Trials

"One of the trials of life is that we do not usually receive immediately the full blessing for righteousness or the full cursing for wickedness. That it will come is certain, but often times there is a waiting period that occurs, as was the case with Job and Joseph. In the meantime the wicked think they are getting away with something. The Book of Mormon teaches that the wicked 'have joy in their works for a season, but by and by the end cometh, and they are hewn down and cast into the fire, from whence there is no return.'" (President Benson, CR, April 1988, p. 5)


"Every trial and experience you have passed through is necessary for your salvation.
(Brigham Young, JD 8:150)

" Every vicissitude we pass through is necessary for experience and example, and for preparation to enjoy that reward which is for the faithful."
(Brigham Young, JD 9:292)

"Joseph could not have been perfected, though he had lived a thousand years, if he had received no persecution. If he had lived a thousand years, and led this people, and preached the Gospel without persecution, he would not have been perfected as well as he was at the age of thirty-nine years."(Brigham Young, JD 2:7)

"Communication with our Father in Heaven—including our prayers to Him and His inspiration to us—is necessary in order for us to weather the storms and trials of life." (Thomas S. Monson, "Stand in Holy Places," Ensign Nov. 2011 and Conference Report Oct. 2011).

"You and I have faith that the way to rise through and above trials is to believe that there is a 'balm in Gilead'⁴ and that the Lord has promised, 'I will not … forsake thee.'⁵ That is what President Thomas S. Monson has taught us to help us and those we serve in what seem lonely and overwhelming trials." (Henry B. Eyring, "Mountains to Climb," Ensign May 2012 or Conference Report April 2012). 


"When hard trials come, the faith to endure them well will be there, built as you may now notice but may have not at the time that you acted on the pure love of Christ, serving and forgiving others as the Savior would have done." (Henry B. Eyring, "Mountains to Climb," Ensign May 2012 or Conference Report April 2012).


I heard Joseph Smith preach to the Twelve in Nauvoo saying that the Lord would get hold of their heart strings and wrench them, and that they would have to be tried as Abraham was tried . . . And Joseph said that if God had known any other way whereby he could have touched Abraham's feelings more acutely and more keenly he would have done so. (John Taylor, JD 24:264)

We may rest assured that all things are controlled and governed by Him whose spirit children we are. He knows the end from the beginning, and he provides for each of us the testings and trials which he knows we need. President Joseph Fielding Smith once told me that we must assume that the Lord knows and arranges beforehand who shall be taken in infancy and who shall remain on earth to undergo whatever tests are needed in their cases. This accords with Joseph Smith's statement: "The Lord takes many away, even in infancy, that they may escape the envy of man, and the sorrows and evils of this present world; they were too pure, too lovely, to live on earth." (T.196-97) It is implicit in the whole scheme of things that those of us who have arrived at the years of accountability need the tests and trials to which we are subject and that our problem is to overcome the world and attain that spotless and pure state which little children already possess. (Bruce R. McConkie, "The Salvation of Little Children," Ensign, April 1977)

Joseph wrote from Liberty Jail, "It seems to me that my heart will always be more tender after this than ever it was before . . . I think I never could have felt as I now do if I had not suffered."
(Neal A. Maxwell, CR, May 1992, p. 39)