My faith-shaking experience talk

I was asked to speak in sacrament meeting last Sunday. However, I wasn't assigned a topic and I would also be speaking with a recently returned missionary from our ward.

So I came home and looked over my blog posts and journal entries and narrowed it down to two topics.

And then I prayed about it.

For the next couple of days thoughts kept coming to me regarding one of the two topics, so I went with it. I prayed to the Lord and told him how I was proceeding and that if it wasn't the right avenue, to please let me know.

Here's the notes to my talk. They are probably somewhat jumbled and random and scattered, but there is one thing I've learned from listening to talks and giving talks and that's to not ever read your talk. So I've really tried to not do that and therefore these are the notes I have. Again, they are also just notes. I don't really remember what I said other than the bishop afterwards was amazed I wasn't given a topic because it's exactly what he's been thinking about -- how to strengthen faith in moments of doubt. I also had so many people tell me what a great talk it was which kind of made me a little embarrassed. I just spoke from my heart and I'm sure the spirit did the rest. 

When Mormon was compiling the Book of Mormon he knew that The Book of Mormon was going to be for our day and he knew the challenges we would face and chose therefore to include 4 incidences with so-called Anti-Christs. The modern equivalent of an anti-Christ is anyone or anything meant to shake a person’s faith or cause doubt or concern. Michael Wilcox likes to calls them faith shakers. Jacob gets to deal with Sherem and Alma, who ironically was a faith shaker himself, gets to handle the other three. Although these faith shakers happened to be real people, life experiences can also be faith shakers.

There is one thing I do know and that is WE ALL WILL AT SOMETIME IN OUR LIFE ENCOUNTER A FAITH SHAKING EXPERIENCE.

7 ½ years ago, right about the time I turned 30, my own faith was challenged in a way that completely changed my life . . . at least the life I was used to living. It was challenged in a way I never expected and I wasn’t sure how I would make it through this faith shaking experience unscathed? It was the darkest time I have ever gone through in my life.

Looking back it is not something I ever want to go through again. But in hindsight I wouldn’t trade it for the blessings that have come from it and from the lessons I have learned.

Some things I’ve learned: 

• Faith is a conscious choice


• It made me really evaluate my own testimony and decide what is was I actually knew deep in my heart. Up until that time I had never on my own stood up to bear my testimony on Fast Sunday. But I got brave one day and did it and since then it has become easier. There is truth in the fact that your testimony grows in the bearing of it.


• As a family we became more diligent in our family scripture reading and FHE. I remember one morning I had gone outside to shovel the snow and when I came back in, ready to gather everyone up, there were my kids with their scriptures open and they had already made it through the first column. These were little kids – Kiersten might have been 6 or 7.


• Cling forever to the things you know when you’re surrounded by things you don’t know. The time to jump ship is not in the middle of the storm. STAY IN THE BOAT. STAY FAITHFUL. DON’T WALK AWAY.


• The Son always come up. In the darkest of nights, the Son is always on duty and when we need him, we can find him through prayer, through meditation, through the scriptures.


• Faith is an assurance that things will work out for my good. I may not know how, I may not know when, but I know they will because Heavenly Father is in charge.


• Faith is a real power. Some might think it's a crutch to lean on in times of difficulty, but I know otherwise.


• Light and darkness cannot occupy the same space. Same with fear. When I start to be fearful and worry, my faith is waning.


• One aspect of the atonement is there is no end to the Savior’s ability to succor us in our pains, afflictions, temptations. The atonement is as much for me who was hurting as for anyone who had ever committed a wrong.


• Sometimes when going through a difficult time we want to ask the Lord to take away the trial, the pain, the sorrow. Instead we should pray for the grit to continue, the willpower to hang tough, the strength to persevere.


• Instead of asking WHY questions . . . Why is this happening to me?, I learned instead to ask WHAT questions . . . what do I need to learn from this experience? What can I do to help those around me? What can I do for my family?


• Korihor asked Alma to show him a sign. He needed a sign to be convinced that there really was a God. But you know, he had signs all around him. I became more aware of the tender mercies the Lord gives us every day and began writing those down. When I consciously began looking for those divine signatures from the Lord, my faith was strengthened in him.


• There is unequivocally a God in heaven who knows me, knows exactly what I’m going through, and even knows my name.

Jacob tells us that upon encountering Sherem, Sherem  “had hope to shake me from the faith, notwithstanding the many revelations and the many things which I had seen concerning these things; for I truly had seen angels, and they had ministered unto me. And also, I had heard the voice of the Lord speaking unto me in very word, from time to time; wherefore, I could not be shaken.”