Faith is strongest when it is without illusions. Realistic faith alone provides allowance for the testing and proving dimensions of this mortal experience (D&C 98:12; Abraham 3:25). We undergo afflictions such as are "common to man" (1 Corinthians 10:13). Additionally, God will deliberately give curriculum common to man and on into uncommon graduate studies or even post-doctoral discipleship. These trials are often the most difficult to bear. Our Father is full of pressing, tutorial love: "The Lord seeth fit to chasten his people; yea, he trieth their patience and their faith" (Mosiah 23:21). Nevertheless we are assured that "all these things shall give [us] experience, and shall be for [our] good," if we endure them well and learn from them (D&C 122:7; 121:8). For we are to learn much by our own experience.
Thus life itself does not do all of the inflicting. Indeed, some trials come directly from God or with His assent. On the final record will be the incontestable evidence as to whether we are "willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon [us], even as a child doth submit to his father" (Mosiah 3:19).
Having taken his yoke upon us, then, we will experience - though on our small and lesser scale - certain things which permit us to learn of Jesus: loving when our love is not reciprocated or is even rejected, as with the wicked in His day; serving when our service is not appreciated, as with the nine lepers (Luke 17:12-19); seeing erring loved ones who are free to choose but who are choosing unwisely, as when He lamented, "O, Jerusalem..." (Matthew 23:37): watching in some the root of bitterness spring up to trouble and defile others (Hebrews 12:15); experiencing anguish as a result of what is happening to us and around us, but, as with Nephi, still knowing that God loves us (1 Nephi 11:17); being mocked and despised by the world, perhaps even betrayed, and feeling aloneness - all part of suffering in order to learn obedience (Hebrews 5:8).
The Prophet Joseph Smith taught that "all will suffer until they obey Christ himself." Indeed, some suffering actually comes in striving to become like Christ as well as in obeying Him.
Not My Will, but Thine by Neal A. Maxwell. 2008. Deseret Book. p. 5,6
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