Unshaken Faith: Embracing God's Power and Promises

In the inaugural episode of 'Hope Smiling Brightly,' Amber Dawn Pearce shares her journey from a unique upbringing to developing an unshaken faith in Christ. Raised off-grid by converted hippies in a large, blended family, Amber's life was far from ordinary, involving significant challenges and moments of introspection often mistaken for sadness. She discusses overcoming the 'happy when syndrome,' where joy is deferred to future circumstances, and recounts how striving for perfection led to exhaustion and a realization that her understanding of God was fundamentally flawed. Through years of refinement, Amber learned to focus solely on looking to God daily, allowing His truth to replace incorrect beliefs and bring about transformative change. She emphasizes that Christ's healing power, patience, and gifts of the Holy Spirit are essential in personal growth and overcoming the adversary's influence. Amber vows to use her gift of testimony to encourage others, urging them to believe in God's promises, cultivate their spiritual gifts, and recognize the abundant resources available through faith in Christ, especially in these latter days.

You can  join Amber on all social media platforms @amberdawnpearce

00:00 Unlocking Unshaken Faith in Christ
00:29 Introducing Hope Smiling Brightly: Amber's Journey
01:44 The Power of a Smile: Overcoming Life's Challenges
03:11 Embracing the Gospel's Joy: A Personal Transformation
05:55 Foundational Principles for a Fulfilling Life
12:08 Harnessing the Power of God in Our Lives
17:19 The Ultimate Gift: Believing in God's Promises
22:08 Christ: The Source of Our Hope and Healing
23:49 A Call to Action: Cultivating Faith, Hope, and Charity

