One of my favorite quotes of all time is this anonymous one:
"Don't ask the Lord to guide your footsteps unless your willing to move your feet."
This clever statement holds embedded in it some profound insights that I doubt many grasp. First and most obviously, faith is a principle of action. While works without faith is dead, so it is the other way around. Not because faith requires works, but because faith is works. Faith is who you are, not what you think. This is manifest in what you do. If you truly have faith that some action will offer greater reward than another, you will do that action. But if you have some semblance of doubt, if you are unsure which will offer the greater reward, or if you will receieve any reward at all, you may waver in your actions. This is the cause of sin.
Bible translation has lost this meaning of faith because we don't have in English (nor in Spanish I might add) a verb form of the noun faith, as it is in the original Greek and Hebrew, so the word has been degenerated through translation into the related but unequivalent word believe. Thus we have come to understand faith incorrectly as a mere thought.
Additionally, we gleen from this simple quote another important, but largely misunderstood doctrine, that our receiving of revelations, guidance, commandments, and similar blessings are dependent on our willingness and ability to follow the counsel we would receive. As Josepth Smith taught, "we cannot keep all the commandments without first knowing them, and we cannot expect to know all, or more than we now know unles we comply with or keep those we have already received." In other words, you won't be getting any new commandments until you're ready for them.
Our Heavenly Father is not overly anxious to heap condemnation on us. Yet we often seem to deeply desire it, and perhaps sometimes even beg for it. We teach frequently that we can receive guidance, revelation, and blessings if we ask for them and live righteously. This is a poor misrepresentation of the doctrine which has led to much misguidance. First, living righteously is a vague and ambiguous phrase that offers little guidance as to what state one must achieve to be worthy. Many, perhaps most, church members (and this is probably generalizable to the world) consider themselves righteous. This is because they fail to recognize what they've already been given and are yet not living up to. Thus they find themselves in a sort of stasis, living up to a certain level of commandments and contenting themsleves at that level. They believe themsleves to be "righteous", and thus worthy of whatever spritual help they ask for.
Additionally, God has warned us against asking for things we shouldn't. "Trifle not with these things; do not ask for that which you ought not" (D&C 8:10). Yet we fail to consider what is is we should be asking for and instead focus our attention only on what we want.
These are dangerous states to be in because God, in His love, wishes not to heap on us more commandments which we will fail to live up to, thus condemning us further. And, just like any other good parent, He certainly won't give us what we want if it isn't right. But if we don't receive what we ask for, believing oursleves to be worthy, we start hammering at our foundation of faith with doubts. We wonder why God doesn't care, or if He's listening, or if He's even there at all. These are, perhaps a little extreme reactions for many of us, but it certainly broods a frustration when we don't get what we expect or perceive to need.
If we are to receive revelations and guidance from the Spirit, we have to pick up our feet and do it, whatever it is, even if it's something we'd rather not do. Until we adopt this attitude of ultimate determination, we will reach a point of spiritutal stagnation, where we've maximized all that we are willing and able to do. How many of us would be willing to literally drop our jobs and everything we are working on for a church responsibility, as was asked of the Apostles of old? How many of us have a hard time finding time to magnify the callings we have now?
Could we be doing better? If so, we're probably not ready for more.
