THROUGH OUR TRIALS, GOD CAN MANIFEST HIMSELF IN OUR LIVES (John 9, Christ Heals A Blind Man)

In John 9, when Jesus and His disciples come upon a man who was born blind, His disciples asked,

Master, who did sin, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?

Jesus answered, Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest in him.

When we are faced with trials and tribulations that are hard to bear, in looking for an explanation for why these things have come upon us, we can be assured that there is a purpose in the bigger scheme of things and that at least part of that purpose is that “through our challenges, God can manifest Himself in our lives.” (Come Follow Me 2019, April 29-May, John 7-10)

As baptized members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, we are all covenant sons and daughters of God.  What does it mean to be a covenant son or daughter?  It means that not only have we made covenants or promises to Him, but He has also made covenants or promises to us.  As we have promised to always remember Him, He has promised to always remember us.  He is bound to do so, by the Priesthood authority under which the covenant was made.  He was bound to do so by the love He felt for each of us as He suffered the Atonement on our behalf:

          But Zion said, The Lord hath forsaken me, and my Lord hath forgotten me. 

Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb?  Yea, they may forget, yet will I not forget thee.

Behold, I have graven thee upon the palms of my hands; thy walls are continually before me.  (Isaiah 49:14-16)

When we experience hardships, troubles, challenges, tribulations in our lives, the Lord is perfectly aware of us and what has befallen us and cares with a love we cannot even begin to comprehend.  We can be assured that He is standing next to us, ready to bless us.

When we are on the covenant path, striving to keep the promises we have made to Him, we put ourselves in a position to be able to receive His blessings.  We can put our faith and trust in Him, fully expecting that He will help us as we seek to move forward.

This thought has come to me:  When we are on the covenant path, there is always hope, there is always a way, or a path, forward.  As we put our trust in the Lord and call upon Him, He will always show us that path and bless us with the strength we need to walk it.  The journey we take along that path will prove to be a defining experience in our life—by walking with Him at our side, we will become acquainted with the Him as our minds are enlightened with His guidance and our hearts receive His comfort and our body and spirit receive His strengthening influence.  We will learn things we could not have learned in any other way.

Think of Nephi when he was faced with the challenge to build a ship.  What did He learn about the Lord from that experience?  As he had to depend upon the Lord for every step of building that ship, beginning with learning where he could find ore for the tools he would need and getting help to recruit his brothers’ support, he learned day by day and week by week that the Lord was there to give him answers and resources and skills that were needed to accomplish the task:

The Lord had said to Nephi:  And I will also be your light in the wilderness; and I will prepare the way before you, if it so be that ye shall keep my commandments; wherefore, inasmuch as ye shall keep my commandments ye shall be led towards the promised land; and ye shall know that it is by me that ye are led. (1 Nephi 17:13)

We have the same promises from the Lord as Nephi did.  He will lead us through our wildernesses and prepare the way before us if we keep His commandments.  Indeed, He will lead us to our promised land which is salvation and exaltation in His Kingdom.

Only the Lord knows what He wants of us.  Only He can guide us to do it.  It may not be in the way of the world that He guides us (see 1 Nephi 18:2), but it will be in the way that He has prepared for us, in order for us to learn what He wants us to learn.

Truly, through our trials, God will manifest Himself to us, and in that way, those trials will become blessings in our lives.