Perfect Faith

My entire mission and all the knowledge I've received along the way paved the way to the knowledge I received this week regarding faith, fasting, and prayer. My prayers have been tailored to understand what was taught to us last night through Brother Wilson (I am grateful for his knowledge, and for sharing it to help me understand the potential my faith has). I want to share with you my notes, but you'll only understand them if you are sufficiently humble. We're talking faith you must have in Christ's perfect faith to align the will of the Father with our own desires. Heavenly Father's will is whatever we have faith to receive. The 40 day fast that we did in September is exactly this kind of faith. Faith that things which do not normally happen, transpire because of our faith in Christ. God has perfect faith, and the Priesthood is access to God's perfect faith. We must only have faith in that to obtain any blessing from the Lord! This is the kind of faith where if sufficient faith had not been exercised the miracle would not have happened, repeating that point because I have seen that. You and I know where the root of these blessings come from, the blessing of baptizing the Ortega family, and soon the be the Smith family, Chuck Segars, it all comes from God. This faith is the faith to CAUSE things to happen. When we unite our faith in Christ it is impossible for the Lord to withhold blessings from us, which He does NOT want to do. He only withholds blessings from us so we can learn how to exercise the kind of faith to pull down to powers of heaven according to our desires - so you must have PURE desires! Brother Wilson talked with us about how we can ask for the right things for the wrong reasons, and that's why we don't receive blessings most of the time. 

The first thing you must do to have a POWERFUL fast is have a REAL desire that burns so badly it's a need. Moroni 7:33-34. Also, is it a righteous desire? The scriptures are littered with righteous desires, so search those! Your faith is limited upon the knowledge that this is a real, pure desire. How do you know if it's righteous or not after searching the scriptures/ ASK GOD of course!

Next step: WRESTLE with the Spirit. Please your case. Pray like never before to obtain a promise from the Lord that He sees and acknowledges your desire. If you haven't received a confirmation from the Spirit, you might have to refine your desires to get the confirmation you need to fast with faith. 

While you fast, you must continue to wrestle with the Lord in prayer. The hard work is JUST beginning. Fast for Him to know it's a desire! Remember, when you receive a confirmation from the Spirit, the Spirit CANNOT LIE. so have faith in that! The Lord will wait for our desire and faith to be on point. 

Do all you can do to follow through, in whatever case that may be. Say we want to baptize a family, then we must put in the work to find the family while wrestling with the Spirit and keeping our hearts pure. 

 31 Who am I, saith the Lord, that have promised and have not fulfilled?

 32 I command and men obey not; I revoke and they receive not the blessing.

 33 Then they say in their hearts: This is not the work of the Lord, for his promises are not fulfilled. But wo unto such, for theirreward lurketh beneath, and not from above. (D&C 58:31-33)

13 Require not miracles, except I shall command you, exceptcasting out devils, healing the sick, and against poisonousserpents, and against deadly poisons;

 14 And these things ye shall not do, except it be required of you by them who desire it, that the scriptures might be fulfilled; for ye shall do according to that which is written. (D&C 24:13-14)

Fasting is a completely Spiritual event, we know that through fasting our faith GROWS. There's a correlation there I'd like to learn more about when I have access to more than the lds library. 

There's a wall between us any any blessing from the Lord that can only be broken in our perfect faith in the Savior's perfect faith! 

Little notes from this week: God has allowed us to become like Him, because we have already the full potential to become like Him.

President Stoker did an amazing training in MLC on the HEALING power of the Atonement. I will share some of his thoughts with some of my own as I've pondered. I couldn't help but think of many of you as I pondered about the different struggles we are have in life. It's an odd thing, because many of us deal with the same sin, and have the same consequences, yet we need an individual remedy tailored to our unique circumstances. We all need to be healed. We all experience pain from either our own sins or those around us. Chris experienced the pains of mortality prior to the Atonement, in fact much of His life was spent alone! We develop great growth and maturation through healing. Healing causes us to change. Healing HURTS - mentally and spiritually. Chris cares more about our growth and development than he does our own suffering, because the change we undergo is vital to who we need to become. Healing is a gift that requires suffering. 

