Faith is like a seed
I think when I read or hear those familiar verses in Alma 32 I somehow always correlated them with Moroni 3:4-5 where we are invited to find out for ourselves if the Gospel is true.
This morning I read Alma 32:27 ..."awake and arouse your faculties, even to an experiment upon my words, and exercise even a particle of faith, yea even if ye can no more than desire to believe, let this desire work in you, even until ye believe in a manner that ye can give place for a portion of my words."
I was thinking about the word experiment and what that means. It doesn't mean solely praying to know if the Gospel is true, although that could certainly be a part of it. I think it means our actions. Our choices of behavior. Because Faith is a choice. And so when we choose to go to church every Sunday, when we choose to dress modestly, when we choose to read our scriptures and listen to General Conference and try to be better - we are choosing to experiment, we are choosing to have faith.
Vs 28 continues with the results of these choices - that we will see that this seed we planted - meaning these actions we have performed - have grown a tree that has produced fruit.
I think though, that this process can take a long time. For instance, I may choose to take my family to church when my children are little, but it will not be until much later that I may see the positive growth that has come from planting that seed. This tiny seed can and will grow into a tree if it is nourished properly, but doesn't happen overnight.
I think the scriptures make it clear here that there are many steps of faith that lead to a perfect knowledge. We start with a particle - a desire - and a hope and trust and a willingness to try something that we don't know for sure will work. And then we work and wait. And it might be hard. We might forget to water that plant once in awhile. We might get really tired of waiting and watching and feeling like that stupid little tree seed isn't growing. Possibly we will decide to prune it and maybe hack away at it too much and have to start over a little bit. We might decide to spend a little more time getting the soil just right or we might sit under someone else's tree while we wait for ours to grow. But it's all okay because it is part of the lifetime process of developing our tree of faith.
The lesson here for me is that I should take action. I choose whether or not to plant that seed. I am not a sitting duck waiting for a ray of light and a voice from heaven to come and give me faith and knowledge. It doesn't even matter if, in this life, I receive some magnificent heavenly revelation. I can choose to believe that my choices, cumulative over time, will develop into a perfect faith at some point. And that willingness to choose faith, to take those first trusting steps in the darkness of mortality, is what makes all the difference. Actually, you could argue that the difficulty in developing our faith is in itself proof of God's love for us. Or at least proof in His supreme dedication to the concept of agency. If faith were too easy - if the answers were so obvious - what would happen to our agency? If we all joined the church and lived fairly tale lives forevermore, why wouldn't everyone join the church? I think developing faith is supposed to be hard - it is a test of our willingness to CHOOSE and then to STEP FORWARD and experiment.
For an interesting article about the psychology of faith and belief, see HERE
Wendy Ulrich: “If God can ask the brother of Jared, who has heard His voice and seen His finger, “Believest thou the words which I shall speak?”, then certainly we also have a choice to believe or not, regardless of our previous spiritual experiences or our intellectual skills. We believe because we are trying to learn abject constancy with God, to trust that He is still there even when we cannot feel Him, and that He will tell us the truth, even when it seems improbable.”
This morning I read Alma 32:27 ..."awake and arouse your faculties, even to an experiment upon my words, and exercise even a particle of faith, yea even if ye can no more than desire to believe, let this desire work in you, even until ye believe in a manner that ye can give place for a portion of my words."
I was thinking about the word experiment and what that means. It doesn't mean solely praying to know if the Gospel is true, although that could certainly be a part of it. I think it means our actions. Our choices of behavior. Because Faith is a choice. And so when we choose to go to church every Sunday, when we choose to dress modestly, when we choose to read our scriptures and listen to General Conference and try to be better - we are choosing to experiment, we are choosing to have faith.
Vs 28 continues with the results of these choices - that we will see that this seed we planted - meaning these actions we have performed - have grown a tree that has produced fruit.
I think though, that this process can take a long time. For instance, I may choose to take my family to church when my children are little, but it will not be until much later that I may see the positive growth that has come from planting that seed. This tiny seed can and will grow into a tree if it is nourished properly, but doesn't happen overnight.
I think the scriptures make it clear here that there are many steps of faith that lead to a perfect knowledge. We start with a particle - a desire - and a hope and trust and a willingness to try something that we don't know for sure will work. And then we work and wait. And it might be hard. We might forget to water that plant once in awhile. We might get really tired of waiting and watching and feeling like that stupid little tree seed isn't growing. Possibly we will decide to prune it and maybe hack away at it too much and have to start over a little bit. We might decide to spend a little more time getting the soil just right or we might sit under someone else's tree while we wait for ours to grow. But it's all okay because it is part of the lifetime process of developing our tree of faith.
The lesson here for me is that I should take action. I choose whether or not to plant that seed. I am not a sitting duck waiting for a ray of light and a voice from heaven to come and give me faith and knowledge. It doesn't even matter if, in this life, I receive some magnificent heavenly revelation. I can choose to believe that my choices, cumulative over time, will develop into a perfect faith at some point. And that willingness to choose faith, to take those first trusting steps in the darkness of mortality, is what makes all the difference. Actually, you could argue that the difficulty in developing our faith is in itself proof of God's love for us. Or at least proof in His supreme dedication to the concept of agency. If faith were too easy - if the answers were so obvious - what would happen to our agency? If we all joined the church and lived fairly tale lives forevermore, why wouldn't everyone join the church? I think developing faith is supposed to be hard - it is a test of our willingness to CHOOSE and then to STEP FORWARD and experiment.
For an interesting article about the psychology of faith and belief, see HERE
Wendy Ulrich: “If God can ask the brother of Jared, who has heard His voice and seen His finger, “Believest thou the words which I shall speak?”, then certainly we also have a choice to believe or not, regardless of our previous spiritual experiences or our intellectual skills. We believe because we are trying to learn abject constancy with God, to trust that He is still there even when we cannot feel Him, and that He will tell us the truth, even when it seems improbable.”
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