In Every Thought

by Autumn Dickson

The Lord is speaking to Joseph and Oliver in the sections that we read for this week. There is a lot of fantastic material about how the Lord sets us up to try something new, knowing we’ll fail, but also knowing that we have to begin in order to learn. There are principles of revelation and how the Lord utilizes our desires to build up His kingdom.

One of the principles that the Lord speaks about is pretty straightforward.

Doctrine and Covenants 6:36

36 Look unto me in every thought; doubt not, fear not.

Let’s talk about these phrases.

Look unto me in every thought

“Look unto me in every thought,” is a rather lofty goal. I can hardly keep my focus when I’m praying, let alone when I’m trying to do anything else in my life. Perhaps there will come a day when the Savior takes up a grand majority of my thoughts, but I want to propose another interpretation of this phrase.

Perhaps the Lord did mean that He wanted us to have Him at the forefront of our minds constantly, but perhaps He also meant it more along the lines of, “View your thoughts within the reality that I’ve created.” Every thought isn’t necessarily going to be directly about the Savior, but we can take any thought and put it in the context of the Savior. Let’s look at just one example.

Lately, my family has been trying to find somewhere to live back on the east coast. There are a million moving parts, and we’ve found some places that we love. However, every time we start to move forward in a specific direction, the door gets closed. There was one house that we loved. It had been on the market for over a year. The second we started to take action to put in an offer, it was snatched up. This has happened repeatedly.

It’s gotten discouraging, and I have found myself inadvertently disengaging from the process. We’ve been in limbo, between houses and apartments for over three years now. I think what I crave most is some kind of plan. Luckily, I write my prayers every day and I figured it would probably be good to talk to Him directly about it rather than trying to squash any rising hopes or trying to talk myself out of discouragement. Instead of trying to force myself into faith, I decided to turn to Him so He could give me a different perspective. I wanted to be able to see the situation more clearly, and I knew He could talk me through the discouragement and get me to that point.

And He did. As I prayed and told Him about my discouragement, I felt the whispered perspective, “Do you really want Me to ignore My plan and just give you something now?” It almost felt as if He was telling me that He was willing to grant my desires even though they were contrary to His own. It completely flipped over everything in my mind. I don’t want my plan. I want what’s best for my family which is why I want His plan. I want Him to close the wrong doors and choose His timing. I don’t need to be discouraged because He’s setting things up for us. Why on earth would I choose anything else? Why am I discouraged when He has helped me know that He’s leading us right to where we’re supposed to be?

I took my original thoughts (discouragement, desire for permanency) and I looked at them through the lens of Christ; this made my thoughts feel very different. Gratitude replaced discouragement. Excitement replaced weariness. The Lord is guiding us. Instead of hurting over some of the places we had really wanted, I felt so grateful that He took it away from us because I was reminded that He has a plan. I want His plan.

This is not just true of situations that feel discouraging. If there is a thought that won’t leave you alone, that drags you down and holds you in place, put that thought in the context of Christ. If it’s difficult to see a clear picture, then pray about it. You don’t even have to figure out the Christlike perspective on your own; He did it for me! All I did was turn to Him, tell Him how I felt, and listened so that I could hear His response. He rearranged my perspective. He helped me look to Him in the thoughts that were pressing in on my mind.

And this goes for any thought. Thoughts of weaknesses and failures. Thoughts of blessings that were taken away. Thoughts of being treated unfairly. We can take our very real feelings and thoughts to the Lord, and He can help us see it through Him and His promises. As we see things the way He sees them, we change because we start operating off of clearer perspectives.

Let’s review that process again

I want to take the experience I had with framing my thoughts through the Savior, and I want to take the general principles so we can apply it in our own individual situations.

Looking unto Him in every thought and having it change you is not something you do on your own. Or, at the very least, it doesn’t have to be something you do on your own. When I went to Heavenly Father with my concerns over moving, I told Him everything I was worried about. HE reframed my thoughts in His image.

Concrete example time!

Sometimes my four year old gets into tiffs with his little four year old best friend. They usually do pretty dang good for four year olds, but every once in a while, they get worked up about something and it devolves pretty quickly. It’s funny because they often both go home (we live a house apart), they last no longer than an hour, and then they’re back to being buddies.

This is not my expectation in the slightest for my four year old, but imagine for a second that he had the maturity to pause before the tiff escalated. Imagine that he was able to reign in his exhaustion from playing in the sun all day and he was able to take a step back from all of his big feelings, and he suggested to his buddy, “Hey let’s go talk to my mom about this. She can help us.” That’s not going to happen, but imagine how much easier it would be for him.

I like to think I’m more mature than a four year old, but if we’re going to scale this, then I’m probably still spiritually around four years old when we’re comparing me to our Heavenly Father (why yes, that’s a completely arbitrary age that I threw out). My situations have often felt far more dire than the arguments I observe between my son and his best friend, but then again, my son seems to feel that their arguments are pretty dire. I can only imagine that my Heavenly Father sees the things that are troubling me and views them with more wisdom and more compassion when compared to how I view my son’s best friend issues.

My son is not capable of this yet, but I would imagine that he would feel a lot better about his arguments if he remembered how often I told him that I loved him. I would imagine that he would feel a lot happier and safer if he could remember to take a step back and ask me for help navigating the situation. I believe that things would run pretty smoothly if he trusted my love and wisdom enough that he turned to me in those precarious moments. Unfortunately, he’s young and often just reacts to what’s in front of him. That’s okay. That’s often how we learn, but let’s take this to what we were speaking about before.

Our situations may feel dire. They may feel like the end of the world. They may feel like it’s going to last forever. We may just simply react to whatever is put in front of us. But imagine how different things might feel if we turned to the Lord and let Him help us navigate things instead.

If Warner took a step back and thought, “How would my mom handle this situation?” I would be flabbergasted to say the least. If he actually successfully imagined how I would handle the situation, I would be even more blown away. But here’s the cool thing in our scenario. We don’t have to guess how our Heavenly Father would react! We can ask Him, and He can reframe our thoughts for us with His wisdom!

Sometimes we think faith says, “I can get over this. This isn’t a big deal. I just have to get it together and trust Him.” Maybe faith does look like that sometimes. But often enough, I have found that my more effective faith says, “I can turn to Him, and He can help me reframe my worries.” I don’t just tell myself He’s going to handle it; I allow myself to trust Him enough to handle it (or at least to walk me through it).

The next phrases in that same verse say, “Doubt not, fear not.” Perhaps those were two new commandments, and perhaps they were simply extensions of the first commandment. When we look to Him in our thoughts, when we remember His love and His promises and when we remember that He wants to support us, our doubts and fears naturally go away. It’s not something we force. We invest our energy into developing the relationship with Him so that we can trust and believe in Him, and then the negative takes care of itself.

I testify of a Heavenly Father and Savior who love us. I testify that Christ wants us to remember Him. He wants us to remember Him, not because He gets a kick out of being worshiped, but because He knows that our trust in Him has the power to change our perspectives on everything. He knows that remembering Him and all He sacrificed for us will bring us peace and joy, and that brings Him peace and joy.

Autumn Dickson was born and raised in a small town in Texas. She served a mission in the Indianapolis Indiana mission. She studied elementary education but has found a particular passion in teaching the gospel. Her desire for her content is to inspire people to feel confident, peaceful, and joyful about their relationship with Jesus Christ and to allow that relationship to touch every aspect of their lives. Autumn was the recipient of FAIR’s 2024 John Taylor Defender of the Faith Award.