For those of us who have spent any time online, we are familiar with the way that different social media and content creation platforms use algorithms to try and learn more about our apparent preferences so that they can lure us into spending more time on their sites by serving up more and more of the content that we presumably enjoy. These algorithms can get into something of a feedback loop where, for example, one time we watch a funny dog video and so it starts to give us more funny dog videos until it gets to a point where it supposes that we must exclusively like funny dog videos because those are the only ones that come up for us to watch. As frustrating as this principle of giving us more and more of what we show interest in when the algorithm starts to get broken can be, it is actually an imperfect shadow of a divine algorithm that our Heavenly Father uses with us. “For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath.” (Matthew 25:29). If we give heed to and carry out a prompting from the Holy Ghost to love and serve our neighbor, then the Lord will recognize that we are both paying close enough attention to His promptings and have the faith to obey them. He will then be inclined to give us more promptings. And as we follow those as well, we become better at recognizing and following them. So we are blessed to receive more of them. And so we will get caught in this positive feedback loop where the Lord blesses us with more promptings because He knows that we will act on them, and as we do obey each new one, we are teaching the divine algorithm to give us more and more. I hope that we are all striving to build a positive feedback loop with the Lord and opening ourselves up to receiving more and more and more as we give up more and more and more to building His Kingdom.
