just see what we see, they would want the same things.  But I have learned to pray for my own understanding.  I have learned to pray for the love and compassion I need to help them through their trials.  I have learned to pray for His blessing to be upon me as I learn to accept His will.  That is a hard prayer to mean.  

Faith is trust.  Trust that God sees what we cannot.  That He knows what we do not yet know.  That He will bring things to pass in His own time.  Trust is that even though something we want right now doesn't work out, there will be something else in our lives that will.  Faith is to believe that all things will work together for our good, no matter how we feel right this minute.  

Faith is believing, that if we just keep knocking, the door WILL be answered, even if it is not quite the way we imagined.