Faith Talk - Our Ability

"Through your faith, Jesus Christ will increase your ability to move the mountains in your life, even though your personal challenges may loom as large as Mount Everest." - President Nelson

I don't know if I'll be able to squeeze this into my talk or whether I can justify making my entire talk about this one concept, but in this sentence, there's a concept that I especially love. "Jesus Christ will increase your ability to move the mountains in your life." Jesus isn't moving these mountains for us; He is increasing our ability to move mountains. He isn't making the burden lighter; He's making us stronger. He isn't removing the obstacles in our path; He's making us better at avoiding and/or overcoming them.

Personally, I think that's awesome. Granted, given the option, I would rather not have challenges to have to overcome, but given that that's not an option, I would rather succeed because Jesus is making me more capable than because He's been doing all the work for me. Maybe it's just my pride talking, but I like the idea of being capable of moving mountains. I would like to overcome my challenges, preferably by my own (admittedly increased) power. I am at war, and I don't want Jesus to fight all my battles for me; I want to be strong enough to win. Luckily for me, it sounds like that's what's happening.

Faith can move mountains, but it's not that if we have faith in Jesus, He'll move our mountains. It's that, if we have faith in Him, we will give us all the power we need to move them ourselves.