What Is God Willing to Do?

I. “The Lord Loves Effort”

President Joy D. Jones’s 2020 talk “An Especially Noble Calling” included a pre-recorded interview with President Russell M. Nelson in which he used the phrase, now ubiquitous among Latter-day Saints, “the Lord loves effort.”

It is an amply established doctrine of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints that effort is necessary for spiritual progress. The Lord commands, in the Doctrine and Covenants, “O ye that embark in the service of God, see that ye serve him with all your heart, might, mind, and strength, that ye may stand blameless before God at the last day.”1 He also says, “Wherefore, now let every man learn his duty, and to act in the office in which he is appointed, in all diligence. He that is slothful shall not be counted worthy to stand, and he that learns not his duty and shows himself not approved shall not be counted worthy to stand.”2

These and countless other scriptural injunctions have been reinforced by the Lord’s living messengers since the earliest days of the Restoration. Joseph Smith wrote, in a letter now included in the Doctrine and Covenants, “Therefore, dearly beloved brethren, let us cheerfully do all things that lie in our power; and then may we stand still, with the utmost assurance, to see the salvation of God, and for his arm to be revealed.”3 Brigham Young taught, “It is nonsense to talk about building up any kingdom except by labor; it requires the labor of every part of our organization, whether it be mental, physical, or spiritual, and that is the only way to build up the Kingdom of God.”4

In 1980, Relief Society General President Barbara B. Smith said of the Biblical figure Ruth, “She had great blessings because of her effort.”5 Elder M. Russell Ballard, then of the Seventy, stated “I have learned firsthand that the wounds of those who suffer spiritually can be healed when you and I put forth the extra personal effort required to reach out to them.”6 Elder Mark E. Petersen of the Quorum of the Twelve taught “There is no reward for half-hearted obedience. We must become vigorous and enthusiastic about living our religion, for God commands that we serve him with all our heart, with all our might, with all our strength, and with the very best of our intelligence.”7

In 2024, President Henry B. Eyring taught, “Qualifying to make sacred covenants is not a one-time effort but a lifetime pattern. The Lord has said it will take our full heart, might, mind, and strength.”8 Elder Dieter F. Uchtdorf invited listeners to “spend time in a sincere, full-hearted effort to draw near to God.”9

There is no doubt about it: the Lord loves effort.

II. “God won’t do anything for you that you can do for yourself”

In the past few years, an idea touted as an innocuous and insightful extension of “the Lord loves effort” has crept into the thinking of many Latter-day Saints. I’ve heard it expressed most often as a commentary on the story of Jesus raising Lazarus of Bethany from the dead, going something like this: “When Jesus raises Lazarus, He only raises him. Everything else that is necessary for Lazarus to ‘come forth,’ Jesus requires those around Him to do. They must bring Him word of Lazarus’s sickness; they must remove the stone from the front of the grave; they must remove the coverings from his body and face. Jesus only stepped in to raise Lazarus from the dead, the part no one else could do. From this we learn God won’t do anything for you that you can do for yourself.”10

The same conclusion is sometimes drawn from President Nelson’s interview with President Jones, referenced earlier. In the interview, he said, “Everything to do with becoming more like the Savior is difficult. For example, when God wanted to give the Ten Commandments to Moses, where did He tell Moses to go? Up on top of a mountain, on the top of Mount Sinai. So Moses had to walk all the way up to the top of that mountain to get the Ten Commandments. Now, Heavenly Father could have said, ‘Moses, you start there, and I’ll start here, and I’ll meet you halfway.’ No, the Lord loves effort, because effort brings rewards that can’t come without it.”

Some draw from President Nelson’s teaching this conclusion: “God required Moses to go all the way to the top of the mountain before speaking to him. That is the highest point Moses was capable of reaching—literally and symbolically the maximum possible effort he could exert. From this we learn God won’t do anything for you that you can do for yourself.”

