The Voice of the Spirit

I gave a talk in Sacrament Meeting today, so I thought that posting that would cover my blog post for the week. Enjoy!

When I was sixteen, around Christmas, some friends from church and I decided to go around looking at Christmas lights. Since Megan Young was the queen bee of the Laurels, we were all to meet at her house at seven. I parked my truck across the street and knocked on her door precisely as the clock was turning from 6:59 to 7:00. I don’t know why I was surprised that I was the first one there and that Megan was still getting ready. In order to get out faster, Sister Young suggested that I go pick up the people that Megan was supposed to pick up and bring them back there. The only problem was that I only had a pickup truck. Not enough room for a carload of people. Sister Young had a solution for that, too. I could take their family van.

As I took their keys in my hand and walked out their front door, I mulled over in my head the route I should take to pick everyone up, how I could best avoid stop signs and traffic lights. I figured out a way that would take me in a loop that would end up right back at the Young’s house. But, as I turned the key in the ignition, I got a strong feeling that I should go the opposite way. “That’s dumb,” I thought. “If I go that way, I’ll have to turn left onto Fair Oaks Boulevard and that always takes forever.” I started backing up. Again, I got that strong feeling that I should go the opposite way. “But that makes no sense,” I thought again, shouting down that annoying feeling. I continued backing up. I was just about to put on the breaks and pull forward when I heard a crunch. I froze. I was almost too afraid to look. Finally, though, I did. I got out of the van to check the damage. I had backed into my own truck.

If I had listened to the voice of the Spirit that night, I could have avoided paying the twelve hundred dollars to repair the Young’s van. But as it was, it was an important lesson for me. I had a greater understanding for what the voice of the Spirit sounds like. Because even though I hadn’t heeded its warning, I had heard it. And I had a greater resolve to heed the next time.

Even so, I’m still learning how to recognize and heed the voice of the Spirit. It was a little easier when I was a missionary since all my thoughts were focused on spiritual things, but there were still moments during my mission that I wish I could do over, that I wish I could do exactly as the Spirit directed me. Since the mission, it’s been a real challenge. There are so many distractions and other concerns I have to worry about. As a missionary, all I wanted was to do God’s work in God’s way, and many times I got the specific guidance that I needed to do just that. Now, though, I’ve had to worry about so many other things. What should I major in? Where should I live? Which jobs should I apply for? Should I go to graduate school? My own wants and desires are so mashed up into all these questions that I wonder if a prompting is really divine guidance, or just my own stupid ideas. Sometimes, the hardest part about doing the will of the Lord is knowing what His will is. If He would just tell me, there’d be no problem.

When Moses was at the shores of the Red Sea, with Pharaoh and his armies behind him and the eyes of all the children of Israel fixed on him, “the Lord said unto Moses…lift thou up thy rod, and stretch out thine hand over the sea, and divide it: and the children of Israel shall go on dry ground through the midst of the sea” (Exodus 14:15-16). Sometimes I read passages like these about the prophets hearing the voice of God and think that they had it easy. God tells them to part the Red Sea or build an arc or take their family to the Promised Land and they do it. Can’t He tell me what I should do with my own little life?

But then I read something in the Doctrine and Covenants that changed my perspective on these questions. In Section 8, the Lord tells this to Oliver Cowdery: “you shall receive a knowledge of whatsoever things you shall ask in faith, with an honest heart, believing that you shall receive…Yea, behold, I will tell you in your mind and in your heart, by the Holy Ghost, which shall come upon you and which shall dwell in your heart. Now, behold, this is the spirit of revelation; behold, this is the spirit by which Moses brought the children of Israel through the Red Sea on dry ground” (D&C 8:1-3). So, Moses was prompted by the Spirit to part the Red Sea? It was just a feeling in his mind and heart? That’s what it seems to be saying. So maybe these other prophets--Noah, Lehi, and all the others--were not acting on direct audible commands from God, but on the whisperings of the Spirit. Of course, there have been a few times when God has spoken directly to His prophets--Moses talked to God face to face at times, the brother of Jared saw Jesus’ spiritual body long before He was born in Bethlehem, and Joseph Smith saw and talked with the Father and the Son in the Sacred Grove--but I think that these moments are rare, even for prophets. I think that when God speaks, he normally does so through the voice of the Spirit, because the voice of the Spirit is His voice.

We have a few descriptions in the scriptures of what that voice “sounds” like. Right before Christ arrived in the Americas, we read that the Nephites who were gathered around the temple in Bountiful “heard a voice as if it came out of heaven; and they cast their eyes round about, for they understood not the voice which they heard; and it was not a harsh voice, neither was it a loud voice; nevertheless, and notwithstanding it being a small voice it did pierce them that did hear to the center, insomuch that there was no part of their frame that it did not cause to quake; yea, it did pierce them to the very soul, and did cause their hearts to burn” (3 Nephi 11:3). And in the Book of Helaman we read that the voice of the Spirit “was not a voice of thunder, neither was it a voice of a great tumultuous noise, but behold, it was a still voice of perfect mildness, as if it had been a whisper, and it did pierce even to the very soul” (Helaman 5:30). And we all know how the voice of the Lord came to Elijah not in the strong wind, or the earthquake, or the fire, but in “a still small voice” (1 Kings 19:12). From all these descriptions, it seems clear that the voice of the Spirit connects more to our soul than it does to our ears. God doesn’t communicate with us through sound waves carried by the vibration of air molecules. He communicates with us through His Spirit.

