Feeling the Spirit

 

Matthew Watkins
@ITalkOfChrist
Growing up, I was often frustrated when people spoke of revelation as a "feeling." How am I supposed to develop familiarity with and confidence in an abstract "feeling" I can't describe, define, or quantify? Was I forever cut off from spiritual communication? Then there were the stories in testimony meeting about "just having a little feeling" to pull off the freeway one exit early... only for a semi to smash through where they would have been a moment later. Was my life in danger because I couldn't tell the difference between intrusive impulses and the Spirit? I legitimately got a little paranoid for a while and started exiting the freeway early or waiting a few seconds after a light turned green... just in case it was the Spirit telling me to do so. Later, I learned through experience some important lessons I wish I knew at 14 years old: 1. **When it's urgent, the Spirit will speak to you through whatever medium and with whatever volume is necessary to get your attention.** You don't die in a car crash just because you didn't recognize that one of the thousand random, indistinguishable thoughts flitting through your head was actually from God. 2. **If you're keeping the commandments, you'll find yourself in situations where things work out well and you were an instrument in His hands without ever noticing any promptings at the time.** Usually, you'll only find out after the fact when other people point it out (which is why you should always speak up when you see it in others). 3. **"Tuning in" to the Spirit is like turning a radio dial, and everyone has their own frequency.** God speaks to our minds and to our hearts, but rarely in a 50/50 proportion. Some receive feelings; others receive specific words. For me, the Spirit's vocabulary consists almost entirely of quoting scripture back to me. The great task of life is to find your specific frequency. If I told you to find the classical station, you'd know how to do it: tune to a station, listen for a bit, hear country music, and move on. It's not abstract; it's not vague. It's a practical, measurable process. You can do the same thing to hear the Spirit: Have a thought enter your mind? It might be the Spirit, but it might just be you. Write it down, pay attention, and see if that thought becomes relevant soon. If you start to notice a pattern, great! Start paying closer attention to those thoughts and what makes them different from others—tune that dial! If those thoughts don't seem to have any bearing on anything, then maybe, like me, you just have an overactive stream of consciousness, and you move on to a different station. Have a peculiar feeling about something? Do the same exercise. See if something comes of it. Dig in more if you see a pattern emerge; otherwise, move on. Through this process of practical—almost scientific—experimentation, I have come to better understand how the Spirit does and does not speak to me, allowing me to develop confidence in the answers I receive. I have so much more I wish I could say on this topic. I wish I could reach the teenagers who struggle with this concept just like I did. I've been reflecting on it recently after watching this episode from
@WardRadioShow
. The guest shares many of these same principles that I have found so powerful in my life. More episodes like this, please, Cardon 😉


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