Why You Should Listen to That Little Voice Inside Your Head

The Holy Ghost is often described as speaking to us with a still, small voice. This voice often gives us guidance which we don't always fully understand. In a talk titled The Holy Ghost, Elder Robert D. Hales told of several promptings he had received and followed, despite not knowing why he was being prompted to do those things. In each case, he later learned that his actions were answers to people's prayers. The things he said were precisely what others needed to hear, despite his not knowing about their situations beforehand. The Holy Ghost knew how he could do the most good, and He prompted him, and he obeyed without question, and thus, prayers were answered.

We each receive inspiration from the Holy Ghost occasionally. Sometimes, we mistake these gems of inspired counsel for stray thoughts, thinking that the promptings are merely random impulses. But so what if they are? Suppose you got a feeling to visit someone randomly, unannounced. Is there anything wrong with that, inherently? If you catch them at a bad time, you can just apologize and arrange to meet up later. If they're not home, you can leave a note. However, if they are home, and if they could use a visit from you at about that time, acting on that "random impluse" might just be an answer to their prayers.

Granted, there are some inner voices we shouldn't listen to. Some come from the adversary, and some actually are merely our own thoughts, giving us bad ideas. We do have to question our impressions to a certain extent, but we don't necessarily have to identify the source of the impulse. We just have to discern the nature of what we're feeling prompted to do. If we feel prompted to do something good, we should do it. If we feel tempted to do something bad, we shouldn't do it. But if we can't tell whether the thing we feel like doing is good or evil, I say "Why not give it a try?"

We often don't know what God has planned. Sometimes, our place in God's plan doesn't make much sense outside of the perspective of the big picture. We may have no idea at all why we're feeling impressed to do a certain thing. But as long as we're not being prompted to do something evil, why not do it? It may be a random thought conjured up by our own minds, but why not give it a whirl? As long as it's not an evil act, the worst it could be is impulsive, and the best it could be is inspiration from God.

I'm okay with being a bit random, with doing things I feel impressed to do, whether I'm confident in the accuracy of the impression or not. As long as I'm not doing anything I know is wrong, the worst case scenario is that I act a little weird sometimes, which I already do. And the best case scenario is that I could end up following guidance that, at the time, I didn't know came directly from God.

The promptings of the Holy Ghost sometimes seem a little random, but there's nothing inherently wrong with being random. If we follow the non-evil impulses we get, we may find ourselves following the Spirit more often than we might think. Trust your impulses. You may discover that some of your "random impulses" are actually revelations from God.