Warning:
This post is over 9 years old. I don't always update old posts with new information, so some of this information may be out of date. Opinions expressed in these older posts may not reflect my current position or understanding.
I was reading Human Action by Ludwig von Mises earlier, an he says this:
“…to make a man act, uneasiness and the image of a more satisfactory state alone are not sufficient. A third condition is required: the expectation that purposeful behavior has the power to remove or at least to alleviate the felt uneasiness. In the absence of this condition no action is feasible. Man must yield to the inevitable. He must submit to destiny.”
That sounds an awful lot like what I understand about faith, the first principle of the Gospel.
Joseph Smith taught in the Lectures on Faith:
“…faith is the assurance which men have of the existence of things which they have not seen; and the principle of action in all intelligent beings. If men were duly to consider themselves, and turn their thoughts and reflections to the operations of their own minds, they would readily discover that it is faith, and faith only, which is the moving cause of all action, in them; that without it, both mind and body would be in a state of inactivity, and all their exertions would cease, both physical and mental.”
“Turn your thoughts on your own minds, and see if faith is not the moving cause of all action in yourselves; and if the moving cause in you, it it not in all other intelligent beings? And as faith is the moving cause of all action in temporal concerns, so it is in spiritual.”