LDS WHY

Several years ago I starting cutting my own hair. It works well—usually. But one afternoon when the razor first touched my hair, I felt something uncomfortable, and heard a loud buzzing noise. It only took a half second for me to realize that something was wrong—I had forgotten to put on the attachment, and had created a bald spot in my head!

When my wife saw it, she was horrified. “You can’t go out like that,” she said. So she got a permanent marker and colored in the bald spot. But that just made it look worse!

Then she said, “After the haircut we’ll have some extra hair. Why don’t we just take some of the extra hair and superglue it to your head.”

And you know what, it worked!

Fortunately there was a quick solution to my bald patch—this wasn’t really a “trial.”

But as we go through life there there are many problems we face that are not so easily we resolved. Some times life is just plain hard. That is why I love President Susan W. Tanner’s motto, “I can do hard things!”

I noticed that the scriptures are full of people who did hard things. We can learn from them. For example:

Nephi building a ship. When the Lord asked him to build a ship, Nephi didn’t ask “why?” or look for excuses; rather he said, “Where shall I go to find the tools” (17:8-9). Even when Nephi’s brother’s complained against them he still had faith that with the Lord’s power he could do anything. (17:18-51).

Alma the Elder and his people. When they were in bondage they poured out their souls to God (Mosiah 24:12), submitted with cheerfulness and patience (24:15). We can do that too!

Alma and Amulek in prison.  One of the things they did in the midst of this “hard thing” was “they answered nothing” (Alma 14:19). They also prayed for strength. That is a powerful scriptural pattern. Don’t pray for your problems to go away, pray for the strength to overcome them.

Paul, the Apostle. Consider the trials he went through: “Of the Jews five times received I forty stripes save one. Thrice was I beaten with rods, once was I stoned, thrice I suffered shipwreck, a night and a day I have been in the deep; In journeyings often, in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils by mine own countrymen, in perils by the heathen, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils among false brethren; In weariness and painfulness, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness” (2 Corinthians 11:24-27).

Still he said, “I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content” (Philippians 4:11). We too can learn to be content, even in the midst of hard things.

You can do hard things. In fact, this is the subject of a new talk on CD I gave called, “I can do hard things!” (Deseret Book just published it). I noticed you can download it here for around half the price of getting the actual CD. You can also view the slides that accompany the talk here and sample a small portion of the talk here.

I’d like to give away a couple free copies of the CD – if you’re a youth, or know a youth who could use it, make a comment on this site, or on our Facebook page. You can share a scriptural example of someone who did a hard thing, tell us how you accomplish hard things, or simply say, “I want the CD.” A winner will be selected in about a week.

You CAN do hard things!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 18th, 2010 at 7:36 pm and is filed under Trials. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.