Applying the Doctrine and Covenants to Your Life
What Do I Do If I’m “Stuck” on a Gospel Question?
By choosing to have patience with what we don’t yet understand, we allow the Spirit to change our hearts.
No matter how smart you are, you will inevitably run into things you just don’t understand.
A tricky math problem. A dense literary passage. The reason your car is making that funny noise. The list goes on.
Sometimes, with a little work, you can figure it out. But sometimes, it feels like the more you dig and poke at the question, the less you understand. That’s when you feel seriously stuck.
Has that ever happened to you with the gospel? It might be a doctrine you struggle with, or a policy that doesn’t make sense to you, or even a reality of your own life that doesn’t seem to fit with what you know about God and His plan. Sometimes an idea seems too difficult to process or accept. Like a bite that’s too big to swallow.
This is exactly what some Church members encountered when they received the revelation given in Doctrine and Covenants 76 about the degrees of glory. Most of them had grown up with a black-and-white concept of heaven and hell. To them, the idea that almost everyone will be resurrected into a kingdom of glory didn’t seem fair. It didn’t match their concept of the nature of God. Even Brigham Young struggled with the revelation because “it was directly contrary and opposed to [his] former education” and “came in contact with [his] own feelings.”
The Crossroads of a Question
When we are “stuck” on a gospel question, we come to a crossroads in our faith.
For some of those early Saints, the revelation was a breaking point. Like the Savior’s disciples who could not bear to hear “an hard saying,” they “went back, and walked no more with him” (John 6:60, 66).
But others who initially faltered came to accept this new knowledge with joy. So what made the difference? Why did this revelation break some people’s faith but strengthen others’?
It all comes down to how those people chose to respond when their spiritual understanding was challenged. When he first heard about the revelation, Brigham Young said, “Wait a little. I did not reject it; but I could not understand it.” By praying, studying, and choosing to have patience with what he didn’t yet understand, he allowed the Spirit to change his heart and testify of truth.
In the Book of Mormon, Alma compares the word of God to a seed. When we receive this seed into our hearts, we can choose to either “cast it out by [our] unbelief” or wait a little, like Brigham Young, and see “if it be a true seed, or a good seed” (Alma 32:28). Alma promises that if we exercise our faith and wait, then the seed will grow within us and “enlarge [our] soul,” “enlighten [our] understanding,” and “be delicious” to us.
This was the experience of many faithful Saints who chose to seek the Lord’s guidance. Brigham Young described how after much pondering and prayer, he eventually “knew and fully understood it for [him]self.” In a perfect example of Moroni’s teaching in Ether 12:6, he received a witness after the trial of his faith.
“Ask, and It Shall Be Given”
The Savior declared, “Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you” (Matthew 7:7). This is not merely a wise suggestion; it is a commandment of the Lord, and it comes with a sure promise that He will answer.
This and similar commands are repeated throughout the scriptures. The Lord is constantly inviting us to bring our most difficult questions to Him. He does not ask us to blindly accept what we cannot understand. As we do so with patience and faith and continue to serve the Lord, He promises to “reveal all mysteries, … even the wonders of eternity” (Doctrine and Covenants 76:7–8).
Personally, I have big questions that I still don’t have answers for, even after years of prayer and earnest seeking. But I don’t think that means God is ignoring my knocking. I can see His light through the crack in the door. I can feel Him with me, sharing the load when it’s too heavy to bear alone.
As I continue to ask, seek, and knock, I can feel that little seed swelling in my heart. My questions stretch me, sometimes painfully, but that gives me more room to grow—in understanding, in wisdom, in faith, in closeness with my Father in Heaven. I don’t have all the answers, but I don’t feel stuck. I feel hope in “the good pleasure of [the Lord’s] will,” and I trust that when I am ready, He will grant me “this privilege of seeing and knowing for [myself]” (Doctrine and Covenants 76:7, 117).