It sounds simple telling people to work hard and never quit, but to really execute and demonstrate those principles takes discipline and faith. Those are the two factors that I believe separate the good from the great, the successes from the failures.
We might imagine that Jesus had many human faults. He failed most humanly, in my reckoning, when he killed the fig tree just because it didn't bear any figs for his breakfast; that was a disgraceful, bad-tempered thing to do, and to try and make a virtue of it by saying it was a demonstration of faith only made things worse.
Put bluntly, the American church today accepts grace in theory but denies it in practice. We say we believe that the fundamental structure of reality is grace, not works - but our lives refute our faith.
In America you have the right to worship any way you choose. That's why virtually every faith and every denomination on Earth has a presence in our land. You have a right to not believe in God at all.
Pray as though everything depended on God. Work as though everything depended on you.
In Iran, education is not a given at all. For decades, in fact, the Iranian government has been systematically depriving members of the Baha'i faith their right to higher education, attempting to bar their advancement and marginalize them in Iranian society.
Nor shall derision prove powerful against those who listen to humanity or those who follow in the footsteps of divinity, for they shall live forever. Forever.
The sight of parents, children and grandparents all descending on a tented field to enjoy the pleasure of ideas and books renews my faith in humanity.
It is never too late to strengthen the foundation of faith. There is always time. With faith in the Savior, you can repent and plead for forgiveness. There is someone you can forgive. There is someone you can thank. There is someone you can serve and lift. You can do it wherever you are and however alone and deserted you may feel.
I think it's a good thing for a president or political leaders to want to put their values or their faith into action. Desmond Tutu did that in South Africa. Martin Luther King Jr. did that here. This is a good thing.
When our forefathers put down roots in desolate places, the thing that allowed them to survive was that they had a faith to see them through the tough times.
Morals, principles and laws are when faith is reduced to standards and those standards basically just bind us, and we become prejudicial, racist, self-serving when we're guided by these laws... When a developed country uses Christianity in its policies, in government, in maintaining corporate wealth, that's a bastardized rendering of a faith.
Society lives by faith, and develops by science.
If Christians see Mormonism as a dramatic deviation from a millennia-old, biblically-based faith, Jews see Christianity in the same light.
Fear of death makes us devoid both of valour and religion. For want of valour is want of religious faith.
Faith is the first factor in a life devoted to service. Without it, nothing is possible. With it, nothing is impossible.
If you desire to be pure, have firm faith, and slowly go on with your devotional practices without wasting your energy in useless scriptural discussions and arguments. Your little brain will otherwise be muddled.
People have this idea that the more pious and devout I am, the more successful I am. Which is very dangerous. If you look at faith in that way, you're bound to fail at both - spiritually and in your career.
Faith is not uprooted by dialectic proof; it must already be deeply shaken by other causes to be unable to withstand the shock of argument.
My faith helps me understand that circumstances don't dictate my happiness, my inner peace.
