Looking up

I am going to piggy back off of a talk that was shared in sacrament meeting today.  It was awesome, to say the least.  His focus was on gratitude.  The way he taught it, though, was by focusing on the idea of "looking up."  This hit me so hard because I realized that once again I had been so caught up in my own problems that I had neglected to express my gratitude to my Heavenly Father.  I wanted to sneak out right then and fix this.  What I learned from this talk is that we are always going to struggle with something in our lives, and if we look down, Satan will pull us down further.  He will blind us from the light that is always surrounding us.  But if we can exercise even a little bit of faith by looking up, looking to the Lord, looking to the light, we will be given the power and strength we need to get through anything.  This brother also said, however, that even if we are looking up, Satan will still try to pull us down with fear.  We have to cast out fear and let faith take over.  I came across an article from this month's Ensign that hit this idea perfectly.  This is by Elder Brent H. Nielson, and it is entitled: "Move Forward with Faith."

"The biggest challenge seems to be fear—fear of the future, fear of failure, fear of not knowing who {we} are or what {we} can become. I have learned a very important lesson. In the gospel of Jesus Christ, fear is the opposite of faith. If you have fear, faith diminishes, but if you have faith, fear diminishes."

This is me!  I constantly fear all of these things.  There was a time in my life when it was so easy to have faith.  I literally never doubted that things would work themselves out.  I am now far removed from that person, and it has been quite the battle to find that conviction again.  I keep thinking about this situation where I desperately needed guidance.  I felt like Heavenly Father wanted me to do something big, but it scared me.  Logically, I could not see how it would work out.  I feared what it would mean for the future.  I feared we would in no way be prepared and we would fail.  I just could not see it working out.  Well, I received one very strong witness that I should listen to what Heavenly Father was telling me.  Then Satan started working on me really hard.  He threw everything he could at me to scare me, and it worked for a while.  So Jeff and I fasted together about this, and we both immediately knew the answer.  When the answer came, all of the fear I had been feeling for the past months were immediately replaced by peace and joy and excitement.  However, it did not take Satan long to start messing with me again.  I prayed for strength to rise above this and see the light that is promised us.  I needed to know without a doubt that we were making the right decision.  My third confirmation came a few days later, when I felt filled with that beautiful light and hope.  This time it stayed!  I knew we needed to listen to what Heavenly Father was telling me, so I finally acted on this loving inspiration.  Now I have to exercise faith in His plan for us as we walk forward into the future.

"In The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, we need have no fear. We need not fear death, because we have faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and His gift of the Resurrection. We need not fear what man can do to us, because we know that if God is with us and if we have faith in Jesus Christ, we can accomplish whatsoever thing is expedient to His work (seeMoroni 7:33). We need not fear the future, because we know that as we keep the commandments, the Lord will bless us.

Paul teaches, “For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind” (2 Timothy 1:7). We move forward with faith in God the Father and in His Son, Jesus Christ."

When you read those quotes, don't you just feel like saying "How could I ever fear anything knowing what Heavenly Father has given me and promised me?"  That is how it makes me feel.  We must look up, to the promises and blessing surrounding us.  Life will be hard at times.  It will bring heartbreak and uncertainty.  Burdens will weigh us down at times.  We will probably lose sight of what is important and miss many glorious blessings while we are in that lost state.  However, we need to know that Heavenly Father will never abandon us.  He sacrificed His only begotten Son so that we could have hope in our future, so that we would never truly be alone in this life.  Because of what the Savior did for us, He is able to lift us up and carry us when we need it.  No matter the difficulty we are facing, we will eventually find our way back to the light if we can exercise the faith to look up.  That is what the Atonement is for.  That is why we have the gospel today so that we can have this knowledge, so we MUST use it.