The Spirit of God speaks to each of us in a different way. I have recently learned that the way I understand the Spirit best is through word and action. In other words, I simply feel that if I follow the Spirit, I am going to do or say something, and that it is right. The first time I remember feeling this way was when I was a teenager and woke up early on a summer morning and simply felt like cleaning the kitchen. So I did. Then my mother came downstairs, exhausted, saying she'd had hardly any sleep and was so glad I'd cleaned the kitchen.
Another time, a woman came in to Walgreens to buy cigarettes. I felt prompted to ask for her ID. She was flattered! It made her day that she looked young enough to be asked for her ID for tobacco.
More recently, I have learned that, usually when I have a calling in a certain area but also with friends, I will simply feel certain words come to me. I often don't know what I'm supposed to say until I say it. Sometimes I struggle with how best to word it.
A word of caution to anyone with my same gift, which is given by God so that we may bless others: just because you feel prompted to say something doesn't mean everyone will listen. They may be prompted to take a different course; your prompting may have been to give them insight, not direction. This happens most often to me when I am giving friends advice. I feel prompted to give them my point of view, which is helpful but not definitive to them.
Remember also that all who do good work by faith, by the power and gifts of God, through His Spirit. These gifts include faith, hope, and charity. They include power unrivaled by any other organization or standpoint. They are powerful and useful in their place. We should "covet to prophesy" (or to speak by inspiration) and "seek after spiritual gifts." The greatest gift we can receive in this life is charity, because it motivates us to be all that we can be, to progress from glory to glory until we are perfect. In the name of Jesus Christ, I bear that testimony, that these spiritual gifts are available unto all who diligently seek them, and they cannot be perfectly imitated by Satan, by tricks, or by psychological wisdom. God alone can grant them. In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.
Showing posts with label Spirit of God. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Spirit of God. Show all posts
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Saturday, March 7, 2009
Mawwaige. And wuv. Twue wuv!
Well, I want to briefly write my thought on marriage.
Firstly, I have had ample opportunity to prepare for marriage in a variety of ways. First, I've developed my living-with-people skills by being kind and learning to work with my family, especially my mother. I believe that the way a young man treats his mother will largely transfer into how he treats his wife. The same skills of respect for womanhood, love, and service are essential. He can learn these skills later on, but it's so much easier to learn them now. Whenever now happens to be. Choices are always made in the present. There is no use procrastinating. Change comes gradually, but it can begin immediately.
Second, I notice that no man or woman alive, including myself, comprehends the potential glory of the marriage relationship. As we begin to look forward and see what a tremendous blessing that central family relationship can be, nurturing that relationship becomes natural and instinctive. Elder L. Tom Perry of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints said, "I believe that if we could create in our minds a clear and true picture of eternal life, we would start behaving differently. We would not need to be prodded to do the many things involved with enduring to the end, like doing our home teaching or visiting teaching, attending our meetings, going to the temple, living moral lives, saying our prayers, or reading the scriptures. We would want to do all these things and more because we realize they will prepare us to go somewhere we yearn to go" (“The Gospel of Jesus Christ,” Ensign, May 2008, 44–46). The choices that have the most importance are the ones with the most long-lasting consequences. Marriage has eternal consequences of unfathomable depth.
Third, I love my wife. It is possible to love someone even before you know who they are. How? Because we can know something about them before we meet them. After I received my patriarchal blessing, I had an actual crush on my future wife for several days. Why? Because my patriarchal blessing contains information about her--enough to create a picture in my mind of who and what she is. She is a noble woman indeed, and I love her and want to prepare myself for her love.
Let us be grateful for God's mercy in making marriage such an ennobling, eternal, and glorious relationship.
Firstly, I have had ample opportunity to prepare for marriage in a variety of ways. First, I've developed my living-with-people skills by being kind and learning to work with my family, especially my mother. I believe that the way a young man treats his mother will largely transfer into how he treats his wife. The same skills of respect for womanhood, love, and service are essential. He can learn these skills later on, but it's so much easier to learn them now. Whenever now happens to be. Choices are always made in the present. There is no use procrastinating. Change comes gradually, but it can begin immediately.
