By Faith All Things are Fulfilled - Marcus B. Nash

Sunday, March 3, 2019

By Faith All Things are Fulfilled - Marcus B. Nash

The life of Ann Rowley, a pioneer woman in the early days of the Church, demonstrates how exercising faith impacts our lives for good. A widow from England, Sister Rowley exercised her faith to answer the prophet’s call to gather to Zion. She was a member of the Willie handcart company, which encountered deep snowdrifts along the trail in the fall of 1856. They had reached a point in the trek where her seven children were literally starving. She wrote: “It hurt me to see my children go hungry. … Night was coming and there was no food for the evening meal. I asked God’s help as I always did. I got on my knees, remembering two hard sea biscuits that … had been left over from the sea voyage. They were not large, and were so hard they couldn’t be broken. Surely, that was not enough to feed 8 people, but 5 loaves and 2 fishes were not enough to feed 5,000 people either, but through a miracle, Jesus had done it. So, with God’s help, nothing is impossible. I found the biscuits and put them in a dutch oven and covered them with water and asked for God’s blessing. Then I put the lid on the pan and set it on the coals. When I took off the lid a little later, I found the pan filled with food. I kneeled with my family and thanked God for his goodness. That night my family had sufficient food.”
Ann Rowley was living the gospel at great personal sacrifice. She needed help and asked for it in prayer. Because of her faith, she was filled with hope and miraculously provided with food for her
family. The Lord also blessed her with the eternally significant ability to “endure in faith to the end.”
Despite an uncertain future, she did not demand to know how she was going to feed her children the
next day; instead, she patiently “wait[ed] upon the Lord” and pressed forward with hope.

The Lord commands us to take “the shield of faith wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked.” Satan will use such things as doubt, fear, or sin to tempt us to let go of faith and lose the protection it offers. Let us briefly examine each of these challenges to faith in turn so that we can recognize and heed not the adversary’s temptations.

First, unbelief in the Lord or His gospel will cause us to resist the Spirit of God. The Lord’s antidote for doubt is simple. As King Benjamin declared, “Believe in God; believe that he is, and that he created all things, both in heaven and in earth; believe that he has all wisdom, and all power, both in heaven and in earth; believe that man doth not comprehend all the things which the Lord can comprehend.”

Second, fear distracts from and undermines faith in the Savior. The Apostle Peter looked to the Lord one stormy night and walked on water--until he averted his gaze and “saw the wind boisterous [and] was afraid” and then sank into the stormy sea. He could have continued walking if he had not feared! Rather than our focusing upon and fearing the boisterous wind and waves in our lives, the Lord invites us to “look unto me in every thought; doubt not, fear not.”

Third, sin diminishes the presence of the Spirit in our lives, and without the Holy Ghost, we will lack the spiritual stamina to hold onto and exercise faith. It is best to exercise our faith to “touch not the evil gift, nor the unclean thing” and to “be diligent in keeping all [the] commandments, lest … your faith fail you, and your enemies triumph over you.” If sin has stained your life, I invite you to exercise “faith unto repentance,” and the Savior, through the Atonement, will purify and heal your life.

President Thomas S. Monson has stated, “The future is as bright as your faith.” I testify of that sublime, hopeful truth and invite each of us to steadfastly press forward with faith in the Lord, “nothing wavering.” I know that the Savior lives, is “the author and the finisher of [our] faith,” and the “rewarder of them that diligently seek him.” I so testify in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.