Hello, it's Me

One of the coolest things that I’ve found in the gospel is that when we are baptized and receive the Holy Ghost, we are pretty much given a built in cell phone. With this cell phone, we can not only call Heavenly Father at any time, but we can also receive “texts” (promptings) from the Spirit about what to do, where to go, who to talk to, what something spiritual means, etc. I, personally, utilized this gift very often when I first was baptized, mostly because I had no idea what anything meant, so I needed all the help I could get.

It’s easy, though, to fall into this trap of, once you’ve gained a little Spiritual knowledge, you think you know everything, and no longer need any more help. Or, more commonly I think, you’ll be asked by the Spirit to do something, and then not want to do it, or feel like it’s too silly, so you’ll push it to the side.

For example, I got the prompting more than a year ago to start a spiritual blog, but I didn’t want to because “everyone has a blog,” and, “I don’t have anything good to say.” But, when I finally started putting it into action (even though this is just my third one), I realized that more than anything, it’s become a testimony builder for myself. You don’t always know the reason that you’re asked to do something, and you can come up with excuse after excuse not to do it, but until you follow that prompting, I can promise you that you will not feel at peace about it.

So, a few months ago, I was sitting in church, and in the lesson, the teacher started talking about listening to the promptings of the Spirit. This is something that’s talked about a LOT in church, but this specific time, he gave a suggestion that I had never heard. He said to make a “pending promptings” list. He said to take a minute, or two, or however long it takes, and write down every single prompting that you’ve been feeling, but haven’t yet done. Then take another minute or so, and write down, next to each prompting, what you can do today to follow those promptings.

All of us did this, and what I found was that when I just stopped talking for a second, and listened, I received more promptings than I thought I would. Before the experiment, I thought, “eh, I probably have like two smallish things that I haven’t done yet.” But nope, definitely not. I came away with about ten or eleven different promptings – big promptings. Like, change-your-life promptings.

So a few things that I learned from that are 1. Stop talking so much. 2. Start listening way more! And 3. The Spirit does not yell the things that he wants you to hear, it’s a whisper. A teeny tiny little whisper that you will not hear if you’re preoccupied and waiting for some kind of huge sign or whatever. That’s another thing I’ve learned - Heavenly Father very rarely works through a huge event. Sometimes yeah, absolutely. But more often than not, we need to be looking not for a lightning storm, but a breeze. As David M. McConkie stated, “One of the most important things we can do is learn to hear and follow the promptings of the Spirit.”

One more thing that I know about the Spirit is that it’s not always telling you what to do and how to live your life. Sometimes the Spirit is there for comfort alone, but this also takes listening. There have been way too many times where I was going through something difficult, and I’d sit for minutes, hours, sometimes days and just complain the whole time to Heavenly Father about how I felt no peace and I felt no happiness and I just didn’t know what to do. But seconds (and I do mean seconds) after I’d stop crying, take a deep breath, and just say, “okay, I’ll listen, I’m sorry,” I’d be comforted, and have a clearer mind about whatever it is that I was dealing with.

Heavenly Father loves you! He really, really loves you, and he wants to talk to you, He wants to help you. No matter what the situation, or even if you feel like you’ve been avoiding Him for too long, He still wants to hear from you and to guide you along your crazy life path. So stop accidentally ignoring Him, and take a second just to listen! This is such an awesome gift from our Heavenly Father, don’t be afraid to use it!