Faith by asking

This post is part of the General Conference Odyssey. This week covers the Sunday Morning Session of the October 1982 Conference.

I really dislike the semi-flippant term "adulting" you hear people tossing around these days, as if it's so commendable for a person to do something responsible. So it was refreshing to hear Elder Derek A. Cuthbert's talk about some childlike qualities we should seek for, and some "grown-up" qualities we should seek for. It was an interesting concept for a talk, and I liked it. It was great to hear someone speak seriously about traits like leadership, wisdom, dependability, accountability, and self-mastery. I particularly loved this insight:

However, it is not being accountable that brings maturity. It is realizing that we are accountable, acting accordingly, and being prepared to give an accounting to those in authority over us and eventually to the Lord himself.

My favorite part of this talk, though, was tucked into a paragraph about faith:

It has always been a source of happiness to my wife and me when one of our children has shown faith by asking for a blessing of health or of comfort and counsel.

I don't know if that seems revolutionary to you, but it does to me. All my life I have heard about asking for things "in faith," and so when I ask for something (either asking God for it in a prayer, or asking for a blessing as in Elder Cuthbert's example), I am usually concerned that I might not be doing it with enough faith. Everyone knows that we can't always expect God to give us what we ask for, but there's also the variable of "maybe he wanted to give it to me, but I didn't ask with enough faith."

But this paragraph just says that we show faith BY ASKING. The act of asking IS an act of faith. That seems amazing to me!

I'm sure there is still something valuable about striving to ask with MORE faith, and I know that asking isn't the ONLY thing we do to show faith (we have to act on previous answers, and be patient, and ask the right kinds of questions, and so forth)—but I still think this is a pretty cool thing to know: when I'm brave enough, or humble enough, or determined enough to just ask, in that moment, I am showing faith.

Other posts in this series:

http://www.jrganymede.com/2019/02/10/22588/

https://www.reliefsocietywomen.com/2019/02/11/of-rites-and-privileges/