2 Corinthians 6

Paul makes one of his most impassioned pleas in this chapter. He first pleads with the Corinthians that now is the time to change their lives. To wait could be everlastingly too late. As ministers of the gospel, he lists the attributes they have had to have: patience, pureness, knowledge, longsuffering, kindness, love unfeigned; and what they have gone through: afflictions, distresses, stripes, imprisonment, being dishonored, being alone and unknown, near death. He then says to not be equally yoked together with the world. If you put a yoke on two animals that are not equal in size and strength, when they pull the wagon, one will be injured. You can't keep one foot in the world and one foot in the gospel without being spiritually hurt. If one foot is kept in unbelief while another is tries to keep a footing in belief, unbelief will loom as the larger animal and destroy belief. So Paul says, "Come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing."

Belief isn't a feeling or something that exists without cause or source. People used to say they wished they could play the piano like me. I would think to myself, "If you would practice the hours and hours I did, you could." Belief is the same. It comes as the result of our effort. If we live righteously, if we pray and read some scriptures each day, with each day of effort comes a gradual increase in belief and faith. Gradually, our faith in some things will increase to a point to where we can say, "I know." But it should be remembered, faith and belief is what this life is for. Our faith is to be tested and tried and we must prove ourselves worthy of it.

Sometimes it is harder to have faith than it is to know. It is harder to go forward in faith when the world assaults our it, when doubt creeps in and can put a stranglehold on our belief. But if we do go forward, our faith is eventually rewarded and strengthened. When we are faithful, the Lord does grant us knowledge to the point where we can say "I know." But that knowledge will be qualified. We may know "this," but we don't know "that" yet and so we have to have faith and believe that "that' is true. As Isaiah and the Book of Mormon says, knowledge is given "line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little and there a little" until the day after this life when we will know all things. Until then, we must have faith in and hold fast to those things we don't know, but believe to be true. If we're willing to make the effort, and "to touch not the unclean thing," the Lord says, "I will receive you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Almighty." That knowledge, knowing we are his, is one we can be sure he will give us as we struggle and fight to maintain our faith. That is the knowledge that helps see us through all things.