{"id":12410,"date":"2020-03-25T21:59:17","date_gmt":"2020-03-26T03:59:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/?p=12410"},"modified":"2020-03-25T22:03:05","modified_gmt":"2020-03-26T04:03:05","slug":"have-faith-to-act-on-the-whats-and-eventually-youll-learn-the-whys","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/have-faith-to-act-on-the-whats-and-eventually-youll-learn-the-whys\/","title":{"rendered":"Have Faith To Act On The \u201cWhats\u201d And Eventually You\u2019ll Learn The \u201cWhys\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Stay out of debt; live within your means; work to be self-reliant<\/a>; save for a rainy day; have a supply of food storage; have a 72-our emergency kit \u2013 those are all things all the Prophets<\/a> leading my church have been counseling the members for as long as I can remember, and I literally mean for as long as I can remember as I\u2019ve heard it from them over, and over, and over again, from the time I was a little girl. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a young woman I would hear it and not think much about it,\nbut as time went on and I began having my own children and struggled financially\nI found myself praying much more fervently in my life and the result was a confirming\nfeeling that I should pay attention to the Prophets counsel and live by it.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I wouldn\u2019t buy things until I had the money saved up to buy\nthem with cash; I started paying down my debts rather than buying nice things; and\nI began building up my food storage. There were no pandemics happening back\nthen, no earthquakes hitting nearby, or anything of the kind.  Many thought I was being ridiculous to build\nup food storage, others felt I should spend money more freely and enjoy life more\nrather than working so hard to pay off my debts as quickly as I could. After\nall they saw no disasters ahead so it appeared I was being overly cautious. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was in my late 20\u2019s when I began following their counsel\nand now I\u2019m 48. For 20 plus years I haven\u2019t had to use my food storage even\nonce\u2026so why in the world keep storing it? \nNever once have I needed a 72-hour kit so why make it a priority? Why\nkeep following the counsel for all these years when everything has been going fine\u2026often\ntimes even better than fine?  There\u2019s\nonly one answer \u2013 FAITH!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Faith is a willingness to act on the \u201cwhats\u201d God\u2019s asking\nyou to do even though you don\u2019t get all the \u201cwhys\u201d.  I followed their counsel because I had faith\nthat God wouldn\u2019t be asking us to do those things if they weren\u2019t going to be important.\nI didn\u2019t know where or when or if they would come into play – that\u2019s why it\ntook faith.  And for years and years\nthings have been fine \u2013 not a \u201cwhy\u201d in sight. \nBut as years went on I found myself caring less about knowing the \u201cwhys\u201d\nbecause I found that the comfort that came from exercising my faith and doing\nthe \u201cwhats\u201d brought me tremendous feelings of peace and confidence and that was\nreward enough. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Obviously as I sit here today writing this blog it\u2019s now glaringly\nevident why the leaders of the church asked the members to do all those things \u2013\n to stay out of debt; live within your\nmeans; work to be self-reliant; save for a rainy day; have a supply of food\nstorage; have a 72-hour kit\u2026and so on.  Between\nthe current Coronavirus pandemic and the earthquakes in Utah it\u2019s become abundantly\nclear as to the \u201cwhy\u2019s\u201d \u2013 not one ounce of faith is required now to see why getting\nout of debt and having savings needed to be a priority, or why having food\nstorage or emergency kits mattered. Having about every product sold out from\nCostco and Walmart screams the \u201cwhys\u201d. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Faith is following the \u201cwhats\u201d before you get the \u201cwhys\u201d. It\u2019s\nrelying on the promptings that come through prayer and meditation.  And faith will often require making sacrificing\nlong before you see the clear need to make those sacrifices – sometimes sacrificing\nfor short periods and sometimes for years and years without visibility of the \u201cwhys\u201d.  Simply but, faith is a principle of action.\nWe express faith in the way we live and we grow our faith by exercising it\u2026by\nbeing willing to do the \u201cwhats\u201d when the \u201cwhys\u201d aren\u2019t clear.     <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m so grateful for church leaders<\/a> that never stopped advising on those \u201cwhats\u201d, even when I\u2019m sure they got sick of having to repeat that advice year after year after year to all of us. And I\u2019m so grateful that I chose to exercise my faith and listen because it\u2019s given me so much peace during this turbulent time.\u00a0 <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where there is faith there are miracles.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

~Amy Rees Anderson (author of the book \u201cWhat Awesome Looks Like: How To Excel in Business & Life<\/a>\u201d ) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Stay out of debt; live within your means; work to be self-reliant; save for a rainy day; have a supply of food storage; have a 72-our emergency kit \u2013 those are all things all the Prophets leading my church have been counseling the members for as long as I can remember, and I literally mean […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":10610,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[626,23233,224,23240,23245,16275,23241,23235,178,23242,23246,23243,23237,8113,29,23236,1501,23244,23232,5092,23238,23239,1440,23234,23231,22570,2831,23247],"class_list":["post-12410","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-advise","tag-be-self-reliant","tag-confidence","tag-confirmation-of-the-spirit","tag-costco","tag-counsel","tag-do-the-what-even-before-you-learn-the-why","tag-emergency-kit","tag-faith","tag-faith-is-a-principle-of-action","tag-faith-takes-sacrifice","tag-feelings-of-peace","tag-financial-struggle","tag-food-storage","tag-god","tag-heed-the-prophets-counsel","tag-jesus-christ","tag-leaders-of-the-church","tag-live-within-your-mean","tag-meditation","tag-pray-fervently","tag-receive-personal-revelation","tag-reward","tag-save-for-a-rainy-day","tag-stay-out-of-debt","tag-the-church-of-jesus-christ","tag-walmart","tag-where-there-is-faith-there-are-miracles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12410","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12410"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12410\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12412,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12410\/revisions\/12412"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10610"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}