Walking the Path of Discipleship: 3 Concepts to Help Us Along the Way
By Elizabeth Alexander
http://www.unexpectedlyperfect.com
@unexpectedly_perfect
“I’m not going to your wedding. For a church that claims to be so family oriented, they sure don’t support families by not letting everyone into the temple. It’s wrong that we can’t be part of the ceremony.”
This phone call from a beloved family member eighteen years ago still resonates in me. This is not the only opposition I’ve received while choosing to follow gospel teachings, and each time I’ve met resistance my spiritual stability has taken a hit. The path of discipleship is a daily choice. We each have the opportunity to turn our eyes and hearts to Him, but it can be difficult when the voices of contradiction constantly ring in our ears.
I grew up in a home that could be described as a nontraditional Latter-day Saint family. My parents were not active in the Church, but I could tell the gospel was important to my mom. I still recall as kids, my older sister and I pretending to be asleep on Sunday mornings, because we knew my parents would dress us up and drop us off at church without them. We hated going alone, so we would “sleep in” as long as possible to avoid it. After a while our parents gave up, and we stopped going.
The Lord didn’t give up on me however, and I was blessed with an older sister who started going to church with her own friends in another ward. My sister loved the young women program and because of this, I decided to start attending my home ward by myself. The week before I turned 12, a younger me could be seen walking the one mile to the church by myself and asking friends if I could sit with them during sacrament. This was just the beginning of the many times I would walk this path alone.
I look back in wonder at the determination of that young girl. I’m grateful for the choices I made then, because they have helped me as I’ve made the choice to continue in faith as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
As we strive to live gospel principles, we will inevitably face opposition. We may be mocked, and even considered ignorant. I’m sure I have family members who believe I stay because I choose to keep my head in the sand regarding what they see as bad policy, incorrect doctrine, and an archaic male hierarchy. Some may even say I stay because I’ve been indoctrinated.
I want to stand and say that I am not ignorant, repressed, nor indoctrinated. I choose to stay for reasons beyond what they comprehend. I stay because of the Spirit bearing witness to me time and again that this gospel is true. I stay because I know I am a daughter of a loving God, and nothing they say can change my mind. During the darkest moments of my life, the Lord was there. I was never alone and this is a fact.
Now you may say, “My testimony just isn’t there. How do we choose to stay when our testimony is faltering?” If you find yourself in this scenario, you are not alone. Satan works overtime to destroy our conviction to stay.
No matter the current status of our testimony, I want to focus on three key concepts to start implementing in our lives.
- Remember past faith building experiences.
Elder Neil L. Anderson said, “Brothers and sisters, we each have moments of spiritual power, moments of inspiration and revelation. We must sink them deep into the chambers of our souls. As we do, we prepare our spiritual home storage for moments of personal difficulty.”
Just like we prepare for natural disasters or increasing grocery prices by building a food storage, we must prepare ourselves spiritually for unknown future hardships and doubt.
The University of Waterloo, on a campus wellness page, teach their students about the curve of forgetting. They state that two days after learning new information, the average person will have forgotten 50-80% of newly learned information. After 30 days, we remember only 2-3% of the content. They continue to explain that when we review information we have learned, we can remember up to 100% of it.
Our human brains, though powerful, forget easily. When we document our spiritual experiences, we will be more likely to hold steadfast during hardship.
- When in doubt, plant a seed of faith.
“And now as I said concerning faith—faith is not to have a perfect knowledge of things; therefore if ye have faith ye hope for things which are not seen, which are true.
But behold, if ye will awake and arouse your faculties, even to an experiment upon my words, and exercise a particle of faith, yea, even if ye can no more than desire to believe, let this desire work in you, even until ye believe in a manner that ye can give place for a portion of my words” (Alma 32: 21 & 27).
It is normal to have doubts. Having doubt does not mean we have completely lost faith! The gospel is filled with principles that build upon one another to make up the gospel as a whole. Oftentimes we find one aspect of the gospel easy to accept and other parts a bit hard to swallow.
Alma Chapter 32 compares faith to a seed, which we must plant to allow it to grow. I encourage you to take the parts of the gospel that you find easy to believe, or at least have a desire to believe, and plant that as your seed. Pour your heart out to Heavenly Father and tell Him what you like about the Gospel and what you doubt. Ask Him to help the seed you have planted to grow and find understanding in those gospel principles you can’t make sense of.
- Actively build a relationship with Christ.
“…I do know that whosoever shall put their trust in God shall be supported in their trials, and their troubles, and their afflictions, and shall be lifted up at the last day” (Alma 36:3).
If the Savoir was mocked and rejected throughout His life, we too can expect to experience similar hardships when choosing to be His disciple. Christ bore these burdens with the perfect knowledge of God’s plan. Unlike Him, our knowledge has been obstructed by a veil, hindering our eternal perspective. When we build our relationship with Christ, He can help open our eyes. Through Christ we can learn God’s plan for us and endure any obstacle we face, by understanding and applying His atoning sacrifice in our lives. Christ will give us a reason to stay in the gospel, even if we can’t find a reason for ourselves.
These three key concepts are simple but powerful. They have helped me stay firmly on the path of discipleship through the ups and downs that life inevitably brings. If you were to receive a phone call from a loved one telling you all the reasons you are wrong for staying in the Church, how would you respond? I encourage you to make the choice now to fortify your foundation so you don’t crumble. If Satan has clouded your faith with webs of doubt, plant your seed of faith.
Just as I walked that lonely path to church by myself, sometimes it may feel like we are walking the path of discipleship alone. We see others falling away from the church at a rapid rate and it can be discouraging. I promise you are not alone, there are many of us clinging to the iron rod with faith and hope. Our Savior has promised glory and happiness beyond comprehension at the end of this long journey, and He is there to light the way.
Don’t give up on the Lord, He will never give up on you.
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