Ongoing decisions

This post is part of the General Conference Odyssey. This week covers the Saturday Morning Session of the April 1980 Conference. And this Conference is special! Because…it's the first one that I heard myself. Well, not that I remember hearing it, but I'm sure I did, from my mother's arms. It's the first General Conference of my lifetime! So it must be a good one.

Ever since President Nelson's most recent Conference talk, I have been praying every day that I will better hear the voice of the Spirit. I have been hoping to—how did he put it? Oh yes: "I plead with you to increase your spiritual capacity to receive revelation. Let this Easter Sunday be a defining moment in your life. Choose to do the spiritual work required to enjoy the gift of the Holy Ghost and hear the voice of the Spirit more frequently and more clearly."

I don't know if it has been "a defining moment"—I guess I'll only know that in retrospect—but I'm really trying! And one thing I have realized is just how fundamental the Holy Ghost is to everything else I hope to accomplish in life. If I can just manage to make my thoughts and actions either righteous, or at least repentant and striving back toward righteous, then I will be worthy of the Spirit's companionship, and that will help me navigate everything—everything!!—else.

So, as I read the talks for this week, I was immediately drawn to Elder James E. Faust's talk, "Communion with the Holy Spirit." He said:

Members of the Church know that the promptings of the Spirit may be received upon all facets of life, including daily, ongoing decisions.

Something about that wording—"ongoing decisions"—stuck out to me. I think…un-ongoing…decisions are the kind I like best. Things you decide on, and then they stay decided, and you are either right or you were wrong, but at least the agonizing about it is over with! Where should we move? What job should we take? What should I teach this lesson about?

But the ongoing decisions…those are more difficult. The things you decide on, and then they change! Or something changes! And you have to make a decision again! What do I need to do to improve my marriage? How do I guide this difficult child? Where can I best serve today? What should my family look like now? Those are the questions I struggle with most, because I never feel purely settled. I just want to be able to get good at something and then keep doing it forever! But apparently (as we have often discussed) that isn't what God thinks is best for me. It's so hard!

And yet. Elder Faust's words are clear. Living close to the Spirit helps us in "all facets of life, including daily ongoing decisions." Maybe it's the need for constant course-correction, constant checking-in to see "Is this right? Is this STILL right? And is there more?"—maybe it's all this repeated contact with the Spirit of God that actually helps us become His friends.

Here was another section of Elder Faust's talk I found encouraging:

Every day men and women come, by revelation, to understand the basic truth that God has restored his gospel and church. 

Every day leaders of the Church are led by revelation to conduct the affairs of the Church, general and local, throughout the world. 

Every day Latter-day Saint missionaries are impressed by the spirit of revelation to bear witness, to know what to say, to know what to do, and to teach by the spirit of revelation. 

Every day the mind and will of the Lord as revealed in the standard works of the Church are illuminated in the minds of Latter-day Saints by the spirit of revelation. 

Every day faith is increased in the hearts of the faithful by evidences of revelation in their lives—in decisions regarding marriage, vocations, home concerns, business ventures, lesson preparations, danger signals—in fact, in all facets of life.

That painted a picture in my mind of so many people around the world, with so many different problems—but all of us coming to God in prayer, pleading for His guidance—and He sends it! Often through each other! A few weeks ago a lady gave a comment in Relief Society, mentioning someone she had been praying about one morning. And I realized, "Hey, I was praying about that person too—on the same morning!" It was cool to think that there we had both been, united without even knowing it, our prayers joining together before our Heavenly Father for another one of our sisters. As a parent, I have some idea of how happy that must have made Him!

It happens more than we realize, I suspect. It's so easy to feel alone in those difficult "ongoing decisions." Easy to feel like you're the only one floundering as you try to adapt and grow and keep up with the shifting needs of yourself and the people around you. But I felt a jolt of confirmation as I read Elder Faust's words. The Holy Spirit is moving in the lives of people all around us. The prayers we pray, alone in our closets, are being echoed and amplified as our loved ones—on both sides of the veil—pray for us, and we for them. Every morning as I pray, specific people come to my mind, and I am filled with love for them. And inevitably, the first thing that I ask God to grant them is revelation—the companionship of the Spirit to help them with their "ongoing decisions"—because that's what I know I need most! Many of those people won't ever know that I am praying for them, but I hope that they will feel the increased influence of the Holy Ghost—comforting them, guiding them, enlightening them—anyway! And I know that countless other people are striving for the same thing, and that revelation is coming to God's children every day, every hour, as they need it! "The veil o'er the earth is beginning to burst."

And I think we—as we keep seeking God and His Spirit through our vexing, complicated, never-ending "ongoing decisions"—are the ones who will benefit, as that glorious, unfiltered light of heaven shines through.

Other posts in this series:

• The Controversial Topic of Marriage by Jan Tolman