Periodically I read the blog Musings on Mormonism. It is a blog from a former LDS member who is juggling family and spirituality and posts blogs that for the most part appear to be sincere.
The other day I read the post entitled “Can our Hearts be Trusted“. She describes how praying and receiving an answer from God isn’t legitimate because our hearts can decieve us. She then goes on to state the only thing we can trust is God’s word and nothing else.
This statement was very amazing to me for a number of reasons. First, how are we to know God’s word if we can’t recognize and discern his voice? Next, in my opinion it is borderline blasphemy to say that God can’t answer prayers and speak to our hearts through not only feelings, but in our minds and through scriptures as well. Finally, I feel that it is a tool from Satan to deceive us into thinking that we do not need to pay attention to the feelings and promptings God gives us. It states in scripture that God speaks to us in our minds and in our hearts through feelings, visions, scriptures, and other means such as prophecy.
The question then is how do we learn to discern between what our desires are and what God’s desires are? Furthermore, if one claims to be a prophet and speak when moved upon by the Holy Ghost as the prophets of the New Testament did, how are we to know if what they are saying is truth? Many people may answer this by saying to look it up in the Bible and that will confirm the truth. However, how is one to know what truth is when reading in the Bible or any other scripture for that matter? Clearly the answer is through the Holy Ghost. But once again, the question arises how do we know if what we are feeling is from God or just our own desires? Worse yet, how do we know what we feel isn’t Satan trying to deceive us?
These thoughts caused me to reflect on a post I wrote about 2 years ago called “Receiving and Recognizing Answers to Prayers.” In this post and especially in the comments by other readers, there are common threads on how we can live our lives in tune so we can receive and recognize answers to our prayers.
In one of the threads, it discusses how God will send us the Holy Ghost through feelings accompanied with a positive conviction. Personally, I feel that all inspiration we receive should be backed up, as our “musings” friend alludes to with the scriptures.
From my own personal experience, I know this is a truth: God speaks to us through His Holy Spirit and we feel this many times as a burning in the bosom, or exceeding joy that is more than just our own made-up desires that confirms all truth. We do need to learn and practice to discern from our own feelings and God speaking to us though.
Personally, I feel that our friend over at Musings has it 1/2 right. We do need to test our answers to the Word of God and not soley rely on a desire…especially if we’re not sure if it’s from God or not. We shouldn’t rely soley on just our feelings and also it is important to have had a witness of what scripture is truth and this will come through an answer from the Holy Spirit as well.
I know we can learn to recognize and discern between Heavenly Father’s promptings and our own desires.
What are your thoughts on this subject?
Grace for Grace 
12 comments
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July 28, 2009 at 5:57 am
Mormon Heretic
I can appreciate Musing’s point–our hearts can, and do deceive us at times. However, if “the only thing we can trust is God’s word and nothing else” then why in the world are there so many religions who claim to trust in God’s word and nothing else?
It is rather arrogant for Musing to assume that her interpretation is the only correct one.
I like what it says in John 14:26: “But 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 15:26 is nice too: “But when the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, [even] the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father, he shall testify of me:”
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July 30, 2009 at 3:09 pm
Ezra
I am puzzled by two things:
Does God promise to respond to the prayers of ALL people?
Does God put his Word out and expect and honor a variety of interpretations?
The answer to both is no.
And the answer to the predictable response is…
God is who he is. There is no other…and never will be.
Is God subservient to his creation? No.
Is God beholden to those who either reject or pervert his Word? No.
Remember that Scripture constantly lays out the formula:
You are mine if you heed my word.
If you turn from this you are not mine–I will not know you, much less listen to your voice.
To see this in action, consider John 6, where people are glad to have received bread; but when Jesus says that HE himself is bread from heaven that they must eat, people fall away in droves.
And Jesus doesn’t lose sleep over it; he shook off in an instant those who did not believe in the first place.
The focus of all Scripture is the restoration God sets in place to undo our rebellion and to bring us into a full relationship with our Savior, Jesus
The fullness of our work, as Jesus says (in Jn 6), is simply to believe this.
Everything else falls into place.
When this is our focus, ALL our prayers will be heard and the answer given…for God does not leave his people as orphans.
