John Burroughs, the naturalist, was once walking through a busy city park when he heard the beautiful song of a bird.  He stopped to listen.  As he did so he noticed that none of his companions nor anyone around him had heard it.  He took a coin from his pocket and tossed it in the air.  When it hit the pavement with a metallic ring, every head turned.  That was a sound to which their ears were attuned.

Listening for the Spirit is like that.

We can train ourselves to hear it.

When our children were small, Margie and I noticed something very interesting.  All parents know that when there's a new baby in the house as well as other small children, especially if there is also an illness going around the family, the parents can be gotten out of bed a hundred times in a night.  That may be an exaggeration.  It's probably only something like 20 or 30 times.

Since there wasn't much that I could do to take care of the needs of a nursing baby, Margie was the one who got out of bed when the baby cried.  The toddlers and other small children became my responsibility.  Gradually we noticed that we only heard the child for whom we had responsibility.  I couldn't hear the baby crying, and slept peacefully on.  Margie, on the other hand, was always surprised to learn in the morning that I'd been up with the other children.

Thirty-five years ago I had an interesting job in the U.S. Navy.  The Navy sent me away to school for a year on an Army base to learn the Russian language.  All day long I sat in classes doing nothing but learning Russian.  While I was there, the military sent a delegation to the Church's Mission Training Center in Provo.  That's an exercise which the military goes through every several years.  They regularly send experts to the MTC to try to figure out how the Church is able to teach foreign languages so quickly.  They watch, they imitate, and they try to institute in the military classes what they see being done in the classes at the MTC.  In spite of their best efforts, it still takes a year to accomplish what the Church does in eight weeks.

The gift of tongues is alive and well in the Church.  So are the operations of the Spirit.

When I left the Defense Language Institute and went to my various assignments, one of my jobs was to translate intercepted Russian military communications.  Rows of radio operators sat with headphones on their heads while scanning radio frequencies.  When they'd find a Soviet communication, they'd record it.  The recordings were brought to my companions and me for interpretation.

Most often those recordings were filled with static and garbled voices.  I was supposed to make sense of them.  Some recordings I'd have to play over again a dozen times.  If I thought the communication was important, and still couldn't get the full message, I'd call my supervisor over.  He'd put on the headset, listen to the recording, rewind it once, listen again, take off the headset, and give me a full, verbatim report of the conversation.  He had trained himself to tune out the static.

The world is filled with static.  The adversary likes it that way.  Static makes it very difficult for the still small voice of the Spirit to get through.

Have you ever received inspiration in the middle of a movie or a TV program?  Have you ever received inspiration at a dance, at work while the phones are ringing, or while you're hurrying to meet a deadline?

The Spirit finds it very difficult to penetrate such static.  When the scriptures say "Be still, and know that I am God," can you understand why that is so?

It is in the quiet moments that the Spirit speaks, and that we're able to listen.

David O. McKay told the story of the member of the Presiding Bishopric whose son was killed in a railroad accident.  The young man's mother was inconsolable.  After the funeral, she was one day lying quietly on her bed when her deceased son appeared to her.  He told her that everything was all right, and that what had happened had been an accident that occurred when he was reaching for the ladder of the moving train to pull himself aboard.  His foot had caught on a root, and he'd fallen under the train.  He assured her that everything was fine, and as it should be, and that she was not to mourn.

And then he made this significant statement.  He told her that he'd tried to reach his father, but that his father had been too busy.

It's very important that we daily provide a setting in which the Spirit can speak.  We need a quiet time.  If we're early risers, maybe we should resist turning on the radio or TV.  If we walk to exercise, maybe we should leave the headset at home.  We don't need to have the radio playing whenever we're in the car.

These are good times to pray instead.  Prayer promotes inspiration from the Spirit.

When I was bishop, a sister came to me for help.  She was depressed.  The world had closed in on her.  It was impossible to feel happy any more.  What could she do?  I let her talk, while I listened.  Occasionally I'd ask a question.  I prayed for the Spirit to tell me what to say.  Finally I asked, "Are you praying daily?"

She looked at me and said, "Bishop, I haven't prayed in three or four months."  With that statement, the lights came on for both of us.  She left with a commitment to put prayer back in her life.

The results were dramatic.  When I saw her a few days later, there was a light in her eyes, a bounce in her step, and a smile on her face.  Life had become good again.

Spending time each day with the scriptures promotes inspiration from the Spirit, too.  Let me read several remarkable excerpts from the scriptures:

President Joseph F. Smith wrote in Section 138 of the Doctrine and Covenants, "I sat in my room pondering over the scriptures, and reflecting upon the great atoning sacrifice that was made by the Son of God … As I pondered over these things which are written, the eyes of my understanding were opened."  He then received that marvelous vision of the dead.

Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon "were doing the work of translation, which the Lord had appointed unto us (when) we came to the twenty-ninth verse of the fifth chapter of John … And while we meditated upon these things, the Lord touched the eyes of our understandings and they were opened, and the glory of the Lord shone round about."  The vision that followed is what we have as the 76th Section of the Doctrine and Covenants.

Nephi was told the things that his father had seen in vision.  Nephi wrote that "as I sat pondering in mine heart I was caught away in the Spirit of the Lord," where he was shown the same things, and more, that his father had been shown in vision.

Twenty-five years ago, almost to the day, President Kimball received a revelation which we have in the Doctrine and Covenants as Official Declaration – 2.  This revelation is the one which extended the priesthood to all worthy male members of the Church.  It says there that President Kimball "received this revelation, which came to him after extended meditation and prayer in the sacred rooms of the holy temple."

And then there are the Lord's own words found in 3 Nephi 17:3.  "Therefore, go ye unto your homes, and ponder upon the things which I have said, and ask of the Father, in my name, that ye may understand, and prepare your minds…"

Sometimes we feel a desperate need for guidance and inspiration.  Those are good times to go to the temple.

Once upon a time I was serving as bishop, while being a father of eight, while running a farm, while working at a job in town.  I've told this story to you before, but it's a story that I have to repeat to myself every so often in order to keep myself in remembrance.  I had taken the job in town because of the example of the Stephens brothers.  They had always been able to successfully run a farm while working full-time jobs in town.  I reasoned that if they could do that, I could, too.  Besides that, my sons were old enough to do much of the work on the farm, therefore, I could take a job in town and bring some extra income into the family.

My world became very sour.  I began cringing whenever the phone rang, and thought to myself, "Please don't let it be for me!"  I knew something was wrong and had to change when I overheard one of my little children say to another, "Let's go over to the barn and get away from grouchy old Dad."

I went to the temple.  I went all alone.  I went through an endowment session, and then sat in the Celestial Room and prayed and meditated.  Nothing happened, so I got another name and went through a second session.  Again I sat in the Celestial Room and prayed.  As I did so, a scripture came into my mind.  It said, "It is not requisite that a man should run faster than he has strength."  (Mosiah 4:27).

There was my answer!  The Spirit didn't say, "Quit your job," but I knew that was what I had to do.  I got another name and went through a third session as a way of giving thanks, then went home and quit my job in town.  Life became good again.

I've always thought how interesting it was that the Spirit gave me my answer by quoting a scripture.  At the time I couldn't have told you that the line had come from Mosiah 4:27, but I went home and looked it up.  Could the Spirit have put that line in my mind if I hadn't already read it?

If we want to hear the Spirit speak we must provide the setting, and train ourselves to hear.  Prayer, fasting, scripture study, temple attendance and quiet, meditative times provide the setting.  Giving service also helps.  I've found that inspiration comes more quickly when it's needed for others rather than for ourselves.

With anything as quiet and sensitive and pure as the Spirit, is it any wonder why the Lord asks us to avoid certain things?  Can anything as pure and sensitive as the Spirit penetrate a mind short-circuited by drugs, alcohol, addictive cravings, or pornographic thoughts?

We have to be very, very careful what we put into our minds and bodies.  A fundamental purpose of the Word of Wisdom has to do with revelation.  If someone "under the influence" can hardly listen to plain talk, how can they respond to spiritual promptings that touch their most delicate feelings?

Laman and Lemuel heard the exact same things that Nephi heard from their father.  But Laman and Lemuel couldn't understand his teachings.  Nephi asked them if they had inquired of the Lord for an explanation.  They replied, "We have not; for the Lord maketh no such thing known unto us."  (1 Ne. 15:9).  He later upbraided them because they had hardened their hearts.  "(The Lord) hath spoken unto you in a still small voice, but ye were past feeling, that ye could not feel his words."  (1 Ne. 17:45).

Nephi's choice of words is interesting.  Why didn't he say, "Ye could not hear his words?"  It's because the Spirit rarely speaks to us with an audible voice.  Rather, he speaks to us through our feelings.

We must keep that sacred conduit open.  It's up to us to provide the setting in which the Spirit can speak to us, and we must train ourselves to be able to hear.  There are many, many things that the Lord wants to tell us.  The messages are there, but the responsibility for sorting them out of the world's static is ours.

–June 2003.