Building Faith

“May we choose to build up within ourselves a great and powerful faith which will be our most effective defense against the designs of the adversary—a real faith, the kind of faith which will sustain us and will bolster our desire to choose the right. Without such faith, we go nowhere. With it, we can accomplish our goals.” -Thomas S. Monson (“Choices” from April 2016 General Conference)

Ways to Talk About it

Look at these ideas to see which ones would work for your family. Depending on your group use one idea or a few together and of course add your own ideas too.

  • Share and discuss the quote from President Monson. (Read it, watch the clip from his talk, or show the meme.)
  • Set out blocks or recyclables (cereal, tissue and other boxes) and let everyone build a tower as tall as possible. Talk about how building faith is like building a tower, you build it a piece at a time or line upon line.
  • Discuss what things (pieces) help build our faith.
    • For older kids: Have everyone look up scriptures about faith. See what you find out about building faith and what blessings come from having faith. This is a great chance to help kids learn to share what they learn from the scriptures. You could give everyone a scripture to look up or even better have them search for scriptures about faith. Help them learn how to find things in the scriptures by using the topical guide and search features.
    • For younger kids: Come up with a few scriptures about faith or a few things that help us build faith. (Praying, Reading Scriptures, Keeping Commandments, Going to Church, Family Home Evening, etc.) Write the words or scripture references on small pieces of paper and attach them to blocks. Hide the blocks around the room beforehand. When the kids find the blocks look up the scriptures and discuss how those things can help make our faith tall and great like the tower. Use the blocks to build a tower.
    • Other people who have faith and who care about us can help us build our faith. To discuss this point, read or tell the story from General Conference about Elder Stanfill needing more light while riding bikes through a long tunnel. Just as he needed the light of his friends to help him through the tunnel, the light, or faith, of those around us (family, friends, ward family) can strengthen our faith. Talk about how the faith of others can help us on a daily basis? How can it help us when our own faith doesn’t seem strong enough? You could also discuss the opposite of this, how somepeople test and drain our faith.

“Those who truly love us can help us build our faith.” -Elder Stanfill, October 2015 General Conference

  • Read Helaman 5:12 and discuss how to build our foundation (our faith in Christ) or discuss the protection we receive when we have the foundation mentioned in the scripture.
  • Have a nerf gun fight (or it could be a pillow fight, water balloon fight, or even a sock ball fight while folding laundry). Make comments about everyone’s efforts to defend themselves. Afterward (now or a different day) discuss those defense strategies. Relate it to President Monson’s quote and discuss how faith protects us and what it protects us from.
  • Plant flowers or a garden. Discuss the needs of plants (water, sun, soil, weeding, patience).  Discuss how nourishing faith and testimony is similar to caring for a garden. (This could be used as a goal or project for older primary children or youth.) 
  • Choose a goal or read scriptures from the Faith section in the Personal Progress book. Everyone could set a goal to increase faith, not just young women.

Resources

  • Scriptures
    • JST, James 2:15 – show faith through works
    • Moroni 10:20 – faith, hope, and charity
    • Ether 12:6 – things hoped for and not seen (Faith is trusting God)
    • 1 Nephi 3:7 – believing that God prepares a way for us
    • Alma 32:28-36 – when talking about Alma’s experiment remember that the seed represents Christ. That means at any given time the seed could represent any principle of the gospel of which someone wants to increase their testimony. Faith is like the soil used to nourish the seed. And as we nourish the seed (study and learn about the principle and show faith by practicing the principle), our testimony of it will grow little by little, line upon line.
    • 2 Nephi 28:30 – line upon line
  • Songs

Related Ideas

  • Build on this lesson by preparing a lesson about The Faith of Joseph Smith for next week. (It could fulfill the requirement in Faith in God, 2nd bullet point, for older primary children).

As always, TAKE & TWEAK these ideas to fit your needs.