Trials of Faith

 Once, before time began, a most remarkable king determined to build a city. It would be magnificent! But he did not intend to build it alone. 

He invited his friends to come with him once his plans were drawn up; they followed him to the mountain he had chosen. He laid the cornerstones, showed them his blueprints, and they went to work with him, building his city's foundation. 

The king and his friends built with their own hands and their own sweat and their own blood a foundation large enough for everyone who might ever want to live there. 

It was the labor of a lifetime, for he intended the foundation of his city to last through the ages. He built it of stone; it would be immovable, a sure foundation.

The king’s final act before the end of his work was to plant a tree at the heart of the city. 

Once the city’s foundation was finished, the king instructed his friends to go out and find anyone who wanted a house of their own to come and build it on the foundation they had laid. He was going away to a far country, he told them, but he would return in a far-off day, when the tree he had planted bore both fruit and flower. Until then, whoever built on the foundation of his city would become citizens of his kingdom.

However, he warned them to tell all who came to build that their houses would be tested when he returned, for a great fire would precede his coming. He told his friends to gather beneath the branches of the tree to wait for him.

The king gave his friends the blueprints for his city before he left, walking alone further into the mountains, far beyond the places where other men were able to go. His friends did not mourn his going, but dispersed out into the world to invite all who wished to come and build on the foundation the king had left for them. 

Many did not wish to leave their own comfortable homes and ways of life, and as the king had instructed, they were left alone to live as they saw fit.

Some returned with the king’s friends to see the foundation of the city, but when they saw the steep, difficult road and the hard mountain stone, they, too, turned away.

Still others climbed the mountain, saw the foundation and the tree, read the blueprints, and decided to build their houses there. Some built their houses of stone, like the foundation; some of metal; others built their houses with brick or wood, and the king’s city grew. 

The friends of the king taught the newcomers the ways of the city, and it prospered despite its remote location. They began to become a people set apart, citizens of a kingdom whose king they had never seen.

Then one day a young boy saw fire in the mountains to the east, a fire that made the sky glow red and sullen even at night. The fire spread to each mountaintop until it surrounded the king’s city. The king’s friends remembered his warning that the city would be tried by fire. 

By the time the people tried to escape, all roads and passages had been blocked by flames red as blood. Only then did the king’s friends remember his instructions to gather to the tree, which had grown so tall that its leaves seemed to brush the vault of the heavens, and so wide that all who lived in the city fit beneath it. They looked, and saw both fruit and flower, and their fear left them as they gathered beneath its sheltering branches. The fire with its spiraling sparks and howling destruction did not touch so much as a leaf of that tree, and its fruits fed those who sought its shelter, and from its roots a spring trickled, quenching their thirst.

True to the king’s word, the city burned. For three days and three nights, it burned. There was a terrible wind that stoked the blood-red blaze, which burned brighter and hotter until it was incandescently white. Many houses built of lesser materials became dust drifting away in the wind, and slag and dross coated what remained.

Rain came after the third night of fire, and washed the soot and charcoal, slag and dross away. The people did not yet dare to leave the shelter of the king’s tree.

The king’s friends waited eagerly all that night for his return, and come he did, down from the eastern mountains where a young boy had first seen the fire, just as the first light of dawn began to spread down the mountain’s slopes. He came with the glorious blaze of sunrise, and the citizens of his kingdom waited for him beneath the tree he had planted, and marveled at the city and its foundations, which now shone with glory.

The king was crowned with a wreath of the tree’s flowers, and his welcome feast was its fruit. The people of his city knew their king, because the fire that had announced his coming had changed them so that they were like him — friends though they had never met.

The king gave a name to that city; it was called Zion.

Helaman warns us: “remember, remember that it is upon the rock of our Redeemer, who is Christ, the Son of God, that ye must build your foundation; that when the devil shall send forth his mighty winds, yea, his shafts in the whirlwind, yea, when all his hail and his mighty storm shall beat upon you, it shall have no power over you to drag you down to the gulf of misery and endless wo, because of the rock upon which ye are built, which is a sure foundation, a foundation whereon if men build they cannot fall.”

There is no ‘if’ about the winds and hail and mighty storm that the devil will throw at us. We may stand in its eye for a moment, but the world’s sorrows will not pass us by; the fire will not stop burning until there is no more fuel. We will weather that storm only if we stand on solid ground: the rock of our Redeemer. 

In 1 Corinthians 3, Paul gives us an extended metaphor:

“For we are labourers together with God . . . ye are God’s building.

“. . . As a wise masterbuilder, I have laid the foundation, and another buildeth thereon. But let every man take heed how he buildeth thereupon.

“For other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ.

“Now if any man build upon this foundation . . .

“Every man’s work shall be made manifest: for the day shall declare it, because it shall be revealed by fire; and the fire shall try every man’s work of what sort it is.

“If any man’s work abide which he hath built thereupon, he shall receive a reward.

“If any man’s work shall be burned, he shall suffer loss: but he himself shall be saved; yet so as by fire.

“Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?

“If any man defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy; for the temple of God is holy, which temple ye are.”

We decide each day what material we build our house with, and upon what foundation. If we build wisely, we build upon the rock of our Redeemer, and what we build will be eternal. 

Why do we build on this foundation, and not another? And how can we be sure that it is the right foundation to build on?

For myself, I began to build my life on my Redeemer’s rock because I was born into a faithful family. However, no matter how faithful my parents are, their faith could never be the foundation on which I build; they showed me by example how to build my own life on the only sure foundation, and it is up to me to do that work. 

Faith is work, and that work is difficult. Without a plan, that work fails to be fully realized. 

In Hebrews 11, Paul writes, “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. . .

“But without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.”

To have faith, we must also have vision. This is what the prophets try to show us: the path we walk, our companion on the road, and our final destination. 

Paul writes in Hebrews 10: “Let us hold fast the profession of our faith without wavering; (for he is faithful that promised;) 

“Cast not away therefore your confidence [in Christ], which hath great recompence of reward.

“For ye have need of patience, that, after ye have done the will of God, ye might receive the promise.

“For yet a little while, and he that shall come will come, and will not tarry.

“Now the just shall live by faith.”

We all live our lives with faith in something, but unless we put our faith in the right things, we will never become what we have the potential to become. Said Paul to the Hebrews:

“The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God:

“And if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified together.

“For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.”

This is what prophets ancient and modern tell us: that we shouted for joy at the opportunity to come to earth and be embodied, and yes, to suffer and sorrow in mortality so that we could grow into something remarkable. 

Said Moroni: “I would show unto the world that faith is things which are hoped for and not seen; wherefore, dispute not because ye see not, for ye receive no witness until after the trial of your faith.”

I testify with Isaiah of old that, “[Jesus the Christ] shall see of the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied: by his knowledge shall my righteous servant justify many; for he shall bear their iniquities.”

“Wherefore (says Paul,) seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us,

“Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God.”

In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.