For his inaugural address to the Church and the world as God’s prophet, President Russell M Nelson chose to speak about hearing and heeding the heavenly messages that our Father in Heaven constantly sends to each of us. You and I understand these divine communications are called revelation.
President Nelson said –
“One of the things the Spirit has repeatedly impressed upon my mind since my new calling as President of the Church is how willing the Lord is to reveal His mind and will. The privilege of receiving revelation is one of the greatest gifts of God to His children.
Through the manifestations of the Holy Ghost, the Lord will assist us in all our righteous pursuits.” (CR April 2018, Sunday Morning, “Revelation for the Church, Revelation for Our Lives”)
He went on to teach—
“[W]e can pray to our Heavenly Father and receive guidance and direction, be warned about dangers and distractions, and be enabled to accomplish things we simply could not do on our own. If we will truly receive the Holy Ghost and learn to discern and understand His promptings, we will be guided in matters large and small.”
“Nothing opens the heavens quite like …daily feasting on the words of Christ in the Book of Mormon.” (CR April 2018, Sunday Morning, “Revelation for the Church, Revelation for Our Lives”)
The most important message that our Heavenly Father will send to you and me as we study the Book of Mormon is the same one that He inspires priesthood holders to tell people in nearly every blessing that they give, “Your Heavenly Father loves you.” With that assurance, we gain confidence that He will come to our aid despite of the despair and fear we sometimes feel. We obtain a hope that He will help us with the righteous dreams and desires of our hearts.
Jacob explained –
Wherefore, we search the prophets, and we have many revelations and the spirit of prophecy; and having all these witnesses we obtain a hope, and our faith becometh unshaken, insomuch that we truly can command in the name of Jesus and the very trees obey us, or the mountains, or the waves of the sea. (Jacob 4:7)
Because He knows how difficult it is for each of us to hear His voice and feel His love due to our doubts, distractions, depressions, and sins, He has given us the gifts of prayer and the Holy Scriptures to strengthen our reception signals. The more often we sincerely pray to Him and purposefully ponder His words, the stronger our signals become and the clearer His voice is to hear. Doing these things, in a sense, turns off our “Do Not Disturb” setting and allows us to accept His messages and notifications through the Holy Ghost that comfort, teach, guide and warn us.
Elder Dale G Renlund of the Quorum of the Twelve shared his personal experience with the scriptures’ impact in helping him feel God’s love. He said –
One Sunday I could tell that if I really hurried with my work, I would be able to go with my wife and daughter to church. But then I had this thought: If I slowed down a little bit and waited, I would not get home until after my wife and daughter had departed. Then I could skip church and take a nap. It mortifies me to say that I did exactly that.
I had stopped consistently doing some personal, private acts of devotion. My routine was that I would get up in the morning, say a prayer, and go to work. Sometimes there would be no distinction between the end of the day and the beginning of the next. I would work through the night and the next day, come home late that second day, and fall asleep without a prayer and without reading anything in the scriptures. The following day the cycle started again. I had allowed my receptors for God’s love to become dull, so that the things of the Spirit were less urgent and less important.
With this realization, I got off the couch, knelt on the floor, and pleaded with God for forgiveness. I begged for help. As I did, a plan formulated in my mind and heart to change the pattern of behavior.
I began with simple reminders to myself. On my daily to-do list, I started including morning and evening prayers. I brought a paperback Book of Mormon to my cubicle in the hospital and included scripture reading on that to-do list. Some nights the scripture reading was short, just a few verses before midnight. Sometimes my prayers were offered in unusual locations. But I read the scriptures daily. I prayed daily. My plan included a commitment that I would never miss an opportunity to partake of the sacrament. Never.
As I enacted my new course of action, the intensity returned, and my testimony burned brightly again. I shudder to think what would have happened if I had not gotten off that couch that Sunday afternoon. My life would have been very different. Instead, Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ became central to my life again. My receptors for God’s love and my affinity for the Spirit improved. (BYU Speeches, “Experience God’s Love,” December 3, 2019).
Elder Renlund’s example teaches us that God doesn’t want us to complicate the keeping of our commitments to pray and to study the scriptures. Initially, our consistency to and our feelings toward doing these things, rather than our time spent on them, are more important to Him. A few minutes each day in each activity is all that He asks. Our Heavenly Father just wants us to start.
With respect to exercising faith, Alma explained—
But behold, if ye will awake and arouse your faculties, even to an experiment upon my words, and exercise a particle of faith, yea, even if ye can no more than desire to believe, let this desire work in you, even until ye believe in a manner that ye can give place for a portion of my words.
