First Promptings

 The fourth tip Elder Rasband gave us for following the Spirit was "Fourth, we must act on the first prompting" (emphasis in the original). However, my concern with this tip is how reliant it is on the third: "Third, we must recognize the Spirit when it comes." I have some trouble with that. We all have thoughts that are originally ours, and we all have thoughts planted in our minds by the adversary. Doing the first thing that pops into your head, trusting that that idea came from God, can have terrible consequences. If we can't tell the difference between the Spirit's voice and the devil's voice or ours, perhaps it would be best to consider the morality and possible consequences of a course of action before we follow it.

Yet, Elder Rasband told us that "We must be confident in our first promptings:"

Sometimes we rationalize; we wonder if we are feeling a spiritual impression or if it is just our own thoughts. When we begin to second-guess, even third-guess, our feelings—and we all have—we are dismissing the Spirit; we are questioning divine counsel.

Those are strong words. I don't feel like I'm dismissing the Spirit when I try to confirm the origin of a prompting. I admit that I am, or at least may be, "questioning divine counsel," but that's not necessarily a bad thing. We are taught to seek confirmation for what we learn from the scriptures and the prophets. Then, why shouldn't we seek confirmation for promptings as well? When temptations can be disguised as spiritual promptings, I would think that it would be imperative to discern whether a prompting came from God or Satan before we decide to follow it.

It could be that I'm worrying too much. Perhaps the odds of a temptation posing as a prompting are smaller than I think. Within the same paragraph as the message quoted above, Elder Rasband relayed a reassuring promise from the Prophet Joseph Smith: "The Prophet Joseph Smith taught that if you will listen to the first promptings, you will get it right nine times out of ten." So, statistically-speaking, it makes sense to follow one's first prompting because it's highly likely to have been inspired by God. Ninety percent of the time, we will following divine counsel.

I still worry about what happens the other ten percent of the time, but maybe I shouldn't. We all sin fairly regularly, whether we're following promptings to do so or not. Accidentally following a temptation we thought was a divine prompting isn't going to make a huge difference, in the eternal scheme of things. Yes, it'll mean we'll have one more sin to repent of, but we already have more sins than we can count. Accidentally adding one more to the list every tenth time we try to follow the Spirit probably won't make that much of a difference.

This may be the wrong attitude to take on this matter. I would rather be careful and try to avoid any chance of accidentally committing sin. But God has a different perspective than I have, and the counsel from one of His inspired representatives is to take our chances with our first promptings. Maybe He feels that the benefits of urging us to follow our first promptings are worth the inherent risks. In any case, it's probably good advice to follow at least ninety percent of the time.