As you learn to value the additional aspects of God that he reveals to you, you will come to recognize him and everything he provides as being increasingly more valuable than any alternative.6 Unfortunately, because so few people strive to learn and live all they can from God, the more you learn about him, the less often you will find others who have done the same. While it is comforting to think that God himself can make up for the loss of human relationships capable of the depth and quality you will increasingly crave, there are impassable barriers to experiencing a fullness of God’s glory and joy while in the flesh.7 The combination of increased distance from your peers and increasing desire for glory and joy that only exists outside of this world creates an increasingly strong unanswered longing that must be carried while in this life.
The more you learn about and value God, the more overwhelming your desire becomes to be with him instead of remaining here.8 Increasingly, the only force that counters your desire to leave this world is whatever desire you have to remain here in order to demonstrate his goodness to others.9 Imagine what it would be like to have the value you previously found in all things and people suddenly stripped away in comparison to the divine value of what cannot be found in this world.10 To the extent that you lack altruism,11 greater revelations of the goodness of God and the blessings he can provide hereafter increase misery here and now beyond the limits of what anyone who knows less about him can know is possible. The goodness and glory of God are such that increasing your knowledge of them by necessity shows everything else to be increasingly worse by comparison.
Only those of indescribably great faith would be able to continue mortal life in any normal way after gaining an appreciation of what is possible, bearing the extreme contradiction between the toil of mortal life and a knowledge of the greatness of God’s love. Pain is not the greatest form of suffering. Knowing what good is possible without being able to obtain it is far greater. Those carrying the burden of knowing something of God’s goodness must bear the disparity between what they know could be and what actually is in each task, every day. You need immense trust in God and faith in him in order to bear such a burden.
You increase your ability to bear the burden of knowing what is better than what you have through increasing your trust in God. Increase the trust you have in God through remembering all the reasons he has given you to trust him. Enumerate the times in your life when things were much better than they could have been. Recognize his hand in all things and be grateful for every good thing in your life. Learn more about God’s justice, and learn to lean into it by living up to the blessings you desire. Ultimately, increasing your trust in God is a matter of choice. As you repeatedly recognize all the ways in which God has blessed you and others in the past, you will have more than enough reasons to choose to trust in him.
Footnotes
- 1. He answered and said unto them, Well hath Esaias prophesied of you hypocrites, as it is written, This people honoureth me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. (Mark 7:6) ↩
- 2. They shall put you out of the synagogues: yea, the time cometh, that whosoever killeth you will think that he doeth God service. (John 16:2) ↩
- 3. Recall what Samuel told Saul when Saul sacrificed the spoils of war instead of destroying them as commanded: “...Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams.” (1 Samuel 15:22) ↩
- 4. They who dwell in his presence are the church of the Firstborn; and they see as they are seen, and know as they are known, having received of his fulness and of his grace; (D&C 76:94) ↩
- 5. I Am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman. Every branch in me that beareth not fruit he taketh away: and every branch that beareth fruit, he purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit. Now ye are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you. Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in me. I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing. If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered; and men gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned. If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you. Herein is my Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit; so shall ye be my disciples. (John 15:1-8) ↩
- 6. And, if you keep my commandments and endure to the end you shall have eternal life, which gift is the greatest of all the gifts of God (D&C 14:7) ↩
- 7. Wherefore, no man can behold all my works, except he behold all my glory; and no man can behold all my glory, and afterwards remain in the flesh on the earth (Moses 1:5) For man is spirit. The elements are eternal, and spirit and element, inseparably connected, receive a fulness of joy; And when separated, man cannot receive a fulness of joy. (D&C 93:33-34) ↩
- 8. Because of how God’s revelation of himself works, if you are worthy to know of him, you are worthy to be with him. Those who know him well have a right to rejoin him in heaven. Any who know him well here must fight the tremendous pull to leave this world, which is the Lord’s offer to them. Their continuation here comes only by the love of God in them towards their fellowman, in opposition to the love from God to them, which they know they can only experience fully in heaven. ↩
- 9. And the Lord said unto me: John, my beloved, what desirest thou? For if you shall ask what you will, it shall be granted unto you. And I said unto him: Lord, give unto me power over death, that I may live and bring souls unto thee. And the Lord said unto me: Verily, verily, I say unto thee, because thou desirest this thou shalt tarry until I come in my glory, and shalt prophesy before nations, kindreds, tongues and people. (D&C 7:1-3) ↩
- 10. Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. (1 John 2:15) ↩
- 11. Wherefore, my beloved brethren, if ye have not charity, ye are nothing, for charity never faileth. Wherefore, cleave unto charity, which is the greatest of all, for all things must fail— (Moroni 7:46) ↩