To learn the Spirit of God, we must learn to listen with our hearts. If we so desire and are worthy, the Lord will school us in the principle of revelation. One of the most important things we can do is learn the Spirit of God-learn to hear and follow the promptings of the Spirit. The Prophet Joseph Smith taught that the Spirit of God can be learned and that “by learning the Spirit of God and understanding it, you may grow into the principle of revelation, until you become perfect in Christ Jesus.” 3 “There is no price too high, no labor too onerous, no struggle too severe, no sacrifice too great, if out of it all we receive and enjoy the gift of the Holy Ghost.” 2 There is nothing as important as having the companionship of the Holy Ghost. … “Men ought-above all things in this world-to seek for the guidance of the Holy Spirit. McConkie (1915–85) of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles said:
The companionship of the Holy Ghost is one of the greatest blessings we can enjoy in mortality. This gift is the right, when we are worthy of it, to the constant companionship of the third member of the Godhead. After we are baptized, the gift of the Holy Ghost is conferred upon us by the laying on of hands by one who is authorized to administer the ordinances of the gospel. Members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are entitled to this same gift. This promise was fulfilled on the day of Pentecost. He said, “The Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you” ( John 14:26).
The Savior promised His Apostles that after He left them, they would enjoy the gift of the Holy Ghost. This was when he began, as the Prophet Joseph Smith termed it, to learn the Spirit of God. This was when he learned for himself that God hears prayers. My father’s experience as a young boy left a lasting impression on him because it was the beginning of his personal spiritual education. With a twinkle in his eye, he said, “I learned that God can speak to horses!” In his later years he told us that he had learned something else from this childhood experience. Yet when he gathered his family to teach us the gospel, he often spoke of his experience on the dusty trail in Monticello when the Lord heard and answered the prayer of a “freckle-faced seven-year-old boy.” He knew that the Lord had heard and answered his prayer.īecause he had learned to listen to and act upon the whisperings of the Spirit, my father was blessed to see the hand of the Lord on many occasions throughout his life. There, buried in the dust, he found his prized pocketknife. Dad climbed off the horse and put his hand into the deep dust on the trail. He climbed back on his horse, turned around, and rode back down the trail.
There he knelt and asked Heavenly Father to help him find his pocketknife. He stopped his horse and slid off its bare back to the ground. He was heartbroken, but he believed what he had been taught by his father and mother: God hears and answers prayers. To his dismay he realized he had lost it somewhere along the trail. One day as he was riding his horse to fetch the cows, he reached into his pocket for his knife. His prized possession was his pocketknife, which he always kept with him. When he was seven, one of his daily chores was to bring the family’s cows in from their pasture. My father grew up in the small town of Monticello, Utah.
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