The issue is, this conclusion is demonstrably wrong. The proposition “God won’t do anything for you that you can do for yourself” is easy to disprove: find a single case in which God did something for someone which the person could have done for himself. If there is such a case, the proposition is not true—and I can easily rattle off several:

  • Jesus walked to Bethany Himself; He did not require Mary and Martha to carry Him or arrange for Him to be transported, though they could have.
  • God wrote the Ten Commandments with His own finger; He did not require Moses to receive them by revelation and write them, though he could have.11
  • God gave Lehi’s family the Liahona and led them through the wilderness as long as they were faithful to Him; He did not teach Nephi how to build an astrolabe and require him to navigate on his own, though he could have.12
  • God “caused a deep sleep to come upon the Lamanites” who held Alma’s people in captivity; He did not require them to devise a plot to free themselves, though they could have.13
  • The Spirit of the Lord protected Samuel against stones and arrows launched at him as he prophesied on the wall; He did not require Samuel to wear thick armor and bring a shield to protect himself, though he could have.14
  • Anytime any of us has prayed to find a lost item and then found it relatively quickly thanks to guidance from the Spirit, God did not remain silent and require us to continue searching and find the item naturally through our effort, though we could have.15
  • Jesus washed the disciples’ feet; He did not require them to wash their own, though they could have.16

If you are inclined to dismiss these as contrived, as made-up hypotheticals that do not solidly prove my point, recognize that for every example above, there have been times the Lord did require someone to do exactly that thing.

  • We know Jesus could have required Mary and Martha to carry Him to Lazarus because there is scriptural precedent for His commanding people to carry Him: He required the Israelites to physically carry the Tabernacle, a symbol of Him, throughout their forty years in the wilderness.17
  • We know God could have required Moses to receive the Ten Commandments by revelation and write them himself because that is exactly how He revealed the Book of Mormon and other revelations to Joseph Smith, and almost all other scripture is also written that way.
  • We know God could have required Nephi to use a revealed design to construct a navigational instrument because He required Nephi to use a revealed design to construct a ship.18
  • We know God could have required Alma’s people to devise a plot to free themselves from bondage because He required it of Limhi’s people when they were in the same predicament.19
  • We know God could have required Samuel to protect himself with armor because it is clear He expected the Nephite armies to protect themselves with armor for their battles with the Lamanites.20
  • We know God could require us to continue searching for a lost item until we find it naturally through our own effort because that is something many people have experienced firsthand. We’ve seen both: praying for help and immediately finding what was lost, and praying for help and finding it days later.
  • We know Jesus could have required the disciples to wash their own feet as a symbol of their becoming “clean every whit” because He commanded Naaman to wash himself in the River Jordan for similar ends.21

“God won’t do anything for you that you can do for yourself” makes God too formulaic. His plan is more nuanced, personalized, and intentional than that. He does not require us to exert the maximum possible effort for its own sake, but asks us to do what will be best for all His children, meaning He may have countless intertwined and unfathomable reasons for the choices He makes. I don’t know why He gifted Lehi’s family the Liahona but not a ship; I just trust that He had a plan and did what was best to accomplish it.

III. Why It Matters

The simplest reason to disavow the idea that God won’t do anything for us that we can do for ourselves (other than “it is false”) is that it stunts our ability to recognize many of the ways God blesses us. We rarely see blessings we aren’t looking for, so if we’ve ruled out the possibility that God gives us blessings we could have gotten through our own effort, we’ll never notice when He does.

For example, the circumstances of our birth constitute blessings which God could have required us to work for but did not. Many people must dedicate their lives to seeking the blessings of prosperity, safety, and opportunity for themselves and their families. Others, born in more fortunate ages and places, receive these at birth without effort. Those in the latter category owe God acknowledgement and gratitude for His generosity.

Another example is the millions of people in happy marriages to someone they met accidentally while still young. God didn’t have to lead them to each other so early in life. He could have required them to find each other on their own through great personal effort. The same applies to serendipitous job opportunities, friendships, gifts, windfalls, and other positive life changes. They are all kindnesses, not necessities. We should recognize them as such.

During one of the hardest phases of my life, I went to visit my family for two weeks. It was a welcome escape from the challenges I was facing at the time. The two weeks passed too quickly, and the night before my flight home, I found myself overwhelmed with anxiety and sadness about having to return and deal with my normal life again. All I wanted, I thought, was one more day with my family. It felt like another day would help me compose myself and leave on a better note.

After drowning in anxiety for a while, I opened my phone’s notifications to find my flight had been delayed twenty-four hours in anticipation of a snowstorm the next day. I was flooded with relief—another day with my family and a sure message from God that He knew me, knew what I needed, and wanted me to have it.

