Day 138

  • Principle: Patience requires hope and trust in the Lord.  
  • Book of Mormon Reading: Alma 2:19 - 2:38
    • What can you learn from verses 29-31 about patience?
  • Robert D. Hales asked:

    • I have often pondered, Why is it that the Son of God and His holy prophets and all the faithful Saints have trials and tribulations, even when they are trying to do Heavenly Father’s will? Why is it so hard, especially for them? I think about Joseph Smith, who suffered illness as a boy and persecution throughout his life. Like the Savior, he cried out, “O God, where art thou?” (Doctrine and Covenants 121:1)Yet even when he was seemingly alone, he exercised his agency to wait upon the Lord and carry out his Heavenly Father’s will. I think of our pioneer forebears, driven from Nauvoo and crossing the plains, exercising their agency to follow a prophet even as they suffered sickness, privation, and some even death. Why such terrible tribulation? To what end? For what purpose? (Waiting upon the Lord, October 2011)

    • Take some time and write down your answers to these questions?  
  • Robert D. Hales answered these questions:


    • As we ask these questions, we realize that the purpose of our life on earth is to grow, develop, and be strengthened through our own experiences. How do we do this? The scriptures give us an answer in one simple phrase: we “wait upon the Lord.”12 Tests and trials are given to all of us. These mortal challenges allow us and our Heavenly Father to see whether we will exercise our agency to follow His Son. He already knows, and we have the opportunity to learn, that no matter how difficult our circumstances, “all these things shall [be for our] experience, and … [our] good.”13

      Does this mean we will always understand our challenges? Won’t all of us, sometime, have reason to ask, “O God, where art thou?”14 Yes! When a spouse dies, a companion will wonder. When financial hardship befalls a family, a father will ask. When children wander from the path, a mother and father will cry out in sorrow. Yes, “weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.”15 Then, in the dawn of our increased faith and understanding, we arise and choose to wait upon the Lord, saying, “Thy will be done.”16

      What, then, does it mean to wait upon the Lord? In the scriptures, the word wait means to hope, to anticipate, and to trust. To hope and trust in the Lord requires faith, patience, humility, meekness, long-suffering, keeping the commandments, and enduring to the end.

      To wait upon the Lord means planting the seed of faith and nourishing it “with great diligence, and … patience.”17

      It means praying as the Savior did—to God, our Heavenly Father—saying: “Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done.”18 It is a prayer we offer with our whole souls in the name of our Savior, Jesus Christ.

      Waiting upon the Lord means pondering in our hearts and “receiv[ing] the Holy Ghost” so that we can know “all things what [we] should do.”19

      As we follow the promptings of the Spirit, we discover that “tribulation worketh patience”20and we learn to “continue in patience until [we] are perfected.”21

      Waiting upon the Lord means to “stand fast”22and “press forward” in faith, “having a perfect brightness of hope.”23

      It means “relying alone upon the merits of Christ”24 and “with [His] grace assisting [us, saying]: Thy will be done, O Lord, and not ours.”25

      As we wait upon the Lord, we are “immovable in keeping the commandments,”26 knowing that we will “one day rest from all [our] afflictions.”27
       

      And we “cast not away … [our] confidence”28that “all things wherewith [we] have been afflicted shall work together for [our] good.”29 (Waiting upon the Lord, October 2011)

    • Compare your answer to his.  What sticks out?
    • If you have more time study the entire talk Waiting upon the Lord, October 2011.
  • Additional Study