Fully persuaded

This post is part of the General Conference Odyssey. This week covers the Sunday Morning Session of the October 1999 Conference.

President Faust's talk "Hope, an Anchor to the Soul" is one I've come across a few times when studying hope. I don't remember it from when he gave it, though. Maybe I wasn't as interested in hope back then when I was young and carefree! I'm interested now. I loved how he started the talk right off with this:

There are tremendous sources of hope beyond our own ability, learning, strength, and capacity. Among them is the gift of the Holy Ghost.

Seems kind of obvious, I guess, but it didn't occur to me before that when I'm feeling hopeless, I can pray for the Spirit and he can actually give me hope beyond my own. That seems pretty amazing.

I've mostly stopped trying to distinguish faith from hope. They are so close to each other, and every time I think I've found a definition that tells me the difference, I find another one that mixes them up again. But I think I sort of understand in my head (though I don't know that I can explain). Faith is tied to action, I know that. And faith is properly fixed on Jesus Christ. Hope…I think…is more about ourselves, and those we love. Faith believes that Jesus Christ can save anyone, and hope says he will help ME. Or, maybe I still don't quite understand it! Anyway, I like this tidbit Elder Faust adds:

Hope is trust in God’s promises, faith that if we act now, the desired blessings will be fulfilled in the future. Abraham “against hope believed in hope, that he might become the father of many nations.” Contrary to human reason, he trusted God, “fully persuaded” that God would fulfill His promises of giving Abraham and Sarah a child in their old ages.

And then there's this:

Priesthood blessings lift us and sustain us. Hope also comes from direct personal revelation, to which we are entitled if we are worthy.

It sounds so wonderful—to be "fully persuaded" that God will always help me. I think the "fully" in that sentence covers even the cases (all of them?) where we are the ones at fault, we are the ones that lack, we are the ones keeping ourselves from progressing—still; we can "fully" believe because God makes up for all those lacks when we turn to Him!

Really, I think all of these ideas fit with my sense of what hope is pretty well. When Abraham believed God's promises, he was taking an abstract idea that God was trustworthy, and bringing it onto his own level, in his own life, to give him hope. And Abraham's personal revelation about what God would do for him gave him hope as well—again, hope that the God of Universe would actually orchestrate specific blessings in Abraham's own small story. 

It's what I want to hope for too!

Other posts in this series:

The Book of Mormon is True—by Rozy

Peace…and Something for Everyone—by Nathaniel Givens