The Effects of True Faith

See that mountain over there on the right. Would you mind moving it just few hundred yards?

One of the biggest lies I hear told every week by people of faith everywhere and especially in my own church is that you don’t have to be perfect. In fact, some people say that you can never be perfect in this life. Yet Christ commanded us to be perfect, even as He was.

Let’s be clear that perfect, correctly translated means, whole. It doesn’t mean that you will never say the wrong thing, do the wrong thing, or that your house will never have any dust. That is a set up for failure. Whole means healed, complete. It means that you know how to apply the Atonement and you do. Every day. And by its power, and by faith you are made whole and every day become more like Christ "until the perfect day," which can be in this lifetime. 

Yet even with this translation, many people still feel that this goal is unreachable. The distance, however, is not on God’s side. It is on ours, and it comes down to faith.

In the Bible Dictionary under “Faith,” one can find the following.

…”The effects of true faith in Jesus Christ include (1) an actual knowledge that the course of life one is pursuing is acceptable to the Lord (see Heb. 11:4); (2) a reception of the blessings of the Lord that are available to man in this life; and (3) an assurance of personal salvation in the world to come. These things involve individual and personal testimony, guidance, revelation, and spiritual knowledge. Where there is true faith there are miracles, visions, dreams, healings, and all the gifts of God that He gives to His saints.

Point 1 -  This is what everyone wants to know! What is my sacred contract? What did I promise God and others on this earth that I would do here? It is so awesome when you know you are doing what you were born to do.  

Point 2 – Number 2 is huge. Basically any blessing that the Lord has given to any man or woman in this earthly life is available to you too, through faith. So that would include things like translation (Enoch), teleportation (Jesus, Paul, John), walking on water (Jesus, Peter), time travel (Uncle Rico), visions of everything--past present future, all of the worlds God has made (Abraham, Moses, Nephi, etc), parting seas, instant healings. I don’t know about you, but I have always wanted the superpower of teleportation.

Benefits of teleportation: you don't have to pack. You can always go home and get clothes or shower, in the event that you are camping. 

Point 3 – I think that the third point is saying that through faith, it is possible in this life to get that assurance that you will be saved/exalted/etc.

When I was thinking about these things a few years ago, I decided that I wanted more faith. I had always thought that faith was just something you had. The Bible dictionary says that: Although faith is a gift, it must be cultured and sought after until it grows from a tiny seed to a great tree. 

So I sought after it. Jesus pointed out some obstacles to faith (John 5:44 and 12:39–42) and so I tried to eliminate the obstacles. I read Lectures on Faith, which is an amazing little volume by Joseph Smith that used to be part of the preface to the D&C but was taken out because it was a bit lengthy. I kind of wish it was still in there because it is now not as widely read. Although you can get it free as an e-book from DB and for .99 on Amazon. It gave me about a million Ahas.

However, the biggest way I have grown my faith is through meditation. About 600 days ago I started a new 40-day meditation (I hadn’t meditated consistently before that) and I set my intention as “faith.” It took a few months to actually do 40 days in a row, but once I did, I didn’t stop again. I have only missed 2 days since then. 

Each day that I would come to my sheepskin to meditate, I may have had a something different on my mind, but I felt that everything went back to faith, which is, after all, the first principle of the gospel. So every day I would set that intention. Many days it was an act of faith just to get up and meditate. I think that this is part of it. 

When my friend Rachel found out my intention she was surprised. She said she would have characterized me as having a lot of faith. My answer was that I couldn’t move a mountain and that we are supposed to have enough faith to move mountains. I felt I was living below my spiritual potential. As are most people. 

Though typically I do not believe in asking for proof of progress, I do think that once every 9 months or so it is good to look back at how far you have come, but just for a minute. Until recently I only had outward ways of measuring this progress and guesses at inward changes. But because of a sometimes trying friend who tends to see everything as a dot on a numbered line, I have found a new way to measure. I won't go into it all, but let’s just say that faith could be measured in units. And lets say that it takes a certain number of these causal faith units to move a mountain (equal a mustard seed.) And lets just say I could find out how many units I had one year ago, two years ago, today. You get the picture. If muscle testing is your special gift, you could try this. Or you can pray and ask for an answer about where you stand on this faith scale.

My friend/s and I have discovered through prayer, experimentation, muscle testing and spiritual confirmations, that most good faithful people (including stalwart LDS people) fall abysmally, pathetically, horribly (yes that deserved 3 adjectives) below enough faith units to move anything. This may be one of the reasons united prayer is so powerful. Because when you add up everyone’s faith units and beam them at the same purpose, things start to happen. 

Though my intentional journey, I have in fact, increased my faith exponentially from where it was in January 2012. Part of that is because of the accelerated times we have entered, and part of it is the technology I am using. The Kundalini Yoga and Meditation technology is much more than a forklift. It is a rocket and I am happily riding it. I would say that my hair is blown back, but I'm totally rocking the turban.


If you haven't gotten intentional about forklifting yourself and others too, I invite you to do so today. If you have, and want to share your intention or something else, please do so in the comments.

This is a beautiful message from Yogi Bhajan on being a Forklift. If you only have one minute. Watch one minute. Sat Nam.