You Can Wonder and Worry, or You Can Ask

Remember everything I was stressing out about yesterday? We don't have to worry about any of it. God knows what we're capable of and how much He expects from each of us. If we listen to the Spirit, He will tell us what God wants us to do. So, the question becomes, how do we get the Spirit? How do we learn to recognize and understand its promptings? Getting the Spirit is easy. There are lots of good, uplifting things we can do to get the Spirit. We can pray and read the scriptures. We can observe and appreciate nature. We can sing/play/listen to reverent music. And those ideas are just a few of my favorites. I'm sure you could come up with a list of your own. Anything that brings you spiritually closer to God will help you to have His Spirit with you.

Once you've got the Spirit, learning to recognize its presence and promptings requires sensitivity and practice. Even more sensitivity and practice are required to help us understand and heed its promptings. For beginners (if there are any reading this), a good way to get started is to do something that you know will bring you closer to God. For example, you could go into a church, sing a hymn, and then pray to God, asking Him to bless you with the presence of His Spirit. Once you've done that, I can almost guarantee that you'll have a really good feeling inside you. If not, there's probably something that you need to repent of, and you'll probably know in your heart what the problem is. If that's the case, pray to God, apologizing for what you've done, and promise not to do it again. Ask for His help, especially if this is a temptation you think you're going to struggle with. Once you've repented and asked God for His help, you should have a good feeling inside of you.

Once you've got that good feeling, you can ask God what He wants you to do. You can ask Him for general directions, for ideas of what kinds of things you should do, or you could even ask Him for specific directions, asking Him what you should do about a given situation, like "What should I do to improve my relationship with my spouse?" or "What should I do to help me find work?" You can even ask Him questions, preferably yes or no questions like "Are you really there?" "Do you love me?" "Is the Book of Mormon true?" If the good feeling you have swells, the answer is yes. If it dims, the answer is no. If it's too subtle to tell whether it swelled or dimmed or remained the same, keep asking, or ask again later.

If you were praying for direction, you should have some thoughts come into your mind. These are not necessarily what God wants you to do, even if they seem to be good ideas. Always ask for confirmation. Ask something to the effect of "I got the feeling that Is should do [such and such]. Is that what you want me to do?" Again, the good feeling should either swell, dim, or stagnate. If the feeling dims or stagnates and you've got other ideas, ask about some of those. Once you've asked God "should I do this?" and you get a good feeling inside about it, you've got your directions, but don't leave the chapel just yet! There may be more than one right answer, so if you had more than one idea, feel free to pray about the others as well.

Once you're done praying, take the time to thank God for blessing you with the presence of His Spirit, answers to your questions, and directions for what you should do. It's polite. Plus, it makes God more likely to continue blessing you as you continue to come to Him. Also, it's important to act on the answers and guidance you receive. If you ignore the guidance and answers He gives you, He might not give you guidance and answers again so easily as He did the first time. You have to really be listening, and you have to be willing to obey.

For experienced God-worshippers, the program is pretty much the same, except that you didn't need me to explain it to you, since you already knew by your own experience and by what you learned at church. Going to church, by the way, is another good way to attract God's spirit into your life.

I love that guidance from God is available to everyone who seeks it. I love that God can tell me specifically what He wants me to do in any given moment (I have a special thing called the Gift of the Holy Ghost, which means I can have God's Spirit with me all the time. If that sounds good to you, ask the missionaries about it. You can get in touch with them through mormon.org). It really is such a blessing that I can ask God what He wants me to do instead of trying to figure it out on my own. Don't get me wrong, sometimes, He still lets me try to figure it out on my own, but that's only when I forget to ask or when I should already know the answer. God gives us opportunities to use what we've learned. But when we honestly don't know what God wants us to do, and we're willing to do what God tells us when He answers us, He's usually willing to tell us what He wants to do. As long as we keep asking, we don't have to wonder. God will let us know.