You're Strong Enough (7 page)

Then, one day, I asked my husband to give me a blessing. A blessing is given by someone who holds the priesthood of God and is inspired to tell you what God wants you to know in that moment. In this particular blessing, my husband said something that opened my eyes to my own quest. He said, “Kassi, our Heavenly Father wants you to know that He loves you very much and He understands the pain and suffering you have felt and are feeling at this time. He wants you to continue to call on Him for strength and comfort while going through this trial.”

My husband paused, “Kassi, the trial of your headaches was handpicked for you. This was the only way God could test you to see if you would still believe and have faith in Him while going through so much pain. Be strong and faithful and God will help you any way He can while you are going through this trial.”

After the blessing, I felt a sense of peace fill my soul. From that time forward, I have been able to handle my daily headaches with peace.

I know that I am on a quest. This is one of those obstacles that may continue to be on my path for the rest of my life. But, I also know God made me strong enough to overcome it. This trial was handpicked for me to see if I will continue to believe and press forward, having faith that God will not test me more than I can bear. If I make good choices, despite my trials, then the quest I am on will be rewarded.

Challenges

The trials we are faced with are handpicked for us for our ultimate growth and learning, whereas, the
challenges
that befall us are because of free agency.
Challenges are caused by the poor choices humans make that affect us personally.
For example: My headaches are a trial for me because it was not caused by mine or others’ poor choices, whereas my parents’ divorce was my challenge.

A challenge occurs when you or others caused you harm, and it affected your life deeply (raped). Some challenges are harder to overcome and take a lot more effort (forgiveness, healing, help, new beliefs…) on your part than others. But, God will make sure you will have what you need, when you need it. Remember, God cannot take away humans’ free agency, but He can make us strong enough to get through anything we are challenged with.

When challenges come your way, know that God would not have ever sent us down here without the right tools to fix our problems or a way to find relief from them
. This relief from our challenges is found in Matt. 11:28-30, which states, “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest…”

Picture yourself on the path toward returning home as an heir to the throne. You have fought the dragon of lies, accepted your trial of your parents’ divorce, feel secure with the progress you’ve made so far and are feeling pretty good about yourself. Then, as you’re walking back, someone comes over and intentionally throws you to the ground (bullied). What you do?

This is a new challenge. Someone has abused their free agency and hurt you. Do you give up? Do you stop because someone else has lost sight of who they are and the quest they are supposed to be on? Or do you pick yourself up, dust yourself off, forgive them, and keep moving forward?

Throughout our lives we will encounter challenges because of other people. It is part of our quest to see what we will do with the challenges with which we are faced when other people use their free agency
poorly.

Faith Strengthened by Knowledge

God gave everyone the strengths needed to overcome their personal problems and challenges. Now, it’s our job to believe and have faith that He has given us what we need to overcome anything, so that we can succeed. If you have a trial or challenge that is extremely difficult, have the faith to ask for His help and it will be given to you. If you believe that you are strong enough for your trials, then use that knowledge to help you during your obstacles here on Earth.

There may be times when someone crosses your path and you can’t handle the situation alone (i.e., child being molested). That’s why God places others (like family) in your path to help you. Remember, God can help you overcome anything—no matter what life throws at you. With Him you are strong enough.

Ultimate strength to overcome anything comes from believing and counseling with God.

The purpose of life, and the purpose of the quest, is to be challenged, to be tried and to be true to our course. Each quest we face will be full of obstacles, darkness, confusion, doubt and fear. Just remember, when we passed our first quest of being warriors for freedom and light and then were knighted with the body. We were thrilled to take part in this test to prove ourselves worthy to be heirs to the Kingdom of God. We were thrilled because we knew we had what it takes to overcome anything.

Anything worth having in this life, and in the next, will take hard work, struggle, mistakes and even falling down.
Never give up.
Never stop fighting, for you are worth the end reward. No matter what struggles or fights we will have with the dragon on our quest, just know that our Heavenly Father gave us every strength, talent, tool, pieces of armor, and insight that we would need to come out victorious in the end. Everyone is strong enough to return home with honor after defeating the dragon, Satan, and conquering their quest.

Your Quest for Knowledge

Your first quest
is to be grateful for your body. I want you to take an hour and not use your legs. You can crawl if you need something. But, you cannot walk. You may think:
That’s easy. I will just watch TV.
Then, instead, do not use your eyes. Take this challenge seriously.

Write down how limited you felt. What kind of struggle it was. And, hopefully, how grateful you are to have this tool (body) to enjoy life with.

