Does God Have a Purpose for My Life?

Soanday (That is how you say it with a lovely lilt to it, but I cannot do justice with how it sounds with spelling it)

Both Stoke and Newcastle Wards had the most spiritual testimony meetings today. If a theme could be attached to them, it would read: “No matter what trials come your way, stay true to the gospel, have faith, and trust in God.” I testify that this formula works.

The Plan of Happiness offers no guarantee we will have nothing but a garden path full of roses to skip down in life once we have received enlightenment to His truth. It does promise a deeper understanding of His purposes, a means by which we can gain the guidance and strength we need to get through the various challenges, heartaches, disappointments, sorrows, hardships, and such (soach-Eng.) thrown at us in life. It gives us hope for a better tomorrow and a better forever.

Spencer W. Kimball summed it up nicely:

“If we looked at mortality as the whole of existence, then pain, sorrow, failure, and short life would be calamity. But if we look upon life as an eternal thing stretching far into the premortal past and on into the eternal post-death further, than all happenings may be put in proper perspective.

Is there not wisdom in God giving us trials that we might rise above them, responsibilities that we might achieve, work to harden our muscles, sorrows to try our souls? Are we not exposed to temptations to test our strength, sickness that we might learn patience, death that we might be immortalized and glorified?
If all the sick for whom we pray were healed, if all the righteous were protected and the wicked destroyed, the whole program of the Father would be annulled and the basic principle of the gospel, free agency, would be ended. No man would have to live by faith.

If joy and peace and rewards were instantaneously given the doers of good, there could be no evil—all would do good but not because of the rightness of doing good. There would be no test of strength, no development of character, no growth of powers, no free agency, only satanic controls . . .

Being human, we would expel from our lives physical pain and mental anguish and assure ourselves of continued ease and comfort, but if we close the doors upon sorrow and distress, we might be excluding our greatest friends and benefactors. Suffering can make saints of people as they learn patience, long-suffering, and self-mastery. The sufferings of our Savior were part of His education.”