3 Steps to HEALING:

1) Courage. The making of action in spite of fear. We gain courage by facing the truth that we need to change. We must be honest with ourselves. Make your private life the same as your public life. Live differently than the world lives! 

2) Action. 2 Nephi 2:16. Action is the point where belief turns into faith. ACTING in faith leads to grace. Truly I have come to understand that acting in faith is the trial of mortality. We are here learn the faith that God has, that is why we have been given a veil to shield us from spoiling the experience. Fear of man and procrastination keep us from acting in faith and learning this beautiful lesson! Procrastination is failure to repent now. "The more often a person fails without action the less he will be able to act, the less he will be able to feel." C.S. Lewis ( I love that President Stoker is always quoting C.S. Lewis). We overcome procrastination through prayer.

3) Grace. Courage into action to receive help through Christ. Grace proved: Mosiah 24:13-16, Alma 31:31-38. We receive grace through the Holy Ghost, because the Holy Ghost is the vehicle through which we receive love from God. We experience grace through others - ANGELS in mortality. We extend grace through the ways we show love, often our words.

We saw all these things come together in action as the Ortega family was baptized yesterday. This is what it feels like to receive whatever you have faith to receive through the cumulative faith of a branch. I looked over to see them, dressed in white, ready to make a covenant with the Lord. They accessed the Atonement for the first of many times in their loves. We watched as the three of them went down individually to be baptized. I was completely overwhelmed with the Spirit (even with all the chaos of putting on a family baptism).Heavenly Father promised to us as we fast for 40 days for this to happen that it would happen, in His own time, in His own way, and it HAPPENED. A spirit of excitement and beginnings filled the chapel as they filed in. We had a moment to talk with Jesse about how it was while waiting for the girls to get changed after, he sees this as such a blessing. It is so real to him. He is meek and humble, understanding deeply the feelings of the Spirit and giving them place in his heart. Ariez was overcome with "warm fuzzies" and even a desire to serve a mission. Silvia couldn't even believe how wonderful it was! Words cannot convey the experience of watching a family enter into the waters of baptism. Heavenly Father is teaching me what charity really feels like, I am so grateful for that. He understood the desires of my heart and has answered them.

Along with things prayed for... Chris and Jessica Smith have a date to be baptized on November 30th. Chris bore his testimony of God. We were all in a puddle of tears as he did so. It had to come from something outside of himself. God heard his prayers, and all of ours! It was a mark for the beginning of his relationship with God on earth. They are such a driven family! Driven to acheive whatever they put their minds and hearts to! They want the best for their family and are getting that with the Gospel. They get it. They just get it! Jessica is going 58(I believe) hours without coffee for the first time coming up this week.

Chuck and Linda Segars are preparing their family history so they can take their families to the temple! Same with Ali. There's connecting energy all around you whenever you help someone do family history. It's a sign that the hastening of the work is real, and is happening ALL AROUND US in a very literal way.

My companion, Sister Tarawhiti, is the best person to be with me right now. It's so helpful to have a spiritual giant you can bounce ideas, faith, and everything off of! She lifts me higher and aspires me to try harder. I love that she invites all around her to repent, she takes that literally, and you can see people's lives change because of it! She's a miracle worker.

Sorry if I don't write some of you back this week, please take this as the response!

Photos:

the night we got to the mission home. I was so tired.

Sister Tarawhiti and I laughing at something.... the laugh that makes you hurt.

SISTER PANKRATZ!! I didn't even mention exchanges this week! We prayed SOOOO HARD for a miracle to happen. The sisters just got shotgunned into Topsham and have no one to teach! RIGHT after we left, they found a family to teach. The Lord answers our prayers when we do our best, and He sees fit to grant us according to our desires. I love Sister Pankratz and Sister Smith.