Transcript

Amber: 0:00

Believe in God's power, his gifts, his promises. Remember all he has done. You will cultivate unshaken faith in Christ as you do. Let this seed of belief work in you today. And you will be astounded by the power of his grace. You will witness change come into your life. That is so stunning that it will be impossible for you to deny the power of God. Well, hello. Welcome to the first episode of Hope Smiling Brightly. I am Amber Dawn Pearce, and I am so grateful and humbled that you are here. I had a wonderful and unique upbringing raised off grid by addict hippies who were converted to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints. We ended up becoming a family of 15, including 8 adopted siblings. Yep, I know what it's like to live in a home with dirt floors and no plumbing or electricity. Oh, I've got stories. You'll hear a lot of them in future episodes, I promise. Some of you know me from social media where I share little clips of my upbringing and faith. But as we know, when it comes to social media, there is so much more than meets the eye. The gospel of Jesus Christ has brought much joy into my life. And the smile you see on my face there is truly genuine, but finding that joy has been quite the journey. In fact, there is one, one word instruction I heard from others more than any other when I was growing up. Can you guess what it was? Smile. My upbringing was amazing, but it wasn't without incredibly difficult experiences. Being an introspective person by nature. Others often mistook my ability to get lost in thought. as, well, sadness. Though, honestly, sometimes they weren't far off in their assumption. From a very young age, I developed the happy when syndrome. You know what I'm talking about. I'll be happy when ABC is over or when XYZ finally begins. And yes, I definitely knew I would be happy when I could finally use an indoor toilet instead of an outhouse. All jokes aside, with happy when syndrome, I knew there was joy out there, but I was sure it would only come if and when circumstances would change. Funny thing is, Every time circumstances did change, I would just find another happy when to hope for. The same applied to everything else I believed in.\ I knew God would speak. I knew there were miracles. I knew there was peace. I knew there was deliverance. But just Not now. For that, I'd have to wait. That waiting turned into years of striving to check every single box on the Righteous Child of God checklist. I was sure that when I got to the end of my perfect checklist rainbow, that is where I would finally find everything I wanted. You can imagine the confusion when I found myself on the ground, completely exhausted with no pot of gold. Worse than that were the devastating words that God spoke to my mind. In the middle of it all, ye know me not. My whole life, I had worshipped a very demanding God, who I knew loved me, but I was sure was constantly disappointed in me. A God who would only love, accept, and bless me after I could perfect myself. I finally realized that if the cost of worth and acceptance was perfection, then there was no way I could ever pay it. No wonder living the gospel felt so exhausting. I had it all. wrong. Over the next years, God showed me my only labor, the one and only checkbox I ever needed. To look to Him each day. God has slowly stripped away incorrect beliefs I have about who He is and replaced it with truth. With that truth has come change to the point that I barely remember the person that I was before. His promise that his word changes us, born again into a new creature in Christ, is real. I can't help but share this message. Over and over again, the Spirit has spoken to my mind. This isn't just about you, Amber. These experiences can bless more than just you. And so I am here sharing it, even if it helps just one person sharing, because so many have mistakenly decided the solution is to walk away from their faith. If you don't mind, I'd like to share with you a few foundational principles that will guide the message of this podcast. Number one, it is Christ who heals do not labor for that, which cannot satisfy. When I was researching for this podcast, I came across many websites of motivational speakers who promised the same things in different words over and over again. Master every area of your life, create a better life, take control of your life, take back your life, create the life you've been dreaming of, and many more. I am sure those people have some great tools and knowledge to share. But there will always be something missing, and here it is a testimony of Christ can do what all other self help resources promise and more. Whatever it is, Christ is the answer. He is our coach, our guide, our mentor, our motivational speaker. If we would just have the patience to let him speak. Come unto Christ and his power and lay hold upon every good gift, touch, not the evil gift, nor the unclean thing. In other words, stop looking for peace, healing, power in solutions that will never truly satisfy. Isaiah says it perfectly in chapter 55. Wherefore do ye spend money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which satisfyeth not? Hearken diligently unto me, and eat ye that which is good, and let your soul delight itself in fatness. Incline your ear, and come unto me. Hear, and your soul shall live, and I will make an everlasting covenant with you. So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth. It shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereinto I sent it. It sounds easy enough. But remember that Moses raised up a type of Christ in the wilderness, that whosoever would look upon it might live. And many did look and live, but many would not look and perished. And the reason they did not look is because they did not believe that it would heal them. Living in these last days, Has left a lot to be healed in us. Christ promises healing, but few have patience to come to him and instead look for healing and peace from other sources. Yes, finding Christ in these confusing times requires great faith, but the amazing news is that you wouldn't be right here, right now, if you didn't have the capacity for this kind of faith. The second principle, his healing process manifests greater things than you can imagine I dare you to find any resource out there that tops what he offers. So what can you hope for as you turn your head and look to him? What does he want for you to believe? With hope, smiling brightly, you can experience that God is always communicating to you, even in this very moment, that joy is now. Even in the most difficult circumstances, miracles are real and evident in every single day. Angels are ministering to you. He is giving an abundance of the gifts of the Holy Spirit to help us strengthen and bless each other. The power of your covenants is magnifying you in unprecedented ways. His peace that passes all understanding is flowing over you, and he is delivering you from all manner of bondage, physical, mental, spiritual, emotional. He is Lord over all. The third principle, he keeps his promises and they are powerful. God will show unto you with power and great glory at the last day that these things are true. The only thing that can stop it is our own unbelief. And even then, if you don't believe, he's working on that right now too. Today is that promise fulfilled that was given in the book of Mormon. So let's break it down a bit Nephi saw us and witnessed that the power of the Lamb of God descended upon the saints of the church of the lamb and upon the covenant people of the Lord who were scattered upon all the face of the earth. And they were armed with righteousness and with the power of God in great glory. What is this power? Priesthood power available to every covenant daughter or son of God. How important it is to learn the doctrine of the priesthood that it might distill upon our souls. Again, in 2 Nephi 