The Courage to Exercise Faith

I have had many times when I have had to choose faith, and most of those times have required a little bit of courage on my part. I can still remember the first time I had to really exercise faith. I was sitting in my college apartment staring at my recent pay check stub and the tithing slip sitting next to it. My stub read $239.16. My rent for the month had already taken $215 and my tithing was going to require the last $24. That would leave me with exactly 16 cents to get me through the rest of the month.

"I can always catch  up on my tithing later," were my thoughts. "The Lord understands that I need to eat. He knows that I have already been trying to spread $100 dollars over a month's worth of time and that I can't make it through two more weeks on what would now be a grand total of $11.16. I can't do it. He understands." Every fiber of my being was crying out in favor of keeping that $24. It may not have been much, but it tripled what I already had. My conscious, nurtured by the teaching of my parents, was putting up its own fight, however, and even though the litany in favor of waiting to fill out the tithing slip continued it was increasingly losing ground. "Just wait and pay it later. He understands." The words were still echoing in my head but they were getting quieter and quieter as I thought about all the times that the Lord may have understood my parents' circumstances but rather than asking him to, my parents went without and trusted in the promise that the Lord would open the windows of Heaven. With a huge sigh I opened my checkbook and wrote out a second check. The first check made the trip down to the office to ensure housing, and the other found its way into a gray envelope with my Bishop's name on it.

Not all of my experiences have been so extreme. I have not always been asked to step off the edge and pray that the Lord would catch me. In every instance where I was asked to exercise my faith; however, I was never dropped. After I paid my tithing I was blessed by an angel in the disguise of a roommate who offered to share and pay for the first two months of groceries. Another Angel asked if we could carpool to work, helping me save on my gas money. I cannot deny the window to heaven that opened before my gaze or the unmeasurable blessing that fell out.

I learned a lesson that Richard C. Edgley sums up nicely when he says, "Be aware that faith is not a free gift given without thought, desire, or effort. It does not come as the dew falls from heaven. The Savior said, “Come unto me” (Matthew 11:28) and “Knock, and it shall be [given] you” (Matthew 7:7). These are action verbs—come, knock. They are choices. So I say, choose faith. Choose faith over doubt, choose faith over fear, choose faith over the unknown and the unseen, and choose faith over pessimism"

Faith comes in small decisions or in big ones, and it often-for me-requires a great deal of courage. Let's not deny ourselves the blessings though. In the case of faith I can echo President Thomas S. Monson's declaration "Courage Counts!"