Second, I notice that no man or woman alive, including myself, comprehends the potential glory of the marriage relationship. As we begin to look forward and see what a tremendous blessing that central family relationship can be, nurturing that relationship becomes natural and instinctive. Elder L. Tom Perry of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints said, "I believe that if we could create in our minds a clear and true picture of eternal life, we would start behaving differently. We would not need to be prodded to do the many things involved with enduring to the end, like doing our home teaching or visiting teaching, attending our meetings, going to the temple, living moral lives, saying our prayers, or reading the scriptures. We would want to do all these things and more because we realize they will prepare us to go somewhere we yearn to go" (“The Gospel of Jesus Christ,” Ensign, May 2008, 44–46). The choices that have the most importance are the ones with the most long-lasting consequences. Marriage has eternal consequences of unfathomable depth.
Third, I love my wife. It is possible to love someone even before you know who they are. How? Because we can know something about them before we meet them. After I received my patriarchal blessing, I had an actual crush on my future wife for several days. Why? Because my patriarchal blessing contains information about her--enough to create a picture in my mind of who and what she is. She is a noble woman indeed, and I love her and want to prepare myself for her love.
Let us be grateful for God's mercy in making marriage such an ennobling, eternal, and glorious relationship.
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Michael's Steps to Addiction Recovery
Since all sin is addictive, and I've had plenty to overcome, here are my steps to addiction recovery and repentance (order isn't important):
1. Make it difficult to access the sinful activity
2. Keep yourself busy with a balanced lifestyle of meaningful activities, including exercise, mental stimulation, and spiritual time.
3. Pray for help.
4. Make yourself accountable: to a priesthood leader, friend, or family member.
5. Get all the help you can. All sorts of tools can help. I like replacing the question, "What do I feel like doing?" with, "How will this make me feel?"
6. Don't obsess over the sin; fear and self-hatred only make it harder to overcome. Forgive yourself and forget the sin; remember the lessons learned, especially your dependence on the Savior. That won't change..
7. This is my favorite step: find something you care about more than the sin, even in the heat of temptation. This is a challenge. The best way is to further your relationship with God until it forces out all sin, but relationships with others can also be helpful. The same way you develop relationships with others, develop a relationship with God: talk with Him, talk about Him, and spend time with Him in His house.
1. Make it difficult to access the sinful activity
2. Keep yourself busy with a balanced lifestyle of meaningful activities, including exercise, mental stimulation, and spiritual time.
3. Pray for help.
4. Make yourself accountable: to a priesthood leader, friend, or family member.
5. Get all the help you can. All sorts of tools can help. I like replacing the question, "What do I feel like doing?" with, "How will this make me feel?"
6. Don't obsess over the sin; fear and self-hatred only make it harder to overcome. Forgive yourself and forget the sin; remember the lessons learned, especially your dependence on the Savior. That won't change..
7. This is my favorite step: find something you care about more than the sin, even in the heat of temptation. This is a challenge. The best way is to further your relationship with God until it forces out all sin, but relationships with others can also be helpful. The same way you develop relationships with others, develop a relationship with God: talk with Him, talk about Him, and spend time with Him in His house.
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Spiritually Blind
I've been reading the unabridged version of Les Miserables by Victor Hugo. He wrote a section about prayer. Here's a quote that got me thinking:
"There is, we are aware, a philosophy that denies the infinite [meaning God]. There is also a philosophy, classified as pathologic, that denies the sun; this philosophy is called blindness."
The scriptures often call those who reject God "spiritually blind." The problem with athiesm and agnosticism is that both philosophies assume that God must be intellectually and scientifically provable. Now, there are many logical explanations for God's existence, and many logical explanations for God's lack of existence. But no one can prove it, intellectually or scientifically, either way. Most people seem to have a preconceived idea of whether God exists or not, and almost all scientific data and logic can be harmonized into one mindset or the other.
In other words, belief in God is independent of scholarship. God is available to everyone--regardless of their intelligence, scholarship, or lack thereof. How can this be?
The answer is that God makes Himself available to us through a different means--His Spirit. The Spirit does use our intelligence, but it also uses our emotions, our relationships, and most of all, our spirits. Every good thing responds to His Spirit. Everyone has felt the Spirit, and everyone has a basic instinctive understanding of good and evil--what drives away God's Spirit, and what invites it.