In this past General Conference, Elder Richard G. Scott said, “I am convinced that there is no simple formula or technique that would immediately allow you to master the ability to be guided by the voice of the Spirit. Our Father expects you to learn how to obtain that divine help by exercising faith in Him and His Holy Son, Jesus Christ. Were you to receive inspired guidance just for the asking, you would become weak and ever more dependent on Them. They know that essential personal growth will come as you struggle to learn how to be led by the Spirit.” I have personally wondered if learning to hear and heed the voice of the Spirit is not one of the most important things we are meant to do during our lives.

Now, when I read stories in the scriptures about the great deeds of past prophets, I’m not only impressed with their obedience and dedication to the Lord, I am also impressed with their trust in the voice of the Spirit and their ability to hear it. When Abraham was commanded to sacrifice his only son, the son that God promised he would have and through whom God promised that Abraham’s posterity would number more than the sands of the sea, did he receive that command through an audible voice, or through the voice of the Spirit? I think that it was through the voice of the Spirit, the same voice that told me to go left when I wanted to go right. But unlike me, Abraham obeyed. He walked all the way to Mount Moriah, built an alter, tied his son’s hands, and raised the knife. He was ready to obey God’s command with exactness. He didn’t know as he held the knife that God would send an angel to stop him. He only knew what God commanded, and he trusted that command. As President Eyring has said, when we hear the voice of the Spirit, we are usually “given no assurance of the outcome, just a clear direction—go forward.”

One of the great differences that I have found between the prophets and myself is that trust. Trust in the still small whisperings of the Spirit. When the prophets hear them, they obey, when I hear them, I rationalize my own decision and back into my own car. But I’m learning to trust the Spirit. I have had some successes since that Christmas nine years ago. But sometimes those whisperings are crazy, like telling me to talk to a stranger about religion or something like that. I’m sure that being told to kill his son sounded crazy to Abraham to. One thing to remember is that we “receive no witness until after the trial of [our] faith” (Ether 12:6). I want to use the Apostle Peter as an example of someone who passed a trial of his faith.

“When Jesus came into the coasts of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, saying, Whom do men say that I the Son of man am? And they said, Some say that thou art John the Baptist: some, Elias; and others, Jeremias, or one of the prophets. He saith unto them, But whom say ye that I am?” If Jesus had been going around telling everyone that He was the Messiah they’d all been waiting for, these would have been pretty foolish questions. If they listened to Him at all, they would know who He was. But Jesus didn’t go around saying that. In fact, He frequently told his disciples to keep His identity, His true identity as the Son of God, a secret, at least until He ascended into Heaven. At this point, though, no one, not even his Apostles, had made any indication that they knew His true identity. “And Simon Peter answered and said, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God. And Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-jona: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven” (Matthew 16:13-17). Peter hadn’t heard that Jesus of Nazareth was the Messiah through sound waves carried by the vibrations of air molecules to his ears. He had heard it through the voice of the Spirit.

Peter trusted that divine communication enough to be the first to say it out loud. And he trusted it enough to step out of his boat onto the water when Jesus told him to. And he trusted it enough take a sword and cut off the ear of the high priest’s servant to defend Jesus, even when that high priest’s servant was backed by “a great multitude with swords and staves” (Matthew 26:47). Even though Peter trusted the voice of the Spirit that told him that Jesus was the Messiah, it seems from the record that he and the other Apostles didn’t quite understand what exactly the Messiah’s mission would be. They knew that He was meant to free them from bondage, but they thought that would be from the bondage of the Roman’s who had conquered them. They knew that He was meant to be a king, but they didn’t know that His kingdom “is not of this world” (John 18:36).

What must have been going through Peter’s mind as he watched his Messiah bleed and die on the cross? The man he had trusted in had not freed the children of Israel from Roman bondage. He hadn’t been crowned a king. Did any doubts creep into Peter’s thoughts during those three long days when Jesus lay in the tomb? Did he ever wonder if what he’d thought had come from God was really just some crazy idea of his own? We don’t know for sure, but I think that might have happened. Those were a dark three days. They were the trial of Peter’s faith.

And then Sunday morning came. Mary Magdalene came with news that the tomb was empty. Peter went running to see it for himself. Then Jesus of Nazareth, the man Peter believed in as the Son of God, the Messiah, stood before Peter alive, resurrected. Peter felt the wounds in His hands and in His feet. He was able to confess his love for Him three times. And he went on to lead Christ’s church and preach the good news of Christ’s Atonement to the world. He received his witness, but it was only after he had trusted in the voice of the Spirit.

Most of us have heard that same voice. We’ve asked God to know that the Book of Mormon is true, that Joseph Smith was a prophet, and that Jesus is the Christ. And most of us, if not all of us, have received an answer. Yet, if we were going to write about that experience, would we write that we had a good feeling about these things, or that we heard the voice of the Lord and He said, “These things are true”? That’s how Moses wrote about his experience on the shores of the Red Sea. As he looked at the armies of pharaoh, and the multitudinous children of the Israel, and the vast sea that stretch out to the horizon, he could have thought, , “I’m going to look really foolish if I raise my staff and command the sea and nothing happens.” But he didn’t. He raised his staff. He commanded the sea. And the waters parted.

My prayer is that we can all develop that trust in the voice of the Spirit. That when we hear it we will heed it. I know that as we do we will be doing the Lord’s will, and even if that seems crazy right now, it will always work out for the best in the end.