Exceedingly Great Faith - Alma 13:3

I had just a few weeks left in my mission when this scripture (Alma 13:3) wormed it's way into my thoughts, my study and probably my teaching as well. If you get a chance to read it, do! It talks about the great war in Heaven before we came here and how the war was won.

It was Brother Carpenter, the father of a family we were really close to, who first asked me the question that made me look at this scripture so differently. The scripture talks about the 'exceedingly great faith' of those who fought on the Lord's side. Brother C. asked me, "What did they have faith in? How can they have exceedingly great faith in God and in Jesus Christ when they were living with them? They were taught by their presence. So, what does it mean in this scripture that they had exceedingly great faith?"

This question made me think. It made me study and research. I wanted to find an answer for Brother Carpenter. In the end, I came up with a few reasons.

This is what I think it meant to have "exceedingly great faith" in the context of those living with God before they came to this early life.

There were two plans presented in Heaven, there was God's Plan, the Plan of Happiness that centered on Christ and his Atonement for all mankind. His plan was also based on our agency, our ability to withstand the trials and temptations of this world and to make the right choices. To repent when we made mistakes and to accept Christ and his gospel in this life.  The other plan was presented by Lucifer, it was a plan that he said would ensure that every single one of God's children would make it back. There would be no agency, there would be no choice. All of God's children had to make a choice right then and there as to which plan they would support. Two-thirds of those children chose God's plan and those two-thirds are here on this earth. Those two-thirds are those who exercised our great faith. But HOW?

There are three things I came up with:

1. We had faith in our Heavenly Father that his plan was the right one for us. We had faith that agency was the only way we could learn and make our own choices-even our own mistakes. We had faith that his proposed plan was the only way that we could become more like Him-which is what we really, really wanted.

2. Once we had faith in the plan, we then had to have faith in Jesus Christ, our older brother. We had to have faith that he would fulfill His earthly mission. He would come to earth, he would be sinless though tempted, he would teach and minister, he would suffer for our sins and all our hardships on earth, he would die for us, and then He would be resurrected so that all of us could one day be resurrected. We had to have exceedingly great Faith that he would be able to do all of that because of his eternal, and unsurpassing love for each of us.  

But again, although there was a war in heaven over this decision, we were there and we saw and were taught the Father's Plan by the Father! We saw, and we knew of Christ's love for each of us! We still exercised our faith and choose the plan, but there is one more thing that we had to have faith in.

3. We had to have exceedingly great faith in OURSELVES. The plan in opposition the plan of happiness said that every person would make it back to live with God. That sounds very easy.

But we had heard the Father's plan, we had faith that he was right. We heard Jesus say he would go and be our Savior, we had faith in him. That final and maybe most hardest part to accept was to accept that we would have to go down to earth, away from our Father, and we would have to make choices, face temptation and trials, and make the right choices that would get us back to God. We had to have faith that we could do it. We had to look inside ourselves and ask if we could do it, if we could make all the right decisions, if we could give our will to the Father so that he could make us into the person that He knows we truly are. We had to exercise 'Exceedingly Great Faith' in ourselves.

But guess what? You did that. I did that. Because you and I are here, I know that we had Faith that we could do it. 

Sometimes, I forget that. Sometimes, life is hard. But then, luckily I'm surrounded by people who remind me that I am a Child of God and that He loves me, and He also has Faith in me. That makes a big difference. Whenever I come to this scripture in my study of the Book of Mormon, I'm reminded of Brother Carpenter and his question, and I'm lucky that he asked it and that it stuck with me. And just when things start to get stormy in life, sometimes Heavenly Father reminds me of this scripture. He did that this past weekend and I'm grateful for his constant love for me.

I know that sometimes I get caught up in everything going on around me, but there is so much more to life and to eternity than what is just right here surrounding you. There is so much more to the Plan of Happiness that we don't understand yet. But it is a plan of Happiness. So if you're not happy right now, remember that you can be and that it will all be okay.