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I had a very profound answer to my prayers this last weekend. It was interesting that it was a simple event that would likely be seen as coincidental or silly by some, but it filled me with such a feeling that I hold it sacred. I immediately recognized that because of fasting and prayer, and then seeing 4-5 people reach out to me and my family independently of each other, many independent from knowing specific things, but seeing how they all tied together for an answer I was looking for, that I felt in my heart that God was there, and that He knows my situation, and that at times He may be busy with others but I just need to be patient (expecting answers in months instead of years is sometimes impatient).
The events may have been trite, but the feelings I had were not. I find meaning in my life from these events, and I choose not to explain them away with logic. I just hold them sacred and record them in my journal to remind myself of my feelings should I forget this feeling later in my life.
Many years ago as I was in the early throws of disaffection, I decided to attended the temple to get some help. As the ceremony progressed I was becoming about many of the rituals, etc that didn’t make any sense to me. But before I could get very troubled the specific words came to me “Don’t knock them, they don’t make sense to me either, but all will be OK.” (And no, I don’t understand the paradox of those words) But from that point on, the issue never bothered me, for the 18 years that I was totally inactive. While inactive, my brother committed suicide. After the funeral, my sister-in-law invited me over to share some time together. She shared his note with me and expressed concern that she was at least partly responsible. I found myself very confidently and firmly explaining to her that she was not responsible. I don’t remember what I said that evening, but I remember how the words came clearly to me and she was calmed and soothed by them. I have no doubt that I was inspired that evening for her sake.
After a long absence, I started attending the temple again. On the drives home afterward, I frequently felt a sense of Peace, Purity and Power come to me as an afterglow from the experience.
I have another set of experiences that I’m not sure whether it is a spiritual manifestation or a psychological phenomenon. Frequently when backpacking in a wilderness, far from the clang and clatter of “civilization” I find a variety of hymns seem to run through my head. Since I don’t sing worth squat, I’m surprised to hear the songs in perfect pitch, with the beat being carried by my steps as I walk. Whether that experience is of God or Freud, matters little to me, because the experience is positive, assuring, and pleasant.
Thanks Dash for sharing your experience. This is the first time I saw a posting from you so thanks. a latest experience:
i was laying in bed and thought “gee, I haven’t prayed for quite a while” and so I said a prayer to Heavenly Father, a simple sincere prayer of gratitude. One thing I have thought about lately was the astronomical fact that if you point a powerful telescope in any direction of the sky you will see galaxy after galaxy. My heart is dear to astronomy partly because of what is taught in the Pearl of Great Price where God refers to “his creations” (worlds without number) or Enoch refers to “millions of earths like this… would not even be a beginning” of the number of worlds God has created.
i thought after my prayer “Gee, I wonder how (or when) God will respond ? “.
and lately i have been kind of feeling like i don’t fit into the mainstream church and instead of feeling down about it, i just accepted it as just a fact of life. there are other things too but one thing i’ve thought about was the law of chastity the church teaches about and the strictness when it comes to the wearing of the temple garment. and the feeling i’ve been having is that the Spirit told me : “this isn’t of man. this is of God” . and i felt the truth of that statement.
i woke up from a dream this morning too. the dream was very spiritual. i was helping this physically disabled woman in a hospital setting. she really needed help. I sensed how much she appreciated what i was doing for her. I woke up from the dream feeling that serving others who really need help is really important. it is easy to get caught up with things that really don’t matter and that can take us away from God. This kind of tied into with the paragraph above. we can neglect helping the less fortunate when we busy ourselves with sin and pursuing selfish desires. So these last experiences were to me God’s way of enlightening me to spiritual things that I have been neglectful of. God was communicating to me in ways that were obvious to me, hoping to help me progress.
I had one yesterday. My daughter has been spending time with my inlaws this summer but came home recently. I realized soon into my marriage that my inlaws have a much different perspective on life than my own family did. My wife came into the marriage with many of these perspectives that I found very difficult to live with, frankly. I was afraid to have children because I was afraid they would come out of our family with these same perspectives on life. Anyway, my daughter sat down telling me everything she was going to do with her life when she moves out of our house someday. She wanted to emulate my parents’ home atmosphere, housekeeping, nutrition and overall life attitudes the best — even though they are non-members. Religion did not come into it, but these items did. She went on about organization, regular meals, tidy homes, and an atmosphere of kindness. She then went on to point out the things that appalled her in some of the inlaw households she visited. At one point showing some real disgust for a value/habit that has been purged from our own household, but that existed when I was first married. She also rejected wholesale several values that I was afraid would fall into her psyche due to our life here. And then we talked about ways she was unhappy in our own home, and what could be done to make the household better. Many of the frustrations centered on attitudes I see in my wife and her inlaws, and one thing I do.
At the end, she told me how she felt the Spirit when I reacted to her thoughts about the role of animals in her life when she has her own house, and her own spouse. That was a HUGE one for me. All that was pure spirituality and I felt clouds giving way to happiness in my heart afterwards.
sounds like you have a special relationship with your daughter SD ! i can relate to the combining of the values of two families when a couple marry. my last ex-wife’s family was very tbm and maybe a bit pretentious. my home life was very liberal but kind to others who were different.
Mike
Today was Branch Conference in the branch where I am the High Council representative (I have not been released yet, largely so I could be there for the Branch Conference this week.), and the Branch Mission Leader shared the following when he bore his testimony in the leadership meeting prior to the other meetings. I am going to recreate it in his voice, to the best I can: Quote:About a year ago, Brother S was totally inactive – and had been for many years. Our good Branch President felt inspired to ask us to visit him in his home and ask him if he wanted to come back to church. He let us into his home, talked honestly and openly with us and decided to start attending church again. A few months later he was ordained an Elder, and he now has been to the temple.
About a month ago, I stepped off an airplane and nearly passed out. I discovered I had extensive blood clotting that caused a real risk of losing my life. As I prepared for surgery, I called our HP Group Leader and Brother S to ask for a blessing. Brother S was the voice for that blessing, in which he said a number of very specific things. Each and every one of those things has come to pass exactly as he said in that blessing, and I know I am alive today due to the power he exercised that day as an Elder in Zion.
That’s what the Gospel of Jesus Christ is all about –
participating in the growth and eternal development of God’s children. Well, the other day, I was just thinking to myself that the Spirit may give me promptings but it never gives me overt advice. Anyway, I was going out to teach a new member with the sister missionaries, on the other side of town, and was running slightly late. At a major junction, for some reason, I decided to go straight on, rather than turning right, even though I’d never done this before on the half dozen other occasions I’d taught this guy.
A bit after the junction, I saw the sister missionaries, and pulled over. They were busily trying to replace a wrecked tire on a car. They had got a lift from one of the women in the ward, and they were all pretty helpless. One of them admitted that her dad had never taught her about changing tires!
A plumber came by and replaced the tire pretty quickly, although I’d set everything up. He more or less pulled the tires off – I stuck it in the trunk, and gave him the other one. He said it happens to him all the time. Anyway, if I hadn’t stopped, or gone that way the whole thing would have been a bit more complicated, even with the plumber coming by. The sister who gave the missionaries the lift has a mentally disabled daughter, and although she is very sweet, she can be a bit of a handful, and she needed to hold her to stop her running onto a fairly busy road.
I know this doesn’t really work very well in the telling, but I was a bit stunned by this, and we discussed it in the lesson with the new member!
And by the way, it was also a much longer journey going straight ahead, rather than right… so I wondered what possessed me to go up that way when I’d never gone up there to visit this guy before… Quite spooky!
p.s. Ray, beautiful story about Brother S.
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