persistence

• magnificent p. of primitive man

64:7.20The strug­gles of these early ages were char­ac­ter­ized by cour­age, brav­ery, and even hero­ism. And we all re­gret that so many of those ster­ling and rugged traits of your early an­ces­tors have been lost to the later-day races. While we ap­pre­ci­ate the value of many of the re­fine­ments of ad­vanc­ing civ­i­liza­tion, we miss the mag­nif­i­cent per­sis­tency and su­perb de­vo­tion of your early an­ces­tors, which of­ten­times bor­dered on grandeur and sub­lim­ity.

• validate prayers by possessing cosmic stamina

91:9.21. You must qual­ify as a po­tent prayer by sin­cerely and coura­geously fac­ing the prob­lems of uni­verse re­al­ity. You must pos­sess cos­mic stam­ina.

• exhaust capacity for human adjustment

91:9.32. You must have hon­estly ex­hausted the hu­man ca­pac­ity for hu­man ad­just­ment. You must have been in­dus­tri­ous.

• achievement predicated upon perseverance

115:7.2All this must be ac­cord­ing to the Fa­ther’s plan, which has pred­i­cated fi­nite prog­ress upon ef­fort, crea­ture achieve­ment upon per­se­ver­ance, and per­son­al­ity de­vel­op­ment upon faith. By thus or­dain­ing the ex­pe­ri­ence-evo­lu­tion of the Su­preme, the Fa­ther has made it pos­si­ble for fi­nite crea­tures to ex­ist in the uni­verses and, by ex­pe­ri­en­tial pro­gres­sion, some­time to at­tain the di­vin­ity of Su­prem­acy.

• evils of inaction

130:6.3By this time the young man very much de­sired to talk with Je­sus, and he knelt at his feet im­plor­ing Je­sus to help him, to show him the way of es­cape from his world of per­sonal sor­row and de­feat. Said Je­sus: “My friend, arise! Stand up like a man! You may be sur­rounded with small en­e­mies and be re­tarded by many ob­sta­cles, but the big things and the real things of this world and the uni­verse are on your side. The sun rises ev­ery morn­ing to salute you just as it does the most pow­er­ful and pros­per­ous man on earth. Look—you have a strong body and pow­er­ful mus­cles—your phys­i­cal equip­ment is bet­ter than the av­er­age. Of course, it is just about use­less while you sit out here on the moun­tain­side and grieve over your mis­for­tunes, real and fan­cied. But you could do great things with your body if you would has­ten off to where great things are wait­ing to be done. You are try­ing to run away from your un­happy self, but it can­not be done. You and your prob­lems of liv­ing are real; you can­not es­cape them as long as you live. But look again, your mind is clear and ca­pa­ble. Your strong body has an in­tel­li­gent mind to di­rect it. Set your mind at work to solve its prob­lems; teach your in­tel­lect to work for you; refuse longer to be dom­i­nated by fear like an un­think­ing an­i­mal. Your mind should be your coura­geous ally in the so­lu­tion of your life prob­lems rather than your be­ing, as you have been, its ab­ject fear-slave and the bond ser­vant of de­pres­sion and de­feat. But most valu­able of all, your po­ten­tial of real achieve­ment is the spirit which lives within you, and which will stim­u­late and in­spire your mind to con­trol it­self and ac­ti­vate the body if you will re­lease it from the fet­ters of fear and thus en­able your spir­i­tual na­ture to be­gin your de­liv­er­ance from the evils of in­ac­tion by the power-pres­ence of liv­ing faith. And then, forth­with, will this faith van­quish fear of men by the com­pelling pres­ence of that new and all-dom­i­nat­ing love of your fel­lows which will so soon fill your soul to over­flow­ing be­cause of the con­scious­ness which has been born in your heart that you are a child of God.

• Jesus restated misunderstood message

141:4.3Je­sus also sought to free the minds of his apos­tles from the idea of of­fer­ing an­i­mal sac­ri­fices as a re­li­gious duty. But these men, trained in the re­li­gion of the daily sac­ri­fice, were slow to com­pre­hend what he meant. Nev­er­the­less, the Mas­ter did not grow weary in his teach­ing. When he failed to reach the minds of all of the apos­tles by means of one il­lus­tra­tion, he would re­state his mes­sage and em­ploy an­other type of para­ble for pur­poses of il­lu­mi­na­tion.

• parable of the loaves

144:2.3“Prayer is the breath of the soul and should lead you to be per­sis­tent in your at­tempt to as­cer­tain the Fa­ther’s will. If any one of you has a neigh­bor, and you go to him at mid­night and say: ‘Friend, lend me three loaves, for a friend of mine on a jour­ney has come to see me, and I have noth­ing to set be­fore him’; and if your neigh­bor an­swers, ‘Trou­ble me not, for the door is now shut and the chil­dren and I are in bed; there­fore I can­not rise and give you bread,’ you will per­sist, ex­plain­ing that your friend hungers, and that you have no food to of­fer him. I say to you, though your neigh­bor will not rise and give you bread be­cause he is your friend, yet be­cause of your im­por­tu­nity he will get up and give you as many loaves as you need. If, then, per­sis­tence will win fa­vors even from mor­tal man, how much more will your per­sis­tence in the spirit win the bread of life for you from the will­ing hands of the Fa­ther in heaven. Again I say to you: Ask and it shall be given you; seek and you shall find; knock and it shall be opened to you. For ev­ery one who asks re­ceives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks the door of sal­va­tion will be opened.

• always pray, never become discouraged

144:2.4“Which of you who is a fa­ther, if his son asks un­wisely, would hes­i­tate to give in ac­cor­dance with pa­ren­tal wis­dom rather than in the terms of the son’s faulty pe­ti­tion? If the child needs a loaf, will you give him a stone just be­cause he un­wisely asks for it? If your son needs a fish, will you give him a wa­ter­snake just be­cause it may chance to come up in the net with the fish and the child fool­ishly asks for the ser­pent? If you, then, be­ing mor­tal and fi­nite, know how to an­swer prayer and give good and ap­pro­pri­ate gifts to your chil­dren, how much more shall your heav­enly Fa­ther give the spirit and many ad­di­tional bless­ings to those who ask him? Men ought al­ways to pray and not be­come dis­cour­aged.

• parable of unjust judge

144:2.5“Let me tell you the story of a cer­tain judge who lived in a wicked city. This judge feared not God nor had re­spect for man. Now there was a needy widow in that city who came re­peat­edly to this un­just judge, say­ing, ‘Pro­tect me from my ad­ver­sary.’ For some time he would not give ear to her, but pres­ently he said to him­self: ‘Though I fear not God nor have re­gard for man, yet be­cause this widow ceases not to trou­ble me, I will vin­di­cate her lest she wear me out by her con­tin­ual com­ing.’ These sto­ries I tell you to en­cour­age you to per­sist in pray­ing and not to in­ti­mate that your pe­ti­tions will change the just and righ­teous Fa­ther above. Your per­sis­tence, how­ever, is not to win fa­vor with God but to change your earth at­ti­tude and to en­large your soul’s ca­pac­ity for spirit re­cep­tiv­ity.

• believers grow not weary when thwarted

156:5.21The true be­liever does not grow weary in well-do­ing just be­cause he is thwarted. Dif­fi­culty whets the ar­dor of the truth lover, while ob­sta­cles only chal­lenge the ex­er­tions of the un­daunted king­dom builder.