Hear the Voice of the Lord

In a recent podcast, Dr. Maclane Heward made an interesting comment about the Spirit and revelation. He said, “If we're not careful, we'll speak and talk about testimony and even the First Vision in ways that make our students and our listeners think intense emotional experience.” But he suggested that emotions are not the only way that the Spirit communicates with us: “Doctrine and Covenants section eight, I will tell you in your mind and your heart, but yet culturally we never say I thought the Spirit today.” The verse he was referring to is this one: “Yea, behold, I will tell you in your mind and in your heart, by the Holy Ghost, which shall come upon you and which shall dwell in your heart. Now, behold, this is the spirit of revelation; behold, this is the spirit by which Moses brought the children of Israel through the Red Sea on dry ground” (Doctrine and Covenants 8:2-3). We should not discount that the Spirit can speak to us through our thoughts even as he can through our feelings and emotions. Moses had to have the idea—through a thought—to part the Red Sea and take the children of Israel across it. In our culture we speak almost universally about “feeling the Spirit” and yet that is not really scriptural language. Of course, the Spirit speaks to us through our feelings, but we should not limit ourselves to believe that is the only means of communication. What the scriptures speak more commonly about is hearing the voice of the Lord. For example, the preface to the Doctrine and Covenants says this: “Wherefore the voice of the Lord is unto the ends of the earth, that all that will hear may hear.” It also says that those who “will not hear the voice of the Lord, neither the voice of his servants, neither give heed to the words of the prophets and apostles, shall be cut off from among the people” (Doctrine and Covenants 1:11, 14). Similarly, the “appendix” to the same book of scripture says this, “Hearken and hear, O ye inhabitants of the earth. Listen, ye elders of my church together, and hear the voice of the Lord; for he calleth upon all men, and he commandeth all men everywhere to repent” (Doctrine and Covenants 133:16). Another revelation gives this teaching on the Spirit: “And the Spirit giveth light to every man that cometh into the world; and the Spirit enlighteneth every man through the world, that hearkeneth to the voice of the Spirit. And every one that hearkeneth to the voice of the Spirit cometh unto God, even the Father.” The Spirit is something that we must hearken to or hear. To hear the voice of the Spirit may indeed mean that we feel it; it might also mean that we hear an audible voice; it may mean that we receive thoughts in our head. Or we may hear in some other way. The important point is that we are able to hear and heed, no matter what form the voice comes to us.

               The Prophet Joseph spoke about the way the Spirit speaks to our minds when he said this: “A person may profit by noticing the first intimation of the spirit of revelation; for instance, when you feel pure intelligence flowing into you, it may give you sudden strokes of ideas, so that by noticing it, you may find it fulfilled the same day or soon; (i.e.) those things that were presented unto your minds by the Spirit of God, will come to pass; and thus by learning the Spirit of God and understanding it, you may grow into the principle of revelation, until you become perfect in Christ Jesus.” We must not discount the way in which the Holy Ghost can speak to us in our minds, giving us thoughts, ideas, and impressions in ways independent of our feelings. Indeed, when the Savior taught us to love the Lord, He included doing so with our minds: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind” (Matthew 22:37). This suggests that we love the Lord both with our feelings (the heart) and our thoughts (the mind). To seek to hear His voice in both our heart and mind is perhaps one way that we can strive to obey this injunction. And we should be careful not to impose the way that we hear the voice of the Lord on others as the way, for, as Moroni taught, “The gifts of God… are many; and they come from the same God. And there are different ways that these gifts are administered; but it is the same God who worketh all in all; and they are given by the manifestations of the Spirit of God unto men, to profit them” (Moroni 10:8). He taught this right after inviting us to know that the Book of Mormon is true through the Holy Ghost, and this teaching suggests that there will not be only one way for us to come to know the truth through the power of the Holy Ghost. The medium is not the most important thing; rather, what matters most is that we learn for ourselves to “Hear Him” and then to act according to what we hear.