Stripped to Nothing but Faith

Like I said in my comment on your post, I gave a lesson this week on spiritual battles, focusing on the moment where we are most spent in every possible way.  Where all our weaknesses are just out there for everyone to see.  And we feel so weak that we don't know how to carry on.

I love what the The Infinite Atonement says about this moment, for Christ and for us:

"The Lord's soul-cry, 'My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?' (Mark 15:34) was not a rhetorical question.  It was the earnest pleading of a divine being, who, under intense pain, sought answers and comfort in his hour of need.  There comes a time in each man's life, regardless of his intellectual acumen, when he must rely on faith and faith alone.  Abraham experienced it as he drew his knife from the sheath on Mt. Moriah; Moses felt it as he marched toward the Red Sea.  In each case there was no apparent solution at hand other than to simply obey; all the options of mortal reasoning had been exhausted.  There was only faith to cling to, faith, in its purest form."

"Once again the Savior proved to be the Great Exemplar.  Not only did he know the totality of mortal temptation, not only did he know the pain and infirmities of man, not only did he know the consequences of all sin, but now he knew what it was like to have every vestige of reason stripped away, so that faith and faith alone is all that remains to carry one forward.  All that he had intellectually was an unanswered why,  but what he had spiritually was faith, and with that faith he pressed forward and descended beneath it all."

Sometimes we get to a point in life where we are stripped of everything but faith.  And with faith, and faith alone, we must walk forward.  I feel that is where I am.  Since I've been home from my mission, I've been getting stripped of many things which causes my weaknesses to be even more exposed.  But that is essential in the sanctification process...it is still scary for me.  It is hard to be vulnerable.  To feel uncomfortable inside yourself.  It is hard to feel that you have lost what you have gained.  However, if we allow ourselves to be lost, not lost in sin, but lost in the darkness holding onto the light of God, than we will find ourselves again.  An even truer, freer, more authentic self.  Our capacity to feel, think, and understand will increase.  The process of being stripped down to nothing but faith is terrifying.  I don't know whether I'm still in the stripping down process (that sounds kinda funny when I put it that way) or if I'm in the nothing but faith moment, but either way, I'll just keep moving forward trying to use what I have.  Sometimes all I have in these moments is the knowledge that God loves me.  But that is enough.  I always have just enough to get me through.  And when I make it through, I receive an abundance so that there is not even room to receive it.

God is so good to us!  Love ya,

Rachel