Your second quest
is to give your free agency away. For one hour, I want you to have everyone make all of your choices. This means needing to go the bathroom, eat, sleep, brush your teeth…every decision. You cannot choose anything for yourself. Find someone that will tell you what to do. (Maybe your younger sibling. They’d love that.)

How did you feel about not being able to choose for yourself? How is this like having Satan trying to take away our choices through coaxing us to misuse our free agency (i.e., you steal, you’re in jail). Write down the similarities between these two experiences.

Your Last quest
is to write down your trials (things, people that unintentionally inhibit you) and your challenges (caused by poor choices made by you or others). Now, write down the gifts and strengths you feel you have that will help you overcome. Then write down the ones you will need God’s help with. Ask for His help.

Your body is a gift

Your free agency a reward

Your trials a character builder

Your Challenge is a testing ground

H
ere we are on Earth, trying to find our way in this dark and dreary world, while constantly fighting with the dragon. We have each been given this physical body and the freedom to choose. But now, we find ourselves searching for more because of our challenges and trials. We are searching for inner strength, deeper peace and feelings of greater love.
We find ourselves looking for more than what the world can give.
In other words, we find ourselves smack dab in the mists of darkness, trying to find the light that shows us our way back home.

Though we realize we are of royal birth, we still find ourselves asking questions like:
What do we do when we fall down? What do we do if the dark mists get too intense? How do we know what we should avoid on our paths?
Our Heavenly Father not only gave us the tools, the Spirit, family and the armor of God to help us on our quest, but He also gave us other ways of knowing what to avoid, where to turn for guidance and what to do when we
fall.

Each of our Heavenly Father’s children is unique in his/her personality, purpose, quest, strengths and weaknesses.

Strengths and Weaknesses

When searching for inner strength, we must begin by looking in the mirror.
Our Heavenly Father has given each of us strengths and weaknesses. Our strengths are here to build confidence in our ability to conquer in our individual quests. Our weaknesses are here to keep us humble and seek God’s assistance and counsel.

To find inner strength, we must first discover our strengths and weaknesses. If we know our strengths and weaknesses, then we can be better prepared to know what we can handle and what we can’t handle alone.

To find out what your strength and weaknesses are, you can do two things. First, you can find out by just asking someone you trust and cares about you. Second, you can search within.

Ask Someone Else

When you ask someone what they think your strengths and weaknesses are, you might find it a bit scary because you feel vulnerable. Therefore, you would want to ask someone who really knows you and cares about you. Ask this trusted person what strengths and talents they see you have inside. Then ask them what they see you need to be careful of (weaknesses). Gather this information. Then, look within. If you are satisfied with the answers, focus on those. If one or two don’t seem to fit, then look deep inside and be honest with yourself. Ask yourself:
Are these characteristics really true?
If they aren’t, toss them out. If they are and you didn’t like how they made you feel, they are probably things you need to deal with, especially if your instinct was to toss them out quickly. After you’ve asked the opinion of a trusted person, you can leave it at that or you can try the second way: to search within.

Search within

When searching within, write down the things that you’re good at—things that come easy to you (e.g., smart, good with kids, kind, forgiving). When you are thinking of things that you’re good at, be kind to yourself. No one else has to see this list except for you. So, be proud of yourself. It’s okay to know that you have talents and strengths from God. We all do.
Our Heavenly Father gave everyone strengths, so that we can enjoy life and be
happy.

List your strengths first when searching within, so that the weaknesses are easier to admit. Remember, our Heavenly Father gives us weaknesses so that we will draw close to Him and rely on Him. If all humans were good at everything and never had to work on anything, then this quest of ours would be easy.

As you think about your weaknesses, write down the things you have trouble with and could work on. For example: If you are quick to anger, then your temper is a weakness. If you are easily addicted to things (i.e., food, alcohol, drugs, pornography, women, gossip…), then self-control is a weakness.

Knowledge is Power

You may ask:
Why is knowing our strengths and weaknesses a powerful tool for inner strength?
Knowing what to watch out for (weaknesses) and what to use when your confidence is low (strengths) will not only help you on this quest, but will help you be smarter than the dragon. Knowledge is power.
Your knowledge of your strengths and weaknesses will not only make you more powerful on your quest, but will also help you know what pitfalls to avoid.

If you know you have a problem with pornography, and you want to overcome it, wouldn’t this knowledge give you power when choosing your unobserved activities? What would you do when no one is looking? Knowing our weaknesses and what to avoid will help us when those weaknesses are challenged. Knowing how to avoid certain pitfalls on our quest and what strengths to draw on when struggling will help us on this quest to becoming an heir in the Kingdom of God.

