Listen with your heart
My family wants to make a coat of arms and on it we want the saying "did you know?" translated into Latin on the front. I also wanted to put "I can't believe I ate the whole thing!" But I was out voted because it's funny to me but apparently a sensitive subject to my family. Why did I want to put "did you know" on there? My siblings and I are very intelligent, IQ wise, not really life wise, and we all have self esteem issues, so one of the ways that we make ourselves valuable to other people is to be super smart and supply random, useless facts to the rest of the world constantly so that our intelligence is never questioned. Why do we do this? I don't know, nothing really makes sense when you are dealing with deep seeded emotional issues from childhood, but we all do this, all 5 of us, every single one. It's not all bad, we like to analyze things to death, don't come home with us after a movie unless you're ready to spend the next 3 1/2 hours discussing underlying themes and subplots, but that's only if we are all together which only happens at Christmas every couple of years. I've lived the vast majority of my life as a thinker, I think I'm a feeler too, but for the most part, I look for the logic, I look for patterns, and this has been good and even in my Patriarchal blessing it talks about this being a great help to me, but I've always used logic to make my decisions in life, well, almost always, but I feel it's time to grow more, it's time to put the blinders on my head, and start using my heart, start seeking the Lord in my decisions and as my comfort.
Listening to the April 2012 general conference on my way to work this week, one of the messages really hit home to me from Elder Quentin L. Cook's talk "In Tune with the Music of Faith." He says "the essential doctrine of agency requires that a testimony of the restored gospel be based on faith rather than just external or scientific proof. Obsessive focus on things not yet fully revealed ... will not be efficacious or yield spiritual progress. These are matters of faith." Unbelievable. It was like I was being shaken saying "this is you!!!" Don't get me wrong, I believe that the church is true, I have for many many years, and I have an active and enduring testimony of it, and mostly because of what I've felt in response to prayers, but the church makes sense to me logically, in a way that nothing else does. The doctrine and teachings answer so many questions for me on a logical level. I guess it's a little bit more difficult for me to reconcile how to live according to the spirit, when all I do is think all the dang time. I read something in the Institute manual I think it was by Joseph Smith, and for the life of me I can't find it right now, he it said something like "the person who believes and lives based on logic is missing out on the greatest blessings God has to offer because they won't listen to the enticings of the Spirit" and ever since I read that it's really stuck with me and I've thought "what am I missing out on because I think I can do everything myself? What other life is waiting for me?" I guess this comes along the lines of trusting God to love me like he says that he will, instead of making every decision based on what I "think" is the right thing to do, I need to stop frickin talking and just listen. I need to trust God enough to give me the right answers, ask the question and then just wait and listen until the answer comes. I need to trust that God will answer me when I need it, even if it's not when I want it, like Nephi praying to be loosed when he was tied up on the ship (and I know that the scriptures don't say anything about that, but I assume he did) and he had to wait. I just have to wait, and I hate that, but guess what, it's time. I need to have my heart open and constantly listening to the guidance of the Spirit.
I talked to a friend recently about what it means to be commanded in all things, and one of the things he said that really spoke to me was that the Lord expects us to make decisions for ourselves, but at the same time, we must be worthy of and listening for direction from the Spirit so that we can either redirect our route completely or just make small course corrections, or I would assume, know that we are doing the right thing by continuing on. That to me was a little bit difficult to understand. I'm a military person, I like my mission brief and my orders, and then I will execute and if I need to, I will make a command decision based on what I think is best. But this is a totally different operating system. There is a mission to accomplish, but it's not a "finish the mission and wait for further instruction," this is a "go get in your truck and start accomplishing your mission, and then I'll let you know what to change as you're going." This is such a foreign concept to me, but I think that's the lesson God wants me to learn right now, my mission is to endure to the end, which means keep the commandments for the rest of my life, so I'm moving forward trying to consistently keep the commandments and I will earnestly strive to listen and feel for the Holy Ghost for direction, which means I need to quiet my mind and just relax, I don't need to make all the decisions right now, I don't need to have all the answers right now. I need to listen.
Listening to the April 2012 general conference on my way to work this week, one of the messages really hit home to me from Elder Quentin L. Cook's talk "In Tune with the Music of Faith." He says "the essential doctrine of agency requires that a testimony of the restored gospel be based on faith rather than just external or scientific proof. Obsessive focus on things not yet fully revealed ... will not be efficacious or yield spiritual progress. These are matters of faith." Unbelievable. It was like I was being shaken saying "this is you!!!" Don't get me wrong, I believe that the church is true, I have for many many years, and I have an active and enduring testimony of it, and mostly because of what I've felt in response to prayers, but the church makes sense to me logically, in a way that nothing else does. The doctrine and teachings answer so many questions for me on a logical level. I guess it's a little bit more difficult for me to reconcile how to live according to the spirit, when all I do is think all the dang time. I read something in the Institute manual I think it was by Joseph Smith, and for the life of me I can't find it right now, he it said something like "the person who believes and lives based on logic is missing out on the greatest blessings God has to offer because they won't listen to the enticings of the Spirit" and ever since I read that it's really stuck with me and I've thought "what am I missing out on because I think I can do everything myself? What other life is waiting for me?" I guess this comes along the lines of trusting God to love me like he says that he will, instead of making every decision based on what I "think" is the right thing to do, I need to stop frickin talking and just listen. I need to trust God enough to give me the right answers, ask the question and then just wait and listen until the answer comes. I need to trust that God will answer me when I need it, even if it's not when I want it, like Nephi praying to be loosed when he was tied up on the ship (and I know that the scriptures don't say anything about that, but I assume he did) and he had to wait. I just have to wait, and I hate that, but guess what, it's time. I need to have my heart open and constantly listening to the guidance of the Spirit.
I talked to a friend recently about what it means to be commanded in all things, and one of the things he said that really spoke to me was that the Lord expects us to make decisions for ourselves, but at the same time, we must be worthy of and listening for direction from the Spirit so that we can either redirect our route completely or just make small course corrections, or I would assume, know that we are doing the right thing by continuing on. That to me was a little bit difficult to understand. I'm a military person, I like my mission brief and my orders, and then I will execute and if I need to, I will make a command decision based on what I think is best. But this is a totally different operating system. There is a mission to accomplish, but it's not a "finish the mission and wait for further instruction," this is a "go get in your truck and start accomplishing your mission, and then I'll let you know what to change as you're going." This is such a foreign concept to me, but I think that's the lesson God wants me to learn right now, my mission is to endure to the end, which means keep the commandments for the rest of my life, so I'm moving forward trying to consistently keep the commandments and I will earnestly strive to listen and feel for the Holy Ghost for direction, which means I need to quiet my mind and just relax, I don't need to make all the decisions right now, I don't need to have all the answers right now. I need to listen.
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