FAITH

"And now as I said concerning faith-faith is not to have a perfect knowledge of things; therefore if ye have faith ye hope for things which are not seen, which are true." [[alma 32:21]]

But, doesn't 'not seen' really mean to see?

Not seeing has little, or nothing, to do with faith. We have to see with our spiritual eyes, rather than our physical eyes. God will give us a sufficient amount of light to 'see' the things which we need. But he will not give us more than that, so we can have the opportunity to prove our faith and choose to see from an eternal perspective.
In institute we are studying faith in great detail, I think we are going to be studying it for 6 weeks.  I am definitely not complaining though, as it has been one of the most intriguing classes I have taken yet.
Faith is seeing  [[Not seeing, really means to see]]
Faith is thinking---->"When a man works by faith he works by mental exertion instead of physical force"
Faith is believing
-Is it possible to do wrong, and think right? ---> Can someone make a wrong decision if they were thinking right about it? Or did they have to think wrong in order to make that decision?
-Your eyes depend on light, and the eye of faith requires light.
-The light God give us is sufficient we do NOT need more
-With the light of faith you'll never walk in the dark

An exercise we did today was to find any scripture that had the word faith in it, and we were asked to replace it with a phrase involving words from these 3 categories: 

Mind                 Focus
Mental              Center             Christ
Think                Single           
Thinking
Thoughts

Going back to our original scripture, I will provide an example:
And now as I said concerning centering our way of thinking around Christ- {faith} Having our minds focused on Christ {faith} is not to have perfect knowledge of things; therefore if we {ye} take every   thought we have and center it around Christ {faith}we will {ye} hope for things which are not seen which are true.
*Isn't this correct? If we turn every thought, every action, every desire, and focus it on Christ how could we hope for anything less than the things which we cannot physically see? By putting everything we have in Christ we will take on a new perspective, an eternal one, and begin to see things in a new light. And as we show that faith, or dedication to Christ, to God he will be able to provide us with more of what he sees that we cannot. 

Stress is the opposite of faith....This one was hard for me to hear, as I have been extremely stressed the past few weeks. But isn't this true? If I know my Heavenly Father is watching over me and I am putting my full faith in him then what is there to stress about? If I am doing what's right and centering everything on Christ, what is there to worry about? NOTHING. It will all work out:

"Things work out, it isn't as bad as you sometimes think it is. It all works out, don't worry. I say that to myself every morning. It will all work out. If you do your best, it will all work out. Put your trust in God, and move forward with faith and confidence in the future. The Lord will not forsake us. If we will put our trust in him, if we will pray to him, if we will live worthy of his blessings, he will hear our prayers."
-Gordon B. Hinckley

 
I was supposed to be in a class called Teachings of the living prophets this semester but when I looked up the class time, and went to the assigned classroom I found no one there. However, the teacher that was supposedly teaching that class, at that time, was instead teaching the one I am in now. Coincidence?
I think not.

 A girl and her father are in a cave and it's too dark for her to see her father. When he asks her to jump to him she replies, " But I can't see you" 

His response is this, "It's okay, I can see you....now jump"

Our father can see us, and he can see beyond what we can see, but are we willing to be brave and jump to him in the darkness? 

Today. I choose to jump. Knowing he won't let me fall.