if any of you have any personal revelation stories that they would like to share, i would love to hear them.
today has been a better day. my prayers and then scripture study were quite comforting-kind of like Heavenly Father was patting me on the back and telling me to hang in there.
have you ever met or heard someone who manufactures their own personal revelation? i dont mean burning bush type stories, but more along the lines of the guys who tell the girl they are dating that the Lord revealed to him that they are meant to get married. i have seen it a lot. as a kid, there was a divorced woman in our ward who got up to bear her testimony several different times to tell the congregation how she had received the confirmation that her current boyfriend was IT. i dont think she ever said eternal companion because she was sealed to the bastard who cheated on her while she was at home raising his 4 kids.
i dont want to be that girl. part of my prayers have always been for the truth and the power of discernment so that i dont confuse heartburn with a burning in my bosom from the Holy Ghost.
thats part of the issue with my recent experiences. did i make this up or is this a test of my faith?
please weigh in-if you dont want my millions(snort, ha, yeah right)of readers to know your identity, please post as anonymous as opposed to not posting at all. i would so appreciate the feedback.
addendum: part of the reason i feel on such shaky ground with this revelation stuff is that i had a confirmation with msof and mr ex man. i prayed really hard on both of them and with msof, i felt really good about my decision to marry him. got the thumbs up from the bishop and the majority of my family. even those that were more reserved about it, werent totally opposed. with mr ex man i wanted to be really careful and really sure. i was so excited and happy with him i did not want impose my feelings in the process of asking Heavenly Father what i should do. msof was over 20 years ago and the memories have faded, but with mr ex man I KNOW that i prayed "thy will be done" every single time. i even prayed that i would walk away if that was the right thing to do. can you see why i am gun shy with all this?
I've never really had that purely spiritual and faith-based "burning in my bosom" and I'm not ashamed to say it. I don't think it's because I'm not spiritual or anything, it's just not how my brain works.
ReplyDeleteSure I pray for help, but I usually end up doing a lot of leg work myself, weighing Pros and Cons, etc. Eventually I get to a point after thinking logically and rationally about something that it feels irrefutably right or wrong, and I go with that.
I've never prayed about whether a girl is my soulmate or not, and I probably never will. I think way too many people pray, and when they're done, if they still feel like they want to be with that person, then they accept that as the answer. Too many people let their own personal feelings drown out the real answer they're getting, like when I was 7 and prayed and got the answer that my parents were supposed to buy me a bike.
I've always thought that the Holy Ghost speaks to everyone in your own way, some people feel those "burning bones" others feel something else. I think the key is finding the feeling that you KNOW is the spirit answering you and always remember that feeling so you can contrast other feelings against it.
When I was a senior in college, I had just completed an internship with an engineering company. They made me a job offer. The moment I got the offer, I knew without a doubt that it was the wrong thing for me. Everything just felt wrong about it.
ReplyDeleteI prayed about it and felt like I should try and go to law school. And so I did. I am not one of those guys that does this on a regular basis. I have friends that would call me on the day of a concert and say "I have a spiritual inclination that I should not go to the concert with you tonight." I would NEVER do that. So this really hit me hard. Now, years later, I realize how great of a decision this was. The engineering company is going through layoffs. The housing market in the city where the engineering firm is located is completely burst (so if I had bought a house there, I would now be totally screwed) and meanwhile, I am as busy as ever at a very stable law firm. It won't always happen that way (my dating scene sucks) but I think the Lord is mindful of us.
EXACTLY!! both of you made excellent points and they are exactly why i am so gun shy. i dont want to be like the kid who feels "inspired" that their parents need to buy him a bike or the friend who feels that the Lord is telling him to not go to the concert. Heavenly Father does expect us to figure it out and then go to him for confirmation. i have been(and will continue to do)doing the leg work, but the results of the efforts have been up and down. could be a test of faith, could be the big thumbs down. that is what is weighing so heavily on me now. thanks for giving your insights, i really appreciate it.
ReplyDeleteI went through this also.
ReplyDeleteJust for some perspective, my wife and I were both 22 when we married. I am a member from birth and she was a recently reactivated convert (I don't mean this in a derogatory way) who had had a really rough life including pretty much every type of abuse starting from when she was a child.
My finding my wife for me was the biggest spiritual feeling I have ever had. Every time I prayed about it I just KNEW that we were made for eachother, or at least that I was made for her. I think I Rushed it though as it turned out we didn't quite know each other well enough before we got married to know how to work through each others baggage afterwards. We met in june married in november. The ward we moved into was not very supportive and we requested help from the bishop who just kept fobbing us off. We moved housed to another wards boundaries in January but by then it was too late, my wifes mental condition had deteriorated too far. She left me mid-january. Now I am in court to see my daughter who was born in July and my wife is refusing to allow me to see her. The divorce papers (which she filed) should be finished in a couple of weeks.
So I think the moral of the story is that you need to be really careful about promptings you think you are having. They may just be that you should continue spending time with someone to get to know them better, not that you should marry them ASAP.
thanks anon. your story is exactly the kind of stuff i am looking for. i felt so strongly about marrying my ex husband-i just KNEW it was right and maybe it was, but it didnt change his free agency or his mental illness. i get dizzy going round and round with all the info in my head. so many ways of looking at it. thanks for sharing.
ReplyDeleteThis kinda pertains to the comments regarding marriage, and also because I like to push this whenever I can.
ReplyDeletePresident Eyering said in a Priesthood session a few years ago that just because you get the spiritual prompting that this is the person you should marry, doesn't mean you should do it right away. I think it goes along with the leg work we mentioned, and I've always thought that spiritual answers still require you to do the work before you get the blessing.
My parents divorced when I was young, since then I've been paranoid about being divorced, which is probably why I'm 23(old by our standards) and still not looking for a wife...
PS: Also in that same talk he stated that he felt if people would start courting for at least a year before getting married the divorce rate in the church would be cut in half.
ReplyDeleteIt's funny because this was one of my favorite priesthood session talks, but I think most SA Men in the church like to pretend it never happened, I know my friends did...
Something that has been going through my own head about receiving answers has been, "Are we asking the right questions?" I think sometimes we just say, Is this the person I'm to marry? And when we don't get an answer or just feel the same, we feel confused. I believe that relationships are to be slower and its a process to move toward marriage just like if we were to decide on a career. What should I major in during college first, then where should I apply, then should I accept this job offer, and if needed what other options should I explore?
ReplyDeleteI think we are prone to being too quick because dating is so anxiety producing for so many people and there is "pressure" from the LDS culture to be married, the quicker the better. So we skip very important stages and asking important questions along the way. I love the parable of the Brother of Jared. He had a problem and kept going back to the Lord a number of times to get answers and to ask the Lord for help. It was a process, not a one time thing. Like what was said in a previous comment, it does take a lot of work on our part and willingness to do things that we may not want to do. Sometimes we may even need to ask what question(s) we need to ask about a particular problem or issue we are concerned about. I believe that as we slow things down, that promptings will come, probably from places we hadn't considered before. That has been my experience and what I have seen that works the best for myself and others in my life.
more excellent points! funny that you mention the brother of jared-my scripture study recently took me to that part of the book of Mormon and i had written some notes in the margins from a scripture study from a leadership meeting. very similar to what you are saying jenn.
ReplyDeletewaiting-at this point in my life-a year courtship seems too much-especially if you can get a confirmation, but like you said maybe there are other things that need to be done in order for it ALL to be right.
Waiting, the talk you're citing has gotten me curious, but I haven't been able to find it with my attempts at searches on LDS.org. Perhaps you could locate it better. In what year was it given?
ReplyDelete