An excerpt from The Glory of God is Intelligence, by Robert Smith, p. 39. If you do not own this book, you should. Get it and read it.

Increased awareness can come from God or Satan. Both possess awareness beyond your own, and both have a reason to give you more, but the reasons differ.

God recognizes we are all in bondage to our ignorance. He gives light to everyone, knowing that most will use it to harm themselves and others, because it is the only way to bring people out of bondage.

Satan recognizes we are all in bondage to our ignorance. He tries to keep everyone in ignorance through means that cause people not to think, not to question, and not to act for their own improvement. He wants them to be satisfied, addicted, unintelligent, docile, dogmatic, frustrated, confused, and angry. His strategy is to keep everyone in ignorance, but he realizes that some people have certain traits that make them dangerous.
With these people, he takes a different strategy, depending on their traits.

Those who have the gift of belief, but who have not developed the skill of discernment are flooded by Satan with extraneous nonsense. You can tell these people by how much of their lives they spend on unfruitful practices—practices that might be readily recognizable by others as hokey, superstitious, or cult-like. Note the intentional use of the word “practices.” Those who are believing but neutralized by Satan remain on the hamster wheel of action without ever becoming better people. They are far too busy with their rituals to actually buckle down and learn something: about themselves, about God, etc. These people embrace a very watered-down view of God, and usually subscribe to the simplistic and weak idea that God exists to uniformly accept any and every desire they might have. Satan can rest assured that these types of people will never exert the testing necessary to let go of their time-consuming beliefs, and since their identities are so wrapped up in their false ideas, he can count on their rejection of anyone with higher light and truth who comes along trying to dislodge them.

Those who have the skill of discernment, but not the gift of belief, tend to write off out of hand (either initially or after a grace period of blind obedience to typically inherited religion) anything connected to God. These people readily accept that temporal knowledge is sufficiently complex to require years of professional education and practice, but expect spiritual knowledge to come all at once, with no effort whatsoever. They expect child-level spiritual explanations to endure the weight of adult-level problems, while having no such expectations in temporal areas. All that is required for Satan to derail these people is to expose them to greater awareness than their belief can support. They will not invest the experimentation and study required to grow their faith.

Those with a tendency towards obedience will be bound up in the dogmatic acceptance of whatever they currently believe to the crowding out of anything that is better. As a result of these tactics, most who would otherwise acquire great light and truth end up turning away from the productive paths and spend
their lives doing very little good in the world.

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The quantity of light and truth each person possesses is completely within their own control. This life is the time to prepare for eternity, and it is where you have the opportunity to grow in your awareness. We get according to what we are willing to receive. We alone control what heed and diligence we exercise to acquire and assimilate truth. (Intelligence, p.35)

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God is the source of all truth. If we want to access what he has in all areas of our lives, we must heed his light in all areas of our lives. The ways of the world are not truth. They are illusory, counterfeit, vain, and false. God has commanded us to forsake the world. We ought to forsake anything that is not by him or by his word, whatever domain it is in. “And I give unto you a commandment, that ye shall forsake all evil and cleave unto all good, that ye shall live by every word which proceedeth forth out of the mouth of God.” (D&C 98:11)

Some of the changes that will be suggested to you will seem impossible. Remember that God will never reveal to you a truth that lies outside your capacity to incorporate: “…the Lord giveth no commandments unto the children of men, save he shall prepare a way for them that they may accomplish the thing which he commandeth them.” (1 Nephi 3:7)

Any perceived limits in your ability to change are not real limits, but merely limits in your trust in God. (Intelligence, p.26)

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My own comments:

The test of life is learning to trust God. We need to let go of everything else and learn to trust in God perfectly and completely.

A few nights back, I was on a jog with my son Ephraim. There, in the dark and bitter cold of night the Lord told me: Jared, you need to believe you can do the impossible.”

With God at my side, I am learning that I can do all things that He asks me to do, even the impossible!

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