By Experiment and by Faith

19 Jan 2016

The human mind is feeble and limited. When we are commanded to have faith we are transcending the normal thought process to a higher plane of thought. But from that higher plane we must still look down and acknowledge the way of human thought. Believing in something we cannot see does not mean we don't have to see somethings in order to believe them. The past few months, I have been involved in the initial phases of a social venture in Ghana. To get where we are today, there has had to be a fine balance between basing important decisions by experiment and that by faith. 

From the very beginning, my group has had good motivation and high hopes but strongly lacked in the concrete skills in business management. We had faith that we would be able to conquer the tasks ahead and that, if it were right, Heavenly Father would assist us. From that faith, the windows of heaven were opened and time and time again, we were amazed by the wonderful blessings that rained down. So many times, we would be in a position where we came to a road block that we had no way to overcome. But without fail, every time, something miraculous would happen; we would meet someone who knew the exact data we needed, airline tickets would drop or obstacles would just suddenly be removed. We had a strong faith that all we were doing was in line with the Lord’s will and as long as we humbly accepted his assistance and strived to do good, we would be in his hands. 

Just as much as we had faith however, we had to validate our ideas in a real world way. We applied for competitions and grants and had to pitch in front of businessmen with decades of experience and convince them that our claims could be proven and could be profitable. We spent months in Ghana gathering data and making contacts and made presentations and had arguments. We had to prove to the world that we had what it took. If we went in to these experienced businessmen and told them about how much hope we had and how optimistic we were about our ideas, we would have been kicked to the curb and stopped before we ever started. We had to use a combination of science and faith to have the brightest outcome.

Alma stated that we must “experiment upon [his] words, and exercise a particle of faith, yea, even if ye can no more than desire to believe.” We do not blindly place our trust into a God that we have a relationship, we must search out and experiment on the principles of the gospel. Wee must dig deep and really search to find what is true. When we do that with good intent, we will build a testimony that can never be shaken.