Faith in Action: Designing Your Spiritual Life with Todd Andrewsen - Episode 3

What if the key to overcoming life's biggest challenges lies in something you can't even see? Join us on this week's episode of "Spirit by Design" with Todd Andrewsen as I unpack the profound role of faith in spiritual growth and everyday life. Iexplore the concept of faith as an active principle—like a seed that needs nurturing through prayer, scripture study, and personal revelation. I share inspiring scriptural stories and teachings that demonstrate how true faith requires action and obedience, not just belief.

Ready to transform your spiritual life? Dive deep into how faith, when acted upon with true belief, can lead to profound personal growth and a deeper relationship with God. Learn how exercising faith can bring about knowledge that further strengthens and expands your spiritual journey. Tune in and prepare for an enriching conversation that will leave you inspired and ready to apply these principles in your daily life!

Chapters

• 0:11 Strengthening Faith Through Action
• 15:24 Designing Your Spiritual Life

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:11

At the end of last episode, I talked about exercising a kernel of faith like a mustard seed. Today I'm going to embellish a little bit more on the topic of faith and having faith. What is faith? First, this is your Spirit by Design, with Todd Andrewson. Welcome back for another exciting episode Now.

Speaker 1: 0:42

I've talked about prayer. I've talked about scripture study. I've talked about, during those two, learning to recognize and act on personal revelation, intuition, designing the spirit, life, spiritual life that you want to have right. So in order to do that, you need to have a little bit of faith that you can do it. You need to exercise faith that it's even possible. So how do you have faith? What is faith? So how do you have faith? What is faith? Faith is believing in something that you can't see but know is true. Faith is a thing that is hoped for but can't be seen. Faith is when you exercise that belief and act on it, knowing that it is true. I know I'm repeating myself in a lot of ways. These come from different scriptures that talk about faith. Faith is like a little seed that, when planted, it will grow. Farmers have to have faith every spring when they plant the harvest, that the little seed, when planted in the ground and watered, will grow into a plant that will provide them a livelihood. But what makes it happen? What is behind it? To start, you need to choose what you want to have faith in. If you want to have faith in Jesus Christ, you need to choose to do so. Everything is a choice. Your life is a choice. So in order to exercise faith, you have to first know what you want to believe in.

Speaker 1: 3:06

I'm going to paraphrase a tale, a story, as told by Richard G Scott. He said when Adam and Eve were in the Garden of Eden, everything they needed for daily sustenance was given to them abundantly, with little difficulty. They had no challenges, no pain. They never had to experience hard times. They did not know that they could be happy. They had never felt turmoil nor sadness. They could not even feel peace, because they just were existing, because they just were existing. Eventually, adam and Eve transgressed the command to not eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. By so doing, they were cast out. They were no longer in a state of innocence. They began to experience the principles of opposition happiness, sadness, joy, pain, sadness, health, sickness. They began to feel all of these Weakness. Through Adam and Eve's partaking of the forbidden fruit, knowledge of good and evil was introduced into the world. Their choice made it possible for each of us to be tried and tested.

Speaker 1: 4:24

We are blessed with agency, which is the ability to choose right from wrong, to make decisions and to be accountable for those decisions. I think that's one of the hard parts in life today is people don't want to be held accountable for the decisions that they make. So why am I talking about this as I come, as I'm trying to talk about faith. So our Heavenly Father knew that this would happen to us and he prepared a way, through Christ, for us to be able to overcome the difficulties that we experience in mortality. We live in difficult times. There is evil in the world. I mean there is evil in the world. Each of us are intimately aware of our struggles with temptation, pain, sadness, grief, illness, everything.

Speaker 1: 5:22

Our Father in heaven has given us tools to help us come into Christ. He has given us prayer, like I talked about in the first episode. He has given us scripture study to study the word of God and the words of the living prophets. We talk to God through prayer. He most often communicates back to us through his written word. Don't give in to Satan's lie that you don't have time to study the scriptures, to Satan's lie that you don't have time to study the scriptures, even if you read one verse a day. It is important to be able to organize your priorities. Okay, there are so many promises and blessings that we receive. Now, one of the main blessings that we receive is through this exercising of faith.

Speaker 1: 6:17

And how do we exercise faith? A certain man, kneeling down to Christ, answered that he had asked the disciples to cast an evil spirit out of his son, but they could not. The father begged him, saying If thou canst do anything, have compassion on us and help us. Jesus said unto him If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth. And straightway the father of the child cried out and said with tears Lord I believe, help thou my non-belief. Okay, we've all come face to face with difficult, difficult times. We've been on our knees and cried Lord I believe, help thou mine unbelief. The Savior is always ready to help those of us that want to exercise our faith to help our unbelief. You know there's a lot. There are a lot of YouTubes and podcasts and things that talk about manifesting and all that is the manifestation is an exercise in the power of faith and belief.