I could have paid a fee and changed the flight myself, but God wanted to do it. I’m grateful God encourages me to put forth my best efforts, but I’m also so grateful He isn’t a stickler about it. He knew an opportunity to be “an agent unto myself” wasn’t what I needed in that moment. I needed love, and He delivered ungrudgingly.

IV. Why It Matters, part 2

A deeper problem with “God won’t do anything for us that we can do for ourselves” is that it implies too great a distinction between ourselves and God. The gospel of Christ is about coming into a relationship with Christ—taking upon ourselves His name, doing His work, receiving His power, etc. Strictly speaking, we do not become perfect only because of Christ; we hope to be “perfect in Christ.”22 That is, perfection is not granted to us by Jesus and then possessed by us independently; perfection is the union of ourselves with Jesus. He declared, “Therefore I would that ye should be perfect even as I, or your Father who is in heaven is perfect.”23 He also declared, “The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do: for what things soever he doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise.”24 The works of Christ and of the Father are not distinguishable easily, if at all, and that is the state to which we are commanded to aspire. Perfection is perfect unity with God.

With the goal of perfect unity in view, “God won’t do anything for us that we can do for ourselves” loses meaning. It presupposes a clear line between what God does and what we do, but the abolition of that line is the entire purpose of God’s plan. As we receive the gospel of Jesus Christ, we can “speak with the tongue of angels”25—our words have power to move mountains and smite entire peoples because we are perfectly in tune with God’s will.26 Discovering what God does for us versus what we do for ourselves becomes a nonsensical pursuit; they are one and the same, God continually choosing us by “lending [us] breath, that [we] may live and move and do according to [our] own will,” and us continually choosing God by giving Him thanks, praising Him, serving Him, and keeping His commandments.27 Both agencies are always in play, choosing each other and pursuing the same goals. Continuing to imagine that God draws a line down the middle of a page in His notebook and labels one side “what I’ll do for Jackson” and the other “what Jackson must do for himself” misrepresents the unified, collaborative nature of a covenant relationship with Him.

IV. Why It Matters, part 3

This reason is less precise but perhaps the most critical of the three: the idea that God is only willing to do what we cannot is a poor estimation of God’s character. It is not in His nature to hold back. God is not a schoolteacher who gives you candy only if you behave. He is not a private hospital that serves you only if you pay the fees. He is not an annoyed older brother who won’t play video games with you unless you’re good at them. There is no standard we must reach before God is willing to give (since the standards themselves are one of the greatest blessings He gives). He is always seeking to draw you to Him with His untempered love and the bounty that flows from it. “God is in relentless pursuit of you.”28

God is not withholding any needed help, ever. He has never done and will never do anything except that which will bring as much joy as possible to all His children in the long run (and in the short run too, if it doesn’t contradict what’s best in the long run). He is not bitter, He is not vengeful, He is not ignorant, He is not dismissive, He does not hold grudges, He does not lollygag, He does not sleep. He only appears to withhold help because our objectives are different from His; His obsession is our eternal happiness, while ours, all too often, is our fleeting present happiness. If we could see from His point of view, we would see that every choice He makes—whether to speak or remain silent, to intervene or let the cards fall—is intentional and perfect. When we resist Him or insist He change, we are trying to steer Him toward a goal that ultimately does not matter. If we could see clearly, we would prefer His decisions. We would agree that He is interacting with the world exactly as He should, not leaving anything out, not cruel, not aloof. Everything is accounted for, and He is doing everything He can—not only everything we cannot.

God is the most generous Being in existence. He is constantly asking Himself “What is the most I can do for my child right now? What more can I give? What more can I teach? How else can I help?” Whether He will do something has nothing to do with whether you can do it and everything to do with whether it is beneficial in the eternal scheme. Everything productive He can do, He does. Everything productive He can give, He gives. Relentlessly, overflowing with love, He pursues.

V. Seeing God’s Relentless Pursuit

In the buzz or brutality of life, it can be a challenge to see God’s generosity. Life can be miserable, hard, confusing, and monotonous. When it is, where is this bursting box of blessings God is supposedly emptying upon our heads?

It is there, but to see it requires a new perspective borne of conversion to Jesus Christ. Take a moment to consider the effects of true conversion by imagining you recently heard of Jesus Christ for the first time, and now you wish to become a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Though you have been taught only minimally about Him, you already want to follow Him. You resolve to “let God prevail,”29 opening your heart to God and allowing Him to do as He pleases in your life. You are a clean slate, with no preconceived notions about Jesus Christ or how He will affect you. What will your life look like as conversion takes root? How will God’s “relentless pursuit” be manifest?