Blessings in Christ
Ezra
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July 31, 2009 at 5:33 am
Mormon Heretic
Ezra, can you answer this: “why in the world are there so many religions who claim to trust in God’s word and nothing else?”
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August 2, 2009 at 4:01 am
ama49
Ezra,
I can understand where you’re coming from with your comment. However, the question is for those who are living in line to receive the answer from God and they are having a hard time discerning between their desires and God’s will.
The main point I wanted to make was that God does indeed answer our prayers and through many ways, including and especially feelings to our hearts.
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August 3, 2009 at 11:18 pm
gloria
For the record I did ***not**** on my blog post state that , “praying and receiving an answer from God is not legitimate.” That simply is not true, Ama. Perhaps you should go back and re-read what I posted. With all due respect, you are not speaking the truth here.
What I “did” say is that praying and trusting our feelings is not what God asks us to do when seeking guidance or wisdom. The bible clearly states that our heart is a deceptive thing. We are also told in the book of proverbs that we are to trust in the Lord with all our hearts and lean not unto our *own* udnerstanding.Our “own” understnding or feelings can be deceptive , ama. Feelings and emotions can take over and cloud us from receiving God’s word and will.
I shared some passages and thoughts. Your readers should go back and read for themselves, instead of reading a commentary on what I wrote. http://www.musingsonmormonism.blogspot.com
God tells us to seek His wisdom, not our own. And how do we gain that godly wisdom? The book of proverbs again tells us that the beginning of wisdom / knowledge is the fear of the Lord. Proper understanding of “who” God is and respect for Him and His word.
I feel you misrepresented my thoughts here.
I hope your readers will do some research and look deeper.
Kind regards,
gloria
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August 4, 2009 at 5:10 am
ama49
Hi Gloria,
Thanks for stopping by and making it more clear what you were trying to portray. I agree with your comment here that our own understanding isn’t what we should trust, but rather Gods.
My apologies if I mis-read what you were trying to convey. I thought you were trying to say that God doesn’t speak to us through our feelings, which I don’t agree with.
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March 16, 2010 at 1:04 pm
Diane
To clarify, the bible IS God’s word…that is why we trust in it and only it because God’s word is unchanging and perfect, not like man’s word.
People who accept Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior when they are old enough to understand and make that decision (aka “Born again” because once we make that decision we are “like a new creation”) are given the Holy Spirit inside of us (aka the Comforter) to guide us. God does speak to us in many ways: through the Spirit, through others, through his word…but since we are still human we may misinterpret what we are seeing or feeling. If that “feeling” goes against/contradicts God’s word (aka the bible) then it is NOT from God.
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June 1, 2010 at 11:27 am
RON WALKER
Dear Friend,
I liked reading your letter on God and receiving his message through understanding of God´s manner of speaking.
I have been reading very much and watching Daystar programs considerably. All of these things are interesting but the more I read the Bible and meditate, pray, and listen for that voice of God— the farther and farther from understanding anything it seems.
If I continue to understand less and less as there is so much contradiction, the natural process would be to become an athiest. Something I am not hoping for.
But my simple and nieve question is– If God can do anything, why can´t he communicate with us?
After all that silly business of speaking in tongues is accepted as real and I think is nonsense. Is that God speaking to us?
I wish I could find some message that felt like it really represented our relation to God, if there is indeed a relation.
Ron Walker
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June 3, 2010 at 3:51 am
ama49
Hi Ron,
Thanks for stopping by. You have some very good questions and I enlisted the help of some of my other readers. Many of us are from different denomonations, but we all believe in Jesus Christ. I invite you to pray for patience in yourself and also for understanding of God and yourself. It willl come with time.
Many of us are praying for you. Read the comments on the blog I just wrote from my fellow friends in the faith and feel free to ask any questions.
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June 2, 2010 at 4:44 am
How Does God Speak to us? Help me help this reader… « Grace for Grace
[…] have written about this in previous articles throughout the years. Most notably Discerning between God Speaking and our Own Desires, and Receiving and Recognizing Answers to Prayers. In these articles, I address various ways to […]
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June 18, 2011 at 3:36 pm
Shaun Damon Hagler
Fantastic, thank you!
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March 1, 2013 at 7:34 am
Marjorie Dunn
This is indeed helpful.
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