Speaker 1: 7:36

Faith always moves its possessor to physical and mental actions. To have faith in Jesus Christ means to have such trust in him that we obey whatever he commands. There is no faith where there is no obedience. Obey whatever he commands. There is no faith where there is no obedience. Faith and I'm quoting comes from the hearing of the word of God and is a spiritual gift. Faith increases when we not only hear but act on the word as well, in obedience to the truth we have been taught. So let me emphasize as I've been saying in the last couple episodes, faith requires action. Belief without action is not actual faith. When we have faith, we will act on the things that we have learned.

Speaker 1: 8:42

Jesus, walking by the Sea of Galilee, saw two brethren, simon called Peter, and Andrew, his brother, casting the net into the sea, for they were fishers. And he said unto them Follow me and I will make you fishers of men. And they straightway left their nets and followed him. They acted. They only had a kernel of belief at the time and later it grew and developed into much more.

Speaker 1: 9:15

Each day we decide what we're going to do and what we're not going to do. There's thousands of possibilities. You have the opportunity every day to choose. You can choose right, you can choose wrong. Many choices don't have a direct impact on your eternal salvation, your eternal salvation. They don't have a direct impact on your eternal salvation, your eternal salvation. They don't have a direct impact on your life even. But every day you choose and every choice has consequences.

Speaker 1: 9:43

So when we're choosing to move up the ladder of faith and to act on those personal revelations that we receive and the words that we learn from the scriptures, we gain more. It grows, it builds upon itself, like that mustard seed that grows into a massive bush tree. When we plant that seed of faith in our hearts and water it and feed it with music, with words of wisdom, with scriptures, with prayer, it grows. We simply go and do the things the Lord has commanded, even when we are weary. Know and do the things the Lord has commanded, even when we are weary, trusting that he will help us to do as he asks. When we do that, the Lord helps our unbelief and strengthens it into faith.

Speaker 1: 10:45

No matter who we are, where we live, there is much that is routine and repetitive. When we go through a lot of that repetitiveness, we tend to lose some of that spark, some of that drive, drive. So it actually is an act to pull out the scriptures, to kneel down, to pray or even just pray in your mind. It is an act to take decisive action on something to give service. Those actions break you out of your routine, your repetitive routine, which, frankly, can stall your progress. Okay, we learn and we grow, and we make these choices step by step, line upon line, precept upon precept.

Speaker 1: 11:55

We don't learn everything at once. A baby does not learn to walk all at once. A child does not learn language and begin writing Shakespearean essays. They start with the letters and the simple words and then from simple words, move on to other things. I've learned multiple languages and for everyone. It's a step-by-step process, line upon line, until the learning expands and then, as you learn more and act on it more and use it more, it expands exponentially. In learning to fly, I remember teaching students and they knew nothing, they could barely get the plane to go straight and level. But we worked with them day in and day out, teaching them a little here, a little there and suddenly they're doing loops and rolls and being able to fly 10 feet off your wingtip through 90 degrees of bank up to three, four, five Gs. Line upon line, precept upon precept, we learn.

Speaker 1: 13:13

And as we act on those things that we learn, our faith deepens, our faith develops. And if you do not have a chance to get to church as often as you would like, like me and my job, where most Sundays I am working and I am gone, I take solace from the fact that I can do these things. I pray, I read my scriptures, I act on the intuition and the revelation that I receive In doing so. In doing so, in doing so, that strengthens my faith and protects me from the temptations that Satan has out there, protects me from drifting away from my faith and my belief, protects me from just becoming another one of those guys that screws up their life right. I know, just as the farmer knows that when he plants and tills and digs and dungs about providing fertilizer, providing water, nutrients to the soil, that that plant will grow.

Speaker 1: 14:40

That is the same way I know that if you act on a particle of faith and make the choice, the daily choice, to follow and do these things, you will be able to design the life that you desire, the spiritual life that you desire. Have the relationship with God that you desire. He is your Father, he wants to talk to you. And not only that, but you will be able to find the purpose of your life and act on that purpose. Once you find it, and as you act on it, it will grow and expound. That is the joy of acting on.

Speaker 1: 15:24

Faith is that it grows when you're acting on a true belief. Knowledge is the result, and then you can exercise more faith and more faith, and it grows and grows until you are a different person than you ever saw or thought you could be, but not in a bad way. You are developing and designing the spiritual life you desire. You can have that relationship with God that you desire. I know this to be true. This is spirit by design. You design your spiritual life. Get after it. We'll see you back here next week for the next tip and trick to make it happen. Thank you.