Serve with the Spirit

Let us do whatever is required to qualify for the Holy Ghost as our companion and then let us go forward to do whatever is required for us.

Confirmation into the church gives us the gift of the Holy Ghost but the companionship of the Holy Ghost requires our lives to be put in order.

Reading, studying, and pondering are not the same thing. Pondering invites revelation.

As priesthood holders we will all be called:

1. As His agent to teach with the Spirit
• the Spirit will calm your fears
• you will be surprised to know what to say
• you will feel the approval of the Lord regardless of the outcome and no matter what happens they will remember that you came.
2. to give succor to those in need

How do we magnify our calling? Simply by doing the service that pertains to that calling.

There will be a common theme in all those stories. It will be the power of the priesthood in a holder whose power to serve was magnified by the Holy Ghost.

And so my message for us tonight is this: let us do whatever is required to qualify for the Holy Ghost as our companion, and then let us go forward fearlessly so that we will be given the powers to do whatever the Lord calls us to do. That growth in power to serve may come slowly, it may come in small steps that are difficult for you to see, but it will come.

• We cultivate spiritual gifts by keeping the commandments and trying to live a blameless life. That requires faith in Jesus Christ to repent and be cleansed through His Atonement. So as priesthood holders we should never miss an opportunity to participate with all our hearts in the promise offered in every sacrament meeting for members of the restored Church to “take upon them the name of [God’s] Son, and always remember him and keep his commandments which he has given them; that they may always have his Spirit to be with them.”
• Just as we must be cleansed of sin to have the Spirit with us, we must be humble enough before God to recognize our need for it . . . As the humble servants of the Savior, we should pray for the manifestations of the Holy Ghost to come to us in our service and to those we serve. Humble prayer to our Heavenly Father, in deep faith in Jesus Christ, is essential to qualify us for the companionship of the Holy Ghost.
• Our humility and our faith that invite spiritual gifts are increased by our reading, studying, and pondering the scriptures. . . But reading, studying, and pondering are not the same.
1. We read words and we may get ideas.
2. We study and we may discover patterns and connections in scripture.
3. When we ponder, we invite revelation by the Spirit.
• Pondering, to me, is the thinking and the praying I do after reading and studying in the scriptures carefully.

Repentance, prayer, and pondering over the scriptures are essential parts of our qualifying for the gifts of the Spirit in our priesthood service. Further magnification of our power to serve will come as we respond with faith to go forward in our callings with the Holy Ghost to help us.

I will suggest two services to which we are all called. In carrying them out under the influence of the Spirit, you and others will see your power to serve, strengthen, and magnify.

1. The first is as His agent to teach and testify to others for Him.
• I will make three promies
1. as you pray for help, the Spirit will calm your fears
2. you will be surprised that you know what to say
3. you will feel the approval of the Lord
• I urge all of us, young and old, who are called to speak in a meeting in the name of the Lord to dismiss our feelings of self-doubt and inadequacy. We don’t have to use soaring language or convey deep insights. Simple words of testimony will do. The Spirit will give you the words for you to speak and will carry them down into the hearts of humble people who look for truth from God.
2. all of us will be sent by the Lord to succor those in need
• You will find yourself more able to recognize pain and worry in the faces of people.
• Names or the faces of people in your quorum will come into your mind with the impression that they are in need.
• We need not worry about knowing the right thing to say or do when we get there. The love of God and the Holy Spirit may be enough.

President George Q. Cannon – “Whenever darkness fills our minds, we may know that we are not possessed of the Spirit of God . . . When we are filled with the Spirit of God we are filled with joy, with peace, and with happiness, no matter what our circumstances may be; for it is a spirit of cheerfulness and of happiness.”