My dear friends and bretheren, no matter how many times you have slipped or fallen, rise up!
Your destiny is a glorious one!
Stand tall and walk in the light of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ!
You are stronger than you realize.
You are more capable than you can imagine.
You can do it now!
- Dieter F. Uchtdorf (From his October 2013, Priesthood Session talk, You can do it now!)
Sometimes, I struggle with feelings of weakness. We all have challenges in life, and some of them are, well, challenging. We fail sometimes. We tend to fail more often than we'd like to. But as I was writing a short essay on the subject of the purposes of tests (moral tests, not academic ones), it occurred to me that we're not trying to prove what we're capable of, but what we're willing to do.
God has given each of us a decent amount of power. That power takes different forms for different people, and some people were given more power than others. The test is not to see how much power we were given, but what we're going to do with that power. It's not a question of whether we can do a great deal of good in the world, but whether we'll do as much good as we can.
I think I believe that God has given us (or will give us) all the power and/or help we need to do whatever He wants us to do. If He commands it, He'll make it possible, one way or another. The question then becomes whether we'll take courage, put our faith in the Lord, and put forth the effort to do what He has asked us to do.
I no longer think that life is a question of ability. Now, I believe that if we sincerely try to choose the right, it doesn't matter whether we succeed or fail; we will have already passed the test because we made the right decision and tried.
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