Drawing on our strengths will help build confidence, and being watchful when our weaknesses are challenged, will help us defeat the dragon when He tries to lure us in through temptation. Knowing each will make us stronger during our quest here on Earth. For instance, if you know you’re not good at climbing, but you are really good at navigating, which activity will you choose when given the opportunity?
Use your God given strengths to build your confidence and bring joy to your
life.

Discovering our strengths and weaknesses is just the tip of the iceberg on finding inner strength. Though the strengths will aid us in doing well on our quest, what happens when we fall because of our weaknesses? Who can pick us up? Who’s going to heal us when we get wounded? And who can help us fight the dragon? The one who can help us when we fall, when we get wounded, and when we need to destroy the dragon is the one who went before us. It is the one who finished His quest perfectly, so that we didn’t have to. His name is Jesus Christ, our Savior.

Jesus Christ has many names. One is the Savior of the World. Another is the Healer, the Peacemaker, and the Sacrificial Lamb. Jesus Christ gets these names because of the quest that He had to finish.
His ultimate and all-powerful quest was to die for the sins of the world and to be resurrected.
As we mentioned before, resurrection is a free gift to all those who passed their first quest in the Preexistence. When He died for the sins of the world, Jesus did so for those who would seek His forgiveness, healing power, and comfort in this dreary world. As a result, we can draw inner strength knowing we can be healed when we get hurt and forgiven when we have fallen. The combination of His sacrifice and resurrection is called the atonement.

Christ’s Atonement

The atonement has three major purposes. The first purpose is to be forgiven for sin.
(A sin is an act contrary to God’s commandments that was done on purpose.) Jesus Christ suffered in Gethsemane for every human sin that could ever be done on this Earth. In Luke 22: 41 we read, “…Saying, Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me: nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done…” Though this suffering caused Him and the heavens to tremble because of pain, He still did the will of the Father, for us.

Jesus Christ suffered for the sins of the world so that, if we repent, we can be forgiven. When Jesus Christ suffered in Gethsemane, He felt every sin that would ever be conceived here on Earth so that, no matter what we do wrong, we can be forgiven. He did this so that, if we fall off our path—whether how small (a lie) or large (stealing)—we can be forgiven, picked up and put back on our path. No quest is over here on Earth, no matter how many times we fall, because of the atonement.

Christ suffered so that we did not have to lose our reward as heirs in the Kingdom of God if we messed up. Therefore, if you have sinned, no matter how great, and you repent, you have the opportunity of having it wiped away through the Savior’s atonement. For example: Let’s say, while trekking on your path, you find yourself in a bad mood and hungry. As you walk along, you come across another napping under a tree. As you look closer, you notice they left their food out in the open, so you help yourself. Later that day, you start to feel bad because you just stole someone else’s food. You repent and ask God to truly forgive you. As God sees you are truly sorry, He forgives you and wipes that sin clean.

The second purpose of the atonement is to make up the difference between our mistakes (things done unintentionally) and God’s perfection.
In other words, the atonement makes up for the gap between God’s perfection and our imperfections. In order to receive and be like our Heavenly Father, we must complete our task of defeating the dragon, following Christ’s example and finishing our quest.

The only way to do this is to have Jesus Christ bridge the gap between the impossible task of doing everything perfectly and doing everything using our best efforts. For example: During your quest you come across a bridge full of planks that you must cross. You think to yourself,
No big deal
, so you proceed to cross. As you cross this unstable bridge, you find there are ten missing planks in front of you. What do you do? You can’t go back because this is the only way home. So you pray for help. Because of the atonement, those ten planks are filled and you are able to cross. The atonement bridged the gap after you went as far as you could.

The third purpose of the atonement is to be healed.
The atonement has the power to heal what has been done to you physically, sexually, emotionally, spiritually and mentally. It also has the power to heal illness, health problems, afflictions, hate, anger, revenge and spite. It is an all-encompassing, all-inclusive, all-powerful gift.

God and Jesus Christ knew that innocent people would be harmed by others—intentionally and unintentionally—here on Earth. They knew we needed a way to be healed on our quest when we got wounded. They knew there needed to be a way to be healed, not just for the sinner, but for the innocent.

The atonement has the power to heal; the power to bring back innocence when innocence was taken; to bring back faith where faith has been destroyed; to bring back health when sickness took over; to bring back trust when trust was abused; and to bring back wholeness to all empty souls. The atonement is readily available, just like the armor of God. The only way to use the benefit of the atonement, like the armor of God, is to seek and ask for it. As we use the atonement in our lives, we will not only find inner strength to keep going, but a sense of peace that Christ will make up the difference.