One of the first things you might learn about Jesus is that He asks you to live a good life: work hard, love and care for your family, serve those around you, make friends and be a good friend, and improve yourself. You were already doing all those things before accepting Christ, so you might wonder what it really meant to accept Him. Was it an affirmation of faith in His name, nothing more?

As you keep learning, you realize, no—there are some of His teachings you have never lived. You have never paid tithing, abstained from alcohol, taken the sacrament, or treated Sundays as a holy day. So, you think, maybe becoming a Latter-day Saint means a shift in the ideal you believe in—you’ve always tried to be good, but now you’re trying to become Jesus’s version of “good.” Is that all it entails?

Months and years pass, and you gradually realize, no—there is more. Before knowing Christ, you tried to be good, but Jesus has raised you to new heights. You love the Lord and His Church more than you ever imagined. You love the scriptures. You look forward all week to worshiping in the temple. You teach your children the gospel. You “visit the fatherless and widows.”30 Now, you think, you know what it means to follow Christ. You love the Lord and His Church, and you love the moments you can rise above your everyday life by participating in His work.

Your testimony is real. Your joy is real. But something is missing.

You and your spouse have been in young men’s and young women’s for years, and you’ve been to so many activities that you’re friends with all the ward and stake leaders and their spouses. You recently printed your five hundredth temple name, and they’re starting to blur together. You have ministering down to a T. You watch every general conference, you reread every talk during the intervening six months, you keep up with all the “Come, Follow Me” podcasts, and you carry your patriarchal blessing in your laptop case so you remember to reread it every Sunday.

Your testimony is real. Your joy is real. But a voice in the back of your mind still wonders…this is it?

This is God’s wedding banquet, His windows of heaven, His relentless pursuit? Why is it so…corporate? How can it feel so repetitive, so stale?

It is because the affirmation of faith in Christ, the acceptance of Christ as the arbiter of goodness, and the ever-deepening commitment to Christ’s Church are all fruits of the Spirit, but taken alone, they are incomplete. They are pieces of a puzzle which only together form the full picture of one fully converted to Jesus Christ.

A true convert has this one all-encompassing truth written indelibly in his heart and mind: the purpose of life is to know Jesus. And he understands that everything—everything—was made for that purpose.

The Lord said, “all things are created and made to bear record of me, both things which are temporal, and things which are spiritual; things which are in the heavens above, and things which are on the earth, and things which are in the earth, and things which are under the earth, both above and beneath: all things bear record of me.” Fully knowing Jesus requires His Church, but it is not the only place He is found—all things exist to teach us about Him.

When this understanding takes hold, you begin to seek and see Jesus in everything you do, and so there is a beautiful side effect: all of life becomes holy in your eyes. Where is God’s so-called “relentless pursuit”? It is everywhere.

There is no longer such a thing as an ordinary day. Even the mundane, you realize, was created precisely to grant what is now your deepest desire. Everything is an opportunity; everything matters. Friend after friend, stranger after stranger, flower after flower, sunrise after sunrise, book after book, sermon after sermon, workday after workday, idea after idea, failure after failure, second after second—every single thing in life is God pouring Himself into you. You are being flooded with His gifts. Everything you encounter and everything you do is an occasion to get to know Christ, if you have eyes to see.

You are being bombarded by God’s love. He truly is relentless. But how to capture all He pours out on us? So much of life’s abundance—people we could have met, good we could have done, things we could have learned—slips through our fingers as we lazily let it pass by. How do we lay hold on it?

We call it “effort.”

Not all effort, mind. If you exert effort toward day-to-day “earthly” goals (money, relationships, service, self-improvement, etc.) only because you feel obligated to carry on the life you have, you will become bored, hopeless, and depressed. If you exert that effort for the sake of the earthly goals themselves, then they will bring only rewards which “moth and rust doth corrupt.” But if you exert effort for the sake of knowing Christ, you authorize Him to bless you, and you “lay up for [yourself] treasures in heaven.”31 That is the spiritual value of effort. It is not how we earn salvation, for we cannot. It is not how we prove our worth, for we are “less than the dust of the earth.”32 It is just how we open our arms and let God flow in.