Now behold, would not this increase your faith? I say unto you, Yea (Al. 32:27, 29)
I find it very interesting that many of those who the Master healed received their blessings without having a complete understanding of who He was and why He was there among them. One such person was the man who was sick for 38 years and waited at the pool of Bethesda for the “moving of the water.” As the scriptures state–
For an angel went down at a certain season into the pool, and troubled the water: whosoever then first after the troubling of the water stepped in was made whole of whatsoever disease he had. (John 5:1-4)
Lovingly seeing and perfectly knowing this poor man’s plight, the Savior approached him. The Gospel writer tells us that Jesus “knew that he had been now a long time in that case.” With mercy on His mind and grace in His heart, He asked the sick man “Wilt thou be made whole?“ (v.6) Remember, the man did not reach out to the Savior for help. Jesus came to him.
The man, not knowing who He was and why He was asking him, answered “Sir, I have no man, when the water is troubled, to put me into the pool: but while I am coming, another steppeth down before me.” (v. 7). Perhaps, he thought that Jesus would be kind enough to put him in the pool with the hope of being healed. However, the Master had something else in mind for him.
The account continues –
Jesus saith unto him, Rise, take up thy bed, and walk.
And immediately the man was made whole, and took up his bed, and walked: and on the same day was the sabbath. (John 5:8-9).
The scriptures tell us that when the Jews questioned him about who made him whole, that “he that was healed wist (or in other words, “knew”) not who it was.” (v. 13). Though he was unaware who Jesus was, he had a “particle of faith” in His words to “rise,” “take up his bed,” and “walk.” Because of that belief, he was healed. What a blessing! What a miracle!
One message that you and I can learn from this miracle is that our Heavenly Father and Savior love us enough to reach out to us even when we don’t reach out to them first, when we don’t understand everything and when we feel our faith is weak. Another one is that “the pleasing word of God…healeth the wounded soul.” (Jacob 2:8) By spending time with our Heavenly Father every day in prayer and in the Book of Mormon, we will more clearly and easily see His hand in our lives. We will also sense His Spirit healing our wounded souls.
When I came home from my mission, I made it a daily practice to study the Book of Mormon. One day, while walking home discouraged after struggling through a difficult college course exam, I found a dirty white piece of paper on the road. Normally, I don’t pick these things up, but I felt the strange need to do so this time. Looking at the filthy sheet, I saw the words for the hymn “How Firm a Foundation.” Reading those words brought a measure of peace. I thanked Heavenly Father for being kind enough to help me find this.
After grabbing a quick bite to eat, I headed back to campus to attend the weekly devotional. While I sat listening to the meeting agenda, I learned that the hymn we were about to sing was the same one that I found on my walk home. As I sang the following words, tears streamed down my face—
Fear not, I am with thee; oh, be not dismayed,
For I am thy God and will still give thee aid.
I’ll strengthen thee, help thee, and cause thee to stand,
Upheld by my righteous, upheld by my righteous,
Upheld by my righteous, omnipotent hand.
When through the deep waters I call thee to go,
The rivers of sorrow shall not thee o’erflow,
For I will be with thee, thy troubles to bless,
And sanctify to thee, and sanctify to thee,
And sanctify to thee thy deepest distress.
The soul that on Jesus hath leaned for repose
I will not, I cannot, desert to his foes;
That soul, though all hell should endeavor to shake,
I’ll never, no never, I’ll never, no never,
I’ll never, no never, no never forsake! (Hymns, “How Firm a Foundation,” Hymn 85)
I thanked my Heavenly Father again for His lovingkindness for remembering me. I realized that the reason why I was able to see His hand in these small acts was because I took a small amount of time to get to know Him better through the Book of Mormon.
Regarding the Book of Mormon’s impact on our lives, President Nelson gave us these prophetic promises—
My dear brothers and sisters, I promise that as you prayerfully study the Book of Mormon every day, you will make better decisions—every day. I promise that as you ponder what you study, the windows of heaven will open, and you will receive answers to your own questions and direction for your own life. I promise that as you daily immerse yourself in the Book of Mormon, you can be immunized against the evils of the day, even the gripping plague of pornography and other mind-numbing addictions. (CR October 2017, Saturday Afternoon, “The Book of Mormon: What Would Your Life Be Like without It?”)
God has promised us that He will message us through what we read in the Book of Mormon and what we receive through His Spirit. His heavenly messages will heal our souls and prepare us for His happiness. My hope and prayer are that we will