The Recipe that Cures All Doubt

Hey y'all! I thought I would share with you one of my favorite recipes that I learned in Kentucky and that I still use now. It most often was used when I was discouraged or down after a long day, and it was a great pick-me-up! Hopefully you enjoy it as much as I do ;)

This recipe calls for a few ingredients:

• Good dose of faith
• Time to dedicate to prayer
• Desperation (I talked about this in my blog post a couple of weeks ago)
• Humility 
• A loving, ever-patient Heavenly Father

The Steps: 

1. Gather up the first four ingredients (faith, time, desperation, humility) before kneeling down. 
2. Begin an earnest prayer to Heavenly Father. Talk with Him about how the day went. Tell Him the good things as well as the hard things.
3. Hold nothing back. Be vulnerable to Him. Let Him in. 
4. Key to Cure Doubt: At this point, ask Him His opinion on how you did today. 
5. After this, be prepared to listen. He will answer.
6. Accept this answer and be satisfied. 

This was probably one of the biggest lessons that I learned on my mission. Trying to analyze my own day was often discouraging; I would be hard on myself and then depressing thoughts would come. However, I always knew that if I ended my day by asking God how He thought I did, I was always greeted with love and satisfaction. He knew I had given my all. I was then able to go to bed and sleep soundly, knowing that the One with the most important opinion was happy with me and my work. 

Sometimes when I would ask this, there were things that would come to my mind that I knew I could try better on the next day. That did not mean that I failed, but rather that I could have hope through Christ and repentance that I could change to become better. 

I think the best thing (and here is where the recipe comes in) is that when I received an answer from Heavenly Father like this, I never doubted. I knew I had done good and no one else could tell me otherwise because the most powerful Being had already helped me. 

One of my favorite times of doing this during the mission was after I received news that I was going to be transferred from the area where I had served for 5 transfers, or 8 months. It was a hard area, but it was the area where I grew the most. My companion had already gone to bed, but I was still on my knees, pondering what effect I had had in that area. As I prayed and asked God if I had done what I needed to there, I was filled with peace. Then memories of specific people and lessons and contacts began to fill my mind. Those thoughts did not seem to be my own, but it seemed like Heavenly Father was giving me the blessing of seeing all the times I had fulfilled His purposes. It was amazing and is still precious to this day. 

The other day here at BYU, I had a similar experience. I was at a forum centered on depression for current and returned missionaries. One of the speakers was talking about how some returned missionaries doubted the effect they had had on their missions. At that moment, I thought back to my own mission, but I only felt happiness. There was not a trace of guilt or doubt. I knew because of all the combinations of my prayers and the confirmations that I received that I did what Heavenly Father needed me to on during those 18 months. 

I do not pray and ask Heavenly Father's opinion nearly as much as I did on the mission; but it is something I want to begin to do again. Too often I find that I base my self-worth on my mistakes rather than on my accomplishments. I think in those moments, I need to go to Heavenly Father for what He thinks about it all. He will not lie or deceive, and I doubt that He will ever fill us with anything other than love, even if we did make a mistake.

God loves us as we are His children. He wants to answer us, guide us, help us. When we turn to Him, He is waiting with empty open arms. Let us learn to turn to Him in our moments of despair and doubt!

I love this picture - Christ accepts us exactly how we are. "Yea, come unto Christ, and be perfected in him, and deny yourselves of all ungodliness; and if ye shall deny yourselves of all ungodliness, and love God with all your might, mind and strength, then is his grace sufficient for you, that by his grace ye may be perfect in Christ; and if by the grace of God ye are perfect in Christ, ye can in nowise deny the power of God." (Moroni 10:32)