Applying the Doctrine and Covenants to Your Life
Are You Focused on Your Problems or Your Blessings? What the Early Saints Taught Me about Joy
The early Saints’ experiences in Doctrine and Covenants have taught me a lot about feeling joy.
Full disclosure: I am guilty of being pessimistic and hyperfixating on my problems.
I’m blessed to be surrounded by loved ones who provide plenty of reasonable solutions. But they would tell you that I often don’t take their advice and instead continue feeling miserable, too stubborn to cast aside my negative outlook.
Now, this isn’t to say that all of life’s problems and trials would easily be fixed if we would just “be positive” or “look on the bright side.” Smiling our way through struggles doesn’t always make them easier. But I do believe that what we choose to focus on can affect our ability to endure hardship and feel joy throughout our challenges.
President Russell M. Nelson has said, “The joy we feel has little to do with the circumstances of our lives and everything to do with the focus of our lives.”
But how do we shift our focus to feel the joy that seems so out of reach?
Focusing on God’s Promises
As I’ve studied the Doctrine and Covenants this year with Come, Follow Me, the early Saints of the Church have proven to be powerful examples of this principle that President Nelson taught. The Saints faithfully endured their challenges by remembering their end goal—the “why” behind everything they were living for and the blessings they had been promised.
I’ve learned about Saints who trusted the Lord when He said:
“Ye cannot behold with your natural eyes, for the present time, the design of your God concerning those things which shall come hereafter, and the glory which shall follow after much tribulation.
“For after much tribulation come the blessings” (Doctrine and Covenants 58:3–4).
These Saints, having faith that the Lord would fulfill His promises to them, focused on the blessings that would come after, not during, their tribulations. I believe this shift in focus helped them to continually press forward and even achieve what some might consider to be unthinkable in their circumstances—joy!
Joy Cometh in the Morning
In Psalms 30 there is a verse that reads, “Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning” (Psalms 30:5). Some of you may have experienced this literally. Struggles can seem scarier at night, hard things more impossible. Sometimes that promise of morning seems out of reach. But then dawn comes, and our worries melt away in the light of a new day.
Maybe you’ve experienced this figuratively too. You feel there is no shortage of pain, hardship, or struggle in your life, and you feel darkness closing in on you. Perhaps the promise of joy seems out of reach in the dark. How can we possibly make it to morning?
Like the early Saints, we can “press forward with a steadfastness in Christ, having a perfect brightness of hope” (2 Nephi 31:20). When we feel stuck in the dark, we can put our faith firmly and unwaveringly in Christ, who gives us hope in the joy that will come in the morning. The Lord assures us, as He did the Saints, “The hour is not yet, but is nigh at hand” (Doctrine and Covenants 58:4).
Joy amid Sorrow
It’s normal to feel sadness, frustration, or despair at times. Loss, sickness, mental illness, trauma, or abuse can especially block out the joy and hope we want to feel and make it difficult to see a light at the end of the tunnel.
But it is possible to feel joy amid sorrow because of Jesus Christ. We read in the scriptures, “And thus we see the great reason of sorrow, and also of rejoicing—sorrow because of death and destruction among men, and joy because of the light of Christ unto life” (Alma 28:14). We can feel sorrow for the pains we endure while also feeling joy because of the life-giving light of the Savior.
I am trying to shift my pessimistic perspective when challenges come my way by focusing on the blessings that await me—instead of on my problems. Sometimes I am overwhelmed with sadness, but remembering Christ gives me hope that joy will come.
As you endure the hardships placed upon you, I hope that you will remember the joy of the Saints and know that it can be yours too when you remember the hope of our Savior, Jesus Christ.