Use an Experiment Mindset — Alma 32–35

Come, Follow Me: Book of Mormon 2024 (July 22-28)

Each year as I plan my garden, I label my efforts as “experiments”. Will this seed grow in this place? Will this flower be the color shown on the packet? Will this perennial survive the winter? Will this tomato really produce fruit in the promised 50 days? How can I be more consistent in watering and fertilizing throughout the summer? 

Viewing my garden goals as an annual experiment, I anticipate both successes and failures. Even with promised results on the producer’s tags, I know that my environment is unique and will require personalized testing, learning, and adjusting. This approach helps me be excited each year to try new things as I continually make adjustments from lessons learned. 

Alma encourages us to take this same view toward planting the seed of Christ in our lives. “For behold, if ye will awake and arouse your faculties, even to an experiment upon my words, and exercise a particle of faith, yea, even if ye can no more than desire to believe, let this desire work in you, even until ye believe in a manner that ye can give a place for a portion of my words” (Alma 32:27). 

If our goal is to produce fruit, vegetables, or flowers, we’ll accept the model of experiment-fail-learn-repeat. If we accept this same model to “prove” ourselves worthy of living with God, we’ll do the same. There will be repeated trials on the best way to pray and hear the whisperings of the Holy Ghost. Multiple attempts will be required to find scripture study and temple attendance in a busy schedule. Developing unfailing charity toward ourselves and others will necessitate many tears and tries. 

Christ Himself showed us the importance of obtaining a body and experiencing life. He came to earth to experience the greatest experiment of all, “And we will prove them herewith, to see if they will do all things whatsoever the Lord their God shall command them” (Abr 3:25).  He then suffered and died for us that by finding a lesson from every experience we can improve “line upon line.”  

Do Hard Divinely Better #29: See the divine plan as a series of experiments where both success and failure bring us closer to God if we continually learn, adjust, and keep trying.