It is a strange and beautiful thing that earthly exertions may yield heavenly rewards, but that is what God promises. He continuously pours out blessings and potential blessings upon you, and all you must do is put forth the effort to hold onto them. Accept the things God tries to give you, advance down the paths He lays before you, cooperate with the stirrings of transformation He places within you, and you discover He was not lying when He said He would “open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it.”33 You don’t have to take Malachi’s or Elder Kearon’s word for it; you can see it for yourself.

VI. Recommit, Resubmit

Even as God’s outpouring of blessings becomes visible to you, there will be experiences that defy your comprehension. How can unbearable drudgery, prolonged physical pain, random death, or the suffering of children have any value? You may be tempted, as I have been, to renounce life as vanity and dross and mentally withdraw from it. But if you are converted to Jesus Christ, you say with Him, “thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever.”34

Instead of pulling back, you recommit. You choose again to submit to every confusing, painful experience you encounter, knowing God designed life for us.35 If God is asking you to stay in your nine-to-five, you embrace it joyfully with Him; if God is denying you a clear vision of your future, you do good with Him in the present; if God brings a friend home prematurely, you mourn well with Him; all for the sake of knowing Christ through the experiences—for the sake of receiving and becoming Jesus’s pure love.

You hold fast to the belief that your experiences are part of God’s relentless pursuit, not heartless or meaningless, even if you can’t fathom how. You are reassured that yours is not a God who hesitates to give but who scatters love and light everywhere He goes. You have hope that you will return to Him one day, because instructions are no exception to His love of giving; as you remain open to Him, the Holy Spirit will “tell you all things what ye should do.”36

Follow Him as He lights the way. Gratefully put forth the effort to lay hold on His unsparing abundance, which is freely laid before you. And stop this silly talk of Him stepping in only when all else fails; He is always active, always invested, always adapting, always inspiring, in His endless, selfless, relentless pursuit.

Notes

  1. Doctrine and Covenants 4:2 ↩︎
  2. D&C 107:99-100 ↩︎
  3. D&C 123:17 ↩︎
  4. DBY, 291 ↩︎
  5. Barbara B. Smith, “The Bond of Charity,” October 1980 General Conference ↩︎
  6. M. Russell Ballard, “The Savior’s Touch,” October 1980 General Conference ↩︎
  7. Mark E. Petersen, “Where Do We Stand?” April 1980 General Conference ↩︎
  8. Henry B. Eyring, “All Will Be Well Because of Temple Covenants,” April 2024 General Conference ↩︎
  9. Dieter F. Uchtdorf, “A Higher Joy,” April 2024 General Conference ↩︎
  10. This article is the only online source I’ve been able to find for this idea, but I don’t know whether it’s where it originated. ↩︎
  11. Exodus 31:18, 34:1, KJV ↩︎
  12. 1 Nephi 16:10, 28 ↩︎
  13. Mosiah 24:19 ↩︎
  14. Helaman 16:2 ↩︎
  15. I use this example because it is the most common “recognizable answer to prayer” experience I can think of. If you’ve never experienced it yourself, you can probably find someone who has by asking around. ↩︎
  16. John 13:1-17 ↩︎
  17. Numbers 1:48-51; 4:15,24-25 ↩︎
  18. 1 Nephi 17:8 ↩︎
  19. Mosiah 22:1-11 ↩︎
  20. Alma 43:19-21; 44:17-18 ↩︎
  21. 2 Kings 5; 3 Nephi 27:20 ↩︎
  22. Moroni 10:32, emphasis added ↩︎
  23. 3 Nephi 12:48 ↩︎
  24. John 10:30 ↩︎
  25. 2 Nephi 31:13 ↩︎
  26. Matthew 17:20, Helaman 10:5-11 ↩︎
  27. Mosiah 2:20-22 ↩︎
  28. Patrick Kearon, “God’s Intent Is to Bring You Home,” April 2024 General Conference ↩︎
  29. Russell M. Nelson, “Let God Prevail,” April 2020 General Conference ↩︎
  30. James 1:27 ↩︎
  31. Matthew 6:19-20 ↩︎
  32. Helaman 12:7-8 ↩︎
  33. Malachi 3:10 ↩︎
  34. Matthew 6:13 ↩︎
  35. Mosiah 3:19 ↩︎
  36. 2 Nephi 32:3 ↩︎