6:14, we are reminded that he will manifest himself unto us in power and great glory unto the destruction of our enemies. What enemy? I believe our own thoughts are our greatest enemies. They are often created by suggestions from the adversary. God can destroy those enemies with truth. Okay, so he will manifest himself unto us in power and great glory unto the destruction of our enemies. But in the next line, we learn something that has to happen on our part. You ready for it? When that day cometh, when they shall believe in him. Notice how it didn't say if. He did not say if, but when, because he has that much confidence in you and your belief now, you might be thinking, okay, I believe in Christ and his promises but that is just the start and brings us to the fourth principle. We must believe in his power in our lives personally, and that power comes from gifts of the Holy Spirit, that same God who parted the sea so it could be crossed on dry ground is the same God who is with you when you find yourself at a spiritual dead end, The same God who healed the blind is the one who is trying to help you see him in your life. When your sight is restored You will see that he has given and will help you cultivate gifts that will bless you and the world. If there be one among you that doeth good, he shall work by the power and gifts of God. I remember when President Nelson said, My dear sisters, You have spiritual gifts and propensities. I urge you with all the hope of my heart to pray to understand your spiritual gifts, to cultivate, use, and expand them even more than you ever have. You will change the world as you do. I took that invitation seriously and began to pray for that understanding. I didn't receive an immediate answer, but one day as I was going about my tasks, the words came into my mind as clear as anything. You have the gift to bear testimony. I stood frozen in my spot, surprised that I had never realized I had been blessed with that gift where in that moment, it seemed so obvious, but now I had the task to cultivate, use and expand the gift to bear testimony more than I ever had. And try to have faith in the promise that along with you. We would change the world. That moment was the first of many turning points in my life and in between I've probably faced more opposition than ever trying to overcome doubt and fear and sharing the gift I've been given. Sometimes I wanted to forget about that experience because I was sure I was going to fail. But to deny our own gifts and abilities is to deny God and his power, priesthood power. Deny not the power of God, deny not the gifts of God, but deny yourself of all ungodliness. One of the most ungodly things to do is to reject or diminish the divinity within you. When you put yourself down, tell yourself you can't do something, stay quiet out of fear, hide your gifts. You are literally rejecting the godliness in you. My last point is a warning to beware of one of Satan's favorite tactics. We are shown over and over again in the scriptures of how Satan will try to make us forget that God can do such marvelous works In Alma nine, we are told of a people who forgot and the terrible destruction that came because of it. But do we remember in our day, those same things that they forgot that all things can be made known according to our desires, that we can be visited by the spirit of God converse with angels spoken to by the voice of the Lord. Blessed with the spirit of prophecy and the spirit of revelation and also many gifts the gift of speaking with tongues, And the gift of preaching and the gift of the Holy Ghost. It goes on to list other things we tend to forget or never even see. And I want you to listen to these as if they were spiritual and not just physical, that we have been delivered of God saved from famine, not just physically, but spiritually, from sickness, from all manner of diseases of every kind, waxed strong in battle, spiritual or physical there, that we might not be destroyed, having been brought out of bondage time after time and having been kept and preserved until now. And we have been prospered until we are rich in all manner of things. Again in Mormon one, we witness a time when the work of miracles and healing did cease because of the iniquity of the people. And there were no gifts from the Lord. And the Holy Ghost did not come upon any because of their wickedness and unbelief. Another warning in Moroni 10, that if the day cometh that the power and gifts of God shall be done away among you, it shall be because of unbelief. God's greatest power. is manifested in his children in being able to sanctify and perfect our imperfect efforts as we strive to develop his gifts. He has already paid the price. Our only cost is to believe. These are the last days and where people tend to think of destruction and hardship when those two words"last days" are spoken, we know better. There is great power, promises, miracles, revelation, gifts, joy, strength, protection that has been reserved for these days for right now. They are yours. Claim them. There is hope. Elder Holland gave a similar invitation to know Christ and claim his heavenly help in the April 2024 general conference. But his invitation in particular comes with incredible power because he gave it after having sacred experiences when he almost left this life for good and knowing that this might be the very last message he would give in this mortal life. Can you imagine preparing a talk like that? He bore powerful witness of the reality of eternal life and the need for us to be serious in our planning for it. He said,"That serious needs to exist when Christ comes. Because he needs to recognize us, not as nominal members listed on a faded baptismal record, but as thoroughly committed, faithfully believing, covenant keeping disciples. This is an urgent matter for all of us, lest we ever hear with devastating regret, I never knew you. Or as Joseph Smith translated that phrase, you never knew me." Close quote. Do those words sound familiar? Very similar to the words that were spoken to me. Ye know me not. To know Christ is to need Christ. To believe in and access his healing power. In fact, the very next words Elder Holland spoke were of all the help that is available to us as we come to know Christ, if we will just believe. He said,"Fortunately, we have help for this task, lots of help. We need to believe in angels and miracles and the promises of the holy priesthood. We need to believe in the gift of the Holy Ghost, the influence of good families and friends, the power of the pure love of Christ. We need to believe in revelation and prophets, seers and revelators, and President Russell M. Nelson. We need to believe with prayer and pleading and personal righteousness, we really can ascend to Mount Zion, the city of a living God, the heavenly place, the holiest of all." What a happy place. Are you tired of waiting for your happy when? Tired of trying quick fixes that don't stick? Let's do this now. What change are you seeking? What burden do you need lifted? What faith do you want strengthened? What gifts are dormant within you? What healing is needed? That is what Christ came here to do. I think you might be pretty good at it. Believe in God's power, his gifts, his promises. Remember all he has done. You will cultivate unshaken faith in Christ as you do. And from that faith comes hope. And from that hope comes charity, which encompasses every gift of the spirit and contains the greatest power of God we can realize. Let this seed of belief work in you today and you will be astounded by the power of his grace. You will witness change come into your life that is so stunning that it will be impossible for you to deny the power of God. When dark clouds of trouble hang over you and threaten your peace to destroy, there is hope smiling brightly before you, and you know that deliverance is nigh. Christ is your hope, smiling brightly.