Finding Hope Again

I just finished the Book of Mormon and thus recently read Moroni 7. I've been thinking a lot about hope since then, and wondering its connection to faith. Moroni 7:40 says, "How is it that ye can attain unto faith, save ye shall have hope?"

Hope is a glimmer that leads us to do the necessary work to achieve faith. In other words, hope is motivation. Hope keeps pushing us when we've lost faith. Many of us have been to that dark place where you feel it's time to collapse on your bed and give up the fight.

This is a place I've been in and out of the past few years. I've had a struggle that seems to not quit and comes from every direction and is more confining with each blow. There are days my faith is so weak that I've truly believed I'm just meant for misery and struggle. Those are the days hope kicks in, pulls me to my knees in prayer and leads to faith which brings me back to my feet.

A favorite scripture that hit home to me on my mission, Alma 32:27, reads, "But behold, if ye will awake and arouse your faculties, even to an experiment upon my words, and exercise a particle of faith, yea, even if ye can no more than desire to believe, let this desire work in you, even until ye believe in a manner that ye can give place for a portion of my words."

Desire and hope are synonymous. The days you feel everything and everyone have given up on you and there's nothing left for you to do but give up well, let hope work in you! Let hope give you strength and ambition to work and soon it will be replaced with renewed faith. All you need is a particle of hope and you can do miracles! Pray for hope, and from there, continue to do all things, pray, read scriptures, pay tithes and offerings, be involve in church and temple worship, and always get lost in the service of others. That's when hope and faith become an unstoppable team!