While looking for answers to gospel questions, make sure you are doing those things that you know are true and avoid those things that you know are contrary to truth.
As a young man, I had many questions about the Church. Some of my questions were sincere. Others were not and reflected the doubts of others.
I often discussed my questions with my mother. I am sure that she could sense that many of my questions were sincere and from my heart. I think she was a little disappointed in those questions that were less sincere and more argumentative. However, she never put me down for having questions. She would listen and try to answer them. When she sensed that she had said all that she could and that I still had questions, she would say something like this: “David, that is a good question. While you are searching and reading and praying for the answer, why don’t you do the things you know you should and not do the things you know you should not?” This became the pattern for my search for truth. Through study, prayer, and keeping the commandments, I found that there are answers to all of my important questions. I also found that for some questions, continuing faith, patience, and revelation are needed.
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Over time I came to know that my mother was teaching me Heavenly Father’s pattern for seeking truth. Faith grew, answers began to come, and I accepted a mission call.
In order to receive what was in the Book of Mormon, I needed to read it. I started at the beginning of the book and read every day. Some receive a witness very quickly. For others, it will take more time and more prayer and may include reading the book several times. I needed to read the entire book before I received the promised witness. However, God did manifest the truth of it unto me by the power of the Holy Ghost.
In my missionary journal, I described my joy in knowing the truth as well as my personal expression of commitment and real intent to act on the truth I had received. I wrote: “I have pledged with my Father in Heaven and with myself to do my very best, to give it 100 percent for the rest of my life, whatever I am asked, I’ll do, but for now I have the rest of my mission and I am going to make it a great mission, one that I won’t feel bad about, but not for me, for the Lord. I love the Lord, and I love the work, and I just pray that that feeling will never leave me.”
Over the years I have asked missionaries and young people around the world how they started in their personal effort to seek truth and gain a testimony. Almost without exception, they respond that their own effort to gain a personal testimony started with the personal decision to read the Book of Mormon from the beginning and ask God if it is true. In doing this, they chose to “act” rather than to be “acted upon” by the doubts of others.
Patiently keeping our covenants while we “do [what] is necessary” to receive answers from the Lord is part of God’s pattern for learning truth. Especially when things are hard, we may be required to “submit cheerfully and with patience to all the will of the Lord.” Patient covenant keeping increases our humility, deepens our desire to know truth, and allows the Holy Ghost to “guide [us] in wisdom’s paths that [we] may be blessed, prospered, and preserved.”
I have been patient in bearing addictions but not always cheerful.
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