Links to read it is provided at the bottom of this post.
I posted the below on my family Gospel Study Group on June 2nd 2015. Enjoy!
From the first lecture in the Lectures on Faith, Joseph Smith said: “Faith, then, is the first great governing principle which has power, dominion, and authority over all things: by it they exist, by it they are upheld, by it they are changed, or by it they remain, agreeably to the will of God. Without it, there is no power, and without power there could be no creation, nor existence!”
Background image by: Mani & Ginji https://flic.kr/p/DmRc1G
I just love this quote. I woke up in the middle of the night because our little Brinley is such a light sleeper and I was taking care of her. After I got her to sleep again, I put my headphones on and started to listen to my playlist I have made in Voice Dream Reader. I was just overcome, I have always loved the Lectures on Faith but since I have added them to my sleeping playlist my love has just exploded. I would recommend reading again the first lecture in the Lectures on Faith. They are so powerful and they will truly help to transform your study efforts in a most amazing way. Here are just a few quotations to excite your minds to go read, study, ponder and pray about this principle:
9 From this we learn, that faith is the assurance which men have of the existence of things which they have not seen; and the principle of action in all intelligent beings.
10 If men were duly to consider themselves, and turn their thoughts and reflections to the operations of their own minds, they would readily discover that it is faith, and faith only, which is the moving cause of all action, in them; that without it, both mind and body would be in a state of inactivity, and all their exertions would cease, both physical and mental.
11 …Are you not dependent on your faith, or belief, for the acquisition of all knowledge, wisdom and intelligence? Would you exert yourselves to obtain wisdom and intelligence, unless you did believe that you could obtain them? Would you have ever sown if you had not believed that you would reap? Would you have ever planted if you had not believed that you would gather? Would you have ever asked unless you had believed that you would receive? Would you have ever sought unless you had believed that you would have found? Or would you have ever knocked unless you had believed that it would have been opened unto you? In a word, is there any thing that you would have done, either physical or mental, if you had not previously believed? Are not all your exertions, of every kind, dependent on your faith?
12 And as faith is the moving cause of all action in temporal concerns, so it is in spiritual…
13 …But faith is not only the principle of action, but of power, also, in all intelligent beings, whether in heaven, or on earth.
17 Who cannot see, that if God framed the worlds by faith, that it is by faith that he exercises power over them, and that faith is the principle of power? And that if the principle of power, it must be so in man as well as in the Deity? This is the testimony of all the sacred writers, and the lesson which they have been endeavoring to teach to man.
19 Moroni, while abridging and compiling the record of his fathers, has given us the following account of faith as the principle of power: He says, in Ether 12:13, that it was the faith of Alma and Amulek which caused the walls of the prison to be wrent, as recorded in Alma 14:23-29; it was the faith of Nephi and Lehi which caused a change to be wrought upon the hearts of the Lamanites, when they were immersed with the Holy Spirit, and with fire, as seen in Helaman 5:37-50; and that it was by faith that the mountain Zerin was removed, when the brother of Jared spake in the name of the Lord. See also Ether 12:30.
To download either the PDF or text version, I have uploaded them to my Dropbox for you to download, just click either version below.
PDF: https://www.dropbox.com/s/0ohir20nyeyhf2r/lectures%20on%20faith%20good%20formatting.pdf?dl=0
Text: https://www.dropbox.com/s/06qtd27ncwznsiq/lectures%20on%20faith%20text.txt?dl=0
Otherwise, visit one of the links below to read online.
http://mormonbeliefs.com/1835-original-doctrine-and-covenants/
Craig
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