God's Spirit gives people gifts. One of these gifts is a belief that He lives. A greater gift is an absolute knowledge that He lives. Some of us naturally doubt more than others. But all of us have gifts from God, and the closer we get to Him and His Spirit, the more gifts we will receive.
"There is, we are aware, a philosophy that denies the infinite [meaning God]. There is also a philosophy, classified as pathologic, that denies the sun; this philosophy is called blindness."
The scriptures often call those who reject God "spiritually blind." The problem with athiesm and agnosticism is that both philosophies assume that God must be intellectually and scientifically provable. Now, there are many logical explanations for God's existence, and many logical explanations for God's lack of existence. But no one can prove it, intellectually or scientifically, either way. Most people seem to have a preconceived idea of whether God exists or not, and almost all scientific data and logic can be harmonized into one mindset or the other.
In other words, belief in God is independent of scholarship. God is available to everyone--regardless of their intelligence, scholarship, or lack thereof. How can this be?
The answer is that God makes Himself available to us through a different means--His Spirit. The Spirit does use our intelligence, but it also uses our emotions, our relationships, and most of all, our spirits. Every good thing responds to His Spirit. Everyone has felt the Spirit, and everyone has a basic instinctive understanding of good and evil--what drives away God's Spirit, and what invites it.
God's Spirit gives people gifts. One of these gifts is a belief that He lives. A greater gift is an absolute knowledge that He lives. Some of us naturally doubt more than others. But all of us have gifts from God, and the closer we get to Him and His Spirit, the more gifts we will receive.
Sunday, November 23, 2008
My Testimony
EDIT: You may be looking for the more thorough explanation of what my testimony is and how I got it that I wrote in August 2012.
I know that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.
This message has always been carried forth by the Holy Ghost. "Angels speak by the power of the Holy Ghost; wherefore, they speak the words of Christ" (2 Nephi 32:3). The prophet and missionary Ammon said, "A portion of that Spirit dwelleth in me, which giveth me knowledge, and also power according to my faith and desires which are in God" (Alma 18:35). The Holy Ghost witnesses of Jesus Christ (2 Nephi 31:18).
The Apostle Paul taught that know man can truly know that Jesus Christ is the Messiah any other way. He said, "No man can say that Jesus is the Lord, but by the Holy Ghost" (1 Corinthians 12:3). How can anyone say that Jesus is the Lord with complete surety without the Holy Ghost? Seeing the Lord is a rare privelege that we cannot demand. But we can ask the Lord for the privelege of knowing, for ourselves, that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.
I have asked the Lord for the privilege of having this testimony. For me, it started out by asking if the Book of Mormon was true (Moroni 10:3-7). The Book of Mormon states that Jesus is the Christ. It also teaches many other gospel principles, and so I also know that those are true. The Book of Mormon was translated by Joseph Smith, and so I know that he was a prophet of God and that he saw the Savior with his own eyes.
Most of all, I know that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.
I know that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.
This message has always been carried forth by the Holy Ghost. "Angels speak by the power of the Holy Ghost; wherefore, they speak the words of Christ" (2 Nephi 32:3). The prophet and missionary Ammon said, "A portion of that Spirit dwelleth in me, which giveth me knowledge, and also power according to my faith and desires which are in God" (Alma 18:35). The Holy Ghost witnesses of Jesus Christ (2 Nephi 31:18).
The Apostle Paul taught that know man can truly know that Jesus Christ is the Messiah any other way. He said, "No man can say that Jesus is the Lord, but by the Holy Ghost" (1 Corinthians 12:3). How can anyone say that Jesus is the Lord with complete surety without the Holy Ghost? Seeing the Lord is a rare privelege that we cannot demand. But we can ask the Lord for the privelege of knowing, for ourselves, that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.
I have asked the Lord for the privilege of having this testimony. For me, it started out by asking if the Book of Mormon was true (Moroni 10:3-7). The Book of Mormon states that Jesus is the Christ. It also teaches many other gospel principles, and so I also know that those are true. The Book of Mormon was translated by Joseph Smith, and so I know that he was a prophet of God and that he saw the Savior with his own eyes.
Most of all, I know that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.
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