Yield to the Enticings of the Holy Spirit

In his recent general conference talk Overcome the World and Find Rest, President Nelson suggested how we can work in our lives to overcome the world. He said, “How, then, do we overcome the world? King Benjamin taught us how. He said that ‘the natural man is an enemy to God’ and remains so forever ‘unless he yields to the enticings of the Holy Spirit, and putteth off the natural man and becometh a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord.’ Each time you seek for and follow the promptings of the Spirit, each time you do anything good—things that ‘the natural man’ would not do—you are overcoming the world.” Thus the single most important thing that we can do to overcome the world is to hear and heed the promptings of the Holy Ghost. The same night that the Savior told His apostles that He had overcome the world He also said to them, “And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever; Even the Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him: but ye know him; for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you” (John 14:16-16). Those of the world cannot receive the Holy Ghost because they cannot see it; but we who have faith can have the Holy Ghost within us, and if we will follow its promptings we will be naturally separating ourselves from the things of the world. The act of hearkening to the voice of the Spirit shows our Father in Heaven that we care more about His desires for us than we do about what the world thinks of us, thus naturally helping us overcome the inclination to be like the worldly around us.

               I love this word that King Benjamin used in his invitation for us to put off the natural man: we must “yield” to the enticings of the Holy Ghost. I remember a friend once telling me a story of how he was driving, I believe in conditions where visibility was low, and he came to an intersection. He didn’t need to stop for any reason that he knew of, but he was prompted that he should and so he did. Soon thereafter a large truck came barreling through the other direction—either running a red light or a stop sign—and my friend knew that if he hadn’t stopped he would have been crushed in his car by the truck. He had literally yielded and it saved his life. The promptings of the Holy Ghost are often feelings that we should yield by stopping one action and doing another, letting go of one activity and focusing on another. We have to be humble enough to trust in inspiration that tells us to go in a different direction than perhaps we had planned or wanted to go in.

                The promise that the Lord gave to Jared Carter as he was called to preach the gospel in 1832 is surely applicable to us all: “Verily I say unto you, that it is my will that my servant Jared Carter should go again into the eastern countries, from place to place, and from city to city, in the power of the ordination wherewith he has been ordained, proclaiming glad tidings of great joy, even the everlasting gospel. And I will send upon him the Comforter, which shall teach him the truth and the way whither he shall go; And inasmuch as he is faithful, I will crown him again with sheaves” (Doctrine and Covenants 79:1-3). As we go forth with a desire to do what the Lord wants of us, He will send us the Comforter which will teach us the truth and the path we should take. This was indeed true for Jared Carter as he embarked on this mission and was guided to his brother-in-law Ira Ames who “became convinced of the truth of the Book of Mormon and was willing to be baptized.” One account tells how “Ira Ames had heard of the gospel two years earlier from his mother. In August 1830, Ames received a letter from his mother, Hannah, informing him that she and several relatives (including Jared Carter) had been baptized. Ames had already heard of the Church from other sources and felt some interest, but the letter from his mother had a powerful effect. ‘When reading over my Mothers letter it ran through me like lightning, it roused every feeling of my mind, the effect was powerful,’ he remembered. These feelings prompted him to pray for a witness ‘whether the letter and the matter of it was true or false.’ In response, a ‘clear calmness’ entered his mind. Jared Carter’s visit almost two years later provided Ira his first opportunity to act on that testimony.” Clearly Jared had been shown the way wither he should go as he was led to find Ames and others who had been prepared to hear the gospel and accept its teachings. As we seek to overcome the world we too can be led by the Comforter as we yield to its promptings and work to put the Lord’s desires for us above our attachment to the things of the world.