"Inspirational" Picture Quote - The Seemingly Impossible Promise

One of the picture quotes I didn't share yesterday was this one:

"This is very important: as we do our best, He will not let us fail." -Elder Neil L. Andersen

The reason I didn't share it was because I'm not sure how strongly I agree with it. God often lets people fail despite their best efforts. Perhaps this quote is better shared in greater context. The quote was taken from a Worldwide Leadership Training broadcast titled A Spiritual Work. It was given the context of doing the Lord's work. The idea is that if we're trying to do what God has asked us to do, and we're doing the best we can, we cannot fail. In fact, there's another quote that shares that concept better: "It is impossible for us to fail when we do our best when we are on the Lord’s errand." That bold statement came from Elder M. Russell Ballard, from his October 2013 talk, Put Your Trust in the Lord. Yet, despite having more than one Apostle having said what pretty much amounts to the same thing, I'm still not sure how true it is.

I think that sometimes, even when we try our best to do what the Lord has asked of us, we are sometimes allowed to fail. Often, the purpose of such failure is to teach us lessons that probably couldn't be learned any other way. Such a lesson might be that we need to try harder or try a different approach. Then again, if it were possible to try harder, that means that theoretically we weren't trying as hard as we could the first time, which leads me to a question I've had many times before and still have never really answered: When are we actually doing our best?

Theoretically, it's possible for a human being to live life perfectly, never breaking any of God's many commandments. It's been done before. We all, theoretically, have the ability to completely live up to all of the light and knowledge we have, always keeping every commandment we know of and never doing anything that we know is a sin. It's possible. But at the same time, it's impossible. Nobody's perfect (at least, nobody that lives on the Earth right now is). We all make mistakes. And sometimes, our mistakes lead to us breaking the commandments, or in other ways not doing everything that we possibly could have to do what God wants us to do. We never really do our best, so the guarantee against failure never applies to us.

But perhaps God is more lenient than I currently think. While it's true that God can't look upon sin with any degree of allowance, there is a difference, perhaps a substantial one, between deliberate disobedience and human weakness. I had heard a good quote that says that, but I couldn't find it. Luckily, I found this one instead.

The Lord sees weaknesses differently than He does rebellion. Whereas the Lord warns that unrepented rebellion will bring punishment, when the Lord speaks of weaknesses, it is always with mercy.
-Elder Richard G. Scott, Personal Strength Through the Atonement of Jesus Christ

The point that I'm trying to get at is that our human weakness limits our abilities, and that perhaps it's not realistically possible for us to do as well as we theoretically could do. Even when we "do our best," our ability to do our best is limited. It may not be humanly possible to do as well as we possibly can.

To illustrate, say a young basketball player was magically promised that if he did his best, he'd never miss a shot made from the free-throw line. It's theoretically possible for him to make every free throw, if he really knows how to control his muscles during the throw. If "doing his best" means controlling his muscles perfectly, which is theoretically possible, I think, then the magical promise means that he'll never miss a free throw, unless he makes a mistake while throwing.

But is that even fair? He's only human. He's bound to make a few mistakes. Perhaps the magical promise accounts for that. Maybe all he has to do is focus. But even then, humans often lose focus at little or no fault of their own. Perhaps the requirement to "do his best" includes hours of practice to help him control his mind and his muscles, so he can make each free throw with precision, but how many hours of practice are required? If he spent 8 hours of each day sleeping, 2 hours eating, 8 hours at school, and the remaining 6 hours per day practicing free throws, could he have theoretically practiced more? Yes, if he spent less time eating and sleeping. Also, it's possible for him to drop out of school in order to spend those extra 8 hours practicing his free throw. Unless he practiced his free throw literally to the limit of his physical ability, can it really be said that he actually "did his best" at it?

Certainly, God doesn't expect that much from us, does He? Yet, if allowances are made for our being "only human," and if the statements made by the Apostles are true, then that should make failure even less of a possibility. Assuming that the young basketball player doesn't have to practice that much in order to qualify for the magical promise, that means that he should be able to sink every single free throw he makes, while still leaving plenty of time in his days for everything else he needs to do. If the requirements for guaranteed success are set any lower than absolute perfection, that should make it that much easier to satisfy the requirement and be guaranteed not to fail.

And yet, we fail anyway. So what, exactly, does it mean to "do our best" to keep all of God's commandments? Do we have to spend every waking hour working on it, leaving no time for work, school, meals, bathroom breaks, or even sleep? There are certain physical limitations involved in staying alive. We need to eat and sleep to keep our bodies functioning. We need to work for our food, even if we grow it or hunt it ourselves. At some point, we need to learn the skills required to do the work required to get food. And occasionally, what goes in must come out. It is realistically impossible to spend literally all our time trying to keep the commandments, so how much of our time, energy, and effort is actually required of us in order for us to qualify for the promise that we will not fail? While God would never ask of us more than we could give, it's theoretically possible for us to give 100% of ourselves to the effort, even though a certain percentage of that time and energy would probably be better spent making sure we stay alive. How much is He really asking for?

The trouble is that I don't know. Maybe He wants 90%. Maybe He's only asking for 50%, or even 10! Maybe it's different for each person, depending on their circumstances. My point is that I don't know how much God is asking of me, but I know that if I give any less than my best (however much that is), I have no guarantee not to fail. No matter how well I do or how hard I try, God can always say, "You could have done better." Thus, I never really "do my best," so I never qualify for the promise, so as far as I'm concerned, the promise may as well not even exist.

I know that God wouldn't have had the Apostles give us a promise that doesn't mean anything, so it should be possible for us to do our best and be guaranteed not do fail. But how realistic is that possibility? Is it something that we can actually do, or is it just something that we can theoretically do? It really, really bothers me that I don't know. Because sometimes I think I'm doing my best, and I fail anyway. Other times, I set my bar higher, and "doing my best" suddenly seems impossible. How can I know when I'm really doing my best, according to God's definition of the phrase? How can I know when I'm qualifying for the promise?