“For he will give unto the faithful line upon line, precept upon precept; and I will try you and prove you herewith.” D&C 98:12
School has started and I am in my last two classes for my masters. Like most boys and girls young and old, I look at what I need to learn and am overwhelmed about the amount of work that lies ahead of me. I ask myself, “How am I ever going to get all this done?” The answer is simple and it is always the same: line upon line, precept upon precept. Then, if I have learned the material well enough, I am able to pass the “trying and proving” or in other words, the tests. The hard part that most of us have is the patience to learn line upon line, precept upon precept. When the tasks become more difficult than we like, we tend to give up or find an easier way. When we do shy away from the difficult tasks and we think things have gotten easier, we will eventually be pulled back to the same problems over and over again until we learn what we must. Therefore, we need to be patient while we are in our learning and proving stages of our life.
So, why is patience an important part of learning? It doesn’t matter who we are, we all have a process by which we learn. A few out there have eidetic memories where they can remember everything that they read, hear, see, smell and any other piece of sensory information that their brain can catalogue. These remarkable people still have to learn by their process of experiencing what it is that they need to learn. They cannot know Shakespeare without reading Shakespeare. They cannot know how to do open heart surgery without being guided through the process of book learning and the actual doing. Like everyone else, they do not learn by osmosis and intuition, they learn by being patient through line upon line, precept upon precept. This is the same for everyone else.
For those who become experts in their careers, they do not simply become knowledgeable in every aspect of their expertise, it usually takes a lifetime of learning and still they are finding out what else they do not know. A famous example is the history of flight. The Wright Brothers did not just happen to create the perfect airplane on their first try; it was through the many trials and errors throughout history, and their own failed attempts that they were able successfully create the airplane. Furthermore, they did not create the fighter jet, which would take many years for inventors to accomplish that design. This has been a process of line upon line, precept upon precept.
So, why is it difficult to understand that faith and hope in Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ are any different? In many aspects we think that we just need to have faith by just saying we have faith. We might say to ourselves, “Hey, I went to church during the important times—Christmas and Easter; I gave to a charity and it really helped me get a better refund on my taxes; I opened the door for someone.” These are not bad things and if there is a worldly benefit from doing them, so much the better, however, they are not things that truly help us grow our faith in God. To gain and grow our knowledge, faith and hope in Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ, we need to follow the same principles of line upon line, precept upon precept that we would do for any other worldly pursuit. We learn of the history, from those who have gone before us and recorded their experiences—successes and failures; we practice or experience, by going to church regularly, having meaningful prayers, paying tithing, doing those things that Christ asked us to do; we teach what we have learned to continue the process (many times this is listening to the prophets and apostles, and leaders of the church, or even by teaching the next generation of people who are striving to have faith and hope.) It is a process of line upon line, precept upon precept. We did not gain a greater understanding of the Abrahamic Covenant until Joseph Smith established The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, and through his many spiritual communions with God and Angels. And, we still have more to fully understand and comprehend after we pass away and the veil has been lifted. All these hardships and trials in our lives will then have an even greater meaning when we actually understand why we had to experience what we did.
Moreover, our experiencing hard times, helps us to remember and strive a little more to be connected to Christ. For many people, myself included, it isn’t until we have a need that we truly find ourselves digging deep and really putting our faith in the Lord’s hands. It is at this time when all things seem to be lost, when Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ are able to convincingly show us their power and assistance. There are times in our lives when we go through a traumatic experience in which relying on the Lord helps us cope with the pain. It doesn’t take the pain away, but they help us endure the hardship. We can look through the scriptures and we can find example after example of how God helped and guided those who were in their states of despair, to be able to cope and overcome those obstacles. Thus, helping them grow their faith and hope. Getting to the promised land takes time, it takes preparation, and most of all it takes patience.
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