Area Presidency Message
The Trial of Everything
“While studying Come Follow Me both in my family and personal study, I found myself asking, what did Job learn during his heartrending and prolonged trial of everything? I have great admiration for Job because this trial tested more than his faith.
His series of trials tested him emotionally, socially, spiritually, physically, and even intellectually. It tested him in the same ways we are invited to grow and develop. “And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man” (Luke 2:52).
Elder Jeffery R. Holland taught: “some of life’s lessons will be difficult, and you may be asked to face more than you think you can—and certainly more than you want.”1
Job’s experience caused him to evaluate everything about his life. Those around him were drawing their own conclusions. Even Job at one point was not sure how this would turn out (see Job 19:6–7).
Trials help focus our vision on Jesus Christ
The scriptures describe Job as perfect, but as great as he was, his perspective was not the same after the trial as it was before the trial. What did Job really learn? What difference did it make in his life? Perhaps the answer to this question is found in Job’s own declaration to the Lord when he said, “I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear: but now mine eye seeth thee” (Job 42:5).
Every trial we go through should help us to see the Savior more clearly. Our perspective should change, our focus should be fixed on Him, our eye becoming more single to His glory and our faith in Him becoming more riveting. Sister Tracy Browning reminded us that, “The Savior invites us to see our lives through Him in order to see more of Him in our lives.”2 An understanding of this will lead to the question of why Job was able to see Jesus Christ better because of the things which he suffered?
We are taught that the Savior learned by the things which He suffered (Hebrews 5:8).
He sought to remind Joseph Smith of this when in his moment of anguish for the suffering of the Saints he plead, “O God, where art thou? And where is the pavilion that covereth thy hiding place?” (Doctrine & Covenants 121:1)
In the midst of this trial, the Lord gave great revelations to Joseph Smith, including the gentle admonition: “The Son of Man hath descended below them all. Art thou greater than he?” (Doctrine & Covenants 122:8. See also verses 6 and 7). The Lord invites each of us to learn of Him, listen to His words and walk in the meekness of His Spirit, in order to have peace in Him (see Doctrine & Covenants 19:23). He also invites us to take up our cross and follow Him (see Matthew 16:24).
What might this look like for each of us? Walking, listening, learning while carrying our crosses of loneliness, rejection, illness, family crisis, impairments, tragedy, incapacitation, depression, or unemployment may truly require everything we have. But we must remember who we are walking with, listening to, and learning from. Let it be Jesus Christ. This is His invitation. His peace means more when we experience it during and after suffering.
The Atonement of Jesus Christ provides rest from our trials
The Savior himself taught: “For behold, I, God have suffered these things for all, that they might not suffer if they would repent” (Doctrine and Covenants 19:16).
“And your sufferings be sore—how sore you know not, how exquisite you know not, yea, how hard to bear you know not” (Doctrine & Covenants 19:15).
Then He reminds us that in Him we can find true rest with an invitation to: “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden and I will give you rest.
“Take my yoke upon you; and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls” (Matthew 11:28–29).
For covenant keepers, repentant souls, those who walk, listen, learn of Him, and those who let God prevail in their lives, this promise is sure. If we think of the worst, we have ever felt, thinking there could not possibly be a worse time in our lives, we may be wrong. Is it possible that we only experience a fraction of what we could have because of the Atonement of Jesus Christ? Truly we may know not the full extent of the consequences of our actions or the actions of others. The Savior provides a buffer for the pain we might have felt, such that what we feel is not the magnitude or extent of the burdens that come from sin, pain, or trials. He knows true pain, and for the righteous especially, we may never really know.
Trust in the Lord—His promises are sure
For the people of Alma, He hushed their fears and eased their burdens such that they could not feel them. (See Mosiah 23:27–28; Mosiah 24:10, 12–16).
Job, hurt badly, but in the end who did he find? What did he learn? “The Lord blessed the latter end of Job more than his beginning” (Job 42:12). Perhaps that had much more to do with the heart Job was developing than his material possessions. Perhaps Job recognized that no one could have survived what he just went through without divine help. Hence his understanding of the Master and His Atonement deepened.
Prophets have testified that we all accepted the Lord in the premortal existence, because we knew His promise to be our Redeemer and Savior was sure. We knew it would be hard but knew it would be much harder without Him. We knew we would face challenges but when it was time to cross the veil, we commended ourselves into the hands of the Lord as we entered the ‘boat’ of earth life. We knew we would be buried by the waves of trials and attacked by the monsters of the deep (see Ether 6:4–12), Lucifer and his angels, but we trusted in the Lord.
“Know ye not that ye are in the hands of God? Know ye not that he hath all power, and at his great command the earth shall be rolled together as a scroll?” (Mormon 5:23).
If we allow Him, Jesus Christ will be the light in our vessels, He will keep the darkness away. We will feel His strength bearing us up during those debilitating trials of everything—our great deep. He is the only one who can say with surety, “Be of good cheer; I have overcome the world” (John 16:33).
As President Russell M. Nelson reminded us, “Because Jesus Christ overcame this world, you can too.”3