In my last blog post, I shared the lesson I learned in a very real, personal, and powerful way to “trust God and not google.” I wish I could say that I was perfect at trusting God and turning to Him before google, but I am a very imperfect person. And imperfect people tend to struggle a bit before lasting changes are made. But the other day, I had yet another powerful experience about putting my trust in God before turning to google that I felt prompted to share here. I know God is really trying to tell me something here, and I feel so grateful for His patience, grace, and love towards me and all of His children.
Recently, I was experiencing a bit of a pity party in the middle of the night. I felt hurt, berated, frustrated, angry, and confused. In the midst of my negative feelings, I wanted answers. I wanted validation. I wanted to read about all the other people who had experienced similar experiences and were hurt, upset, and angry too, so that I could say, “See! I have a right to feel this way! I am right, and I have the right to feel angry, hateful, and spiteful.” But with this temptation to “google it,” a gentle impression and reminder came to my mind: “You know that those feelings you will feel and the conclusions you will draw from googling it will not help you in the end. Turn off your phone and kneel on your knees.”
Over the next several moments, I fought the temptation to google it and I turned to God instead. I walked into my front room, I knelt on my knees, and I poured my heart out in prayer. Immediately, I felt an indescribably love fill up my soul. I felt validation, that it was understandable to feel the way I felt, but much more important than the validation I was seeking, I felt DIRECTION. Steps I needed to take to make my circumstance better kept coming to my mind. It felt like a flood of answers I hadn’t known I needed, but those answers made perfect and clear sense to me. It was absolutely amazing, and the gratitude and love that I felt from God was incredible.
Now, my prayers are not often answered like this one was. Sometimes I have to wait for responses to come. Sometimes, answers come from other people, church talks, or impressions days or weeks later. But I feel like God was really trying to teach me a lesson here, or rather reiterate the lesson I had previously learned: TRUST IN HIM. The real answers I received from Him are so vastly different from the answers I find when I obsessively google. While I would have found validation through what google could provide, I would have also felt confusion, victimization, self pity, self doubt, insecurity, and an increased resentment towards others. Instead, when I chose to turn to God in faith, I found validation, direction, insight, peace, hope, love, wisdom, and truth.
This experience reiterated my need to think before I search, and to turn to God first. God is the only source who has REAL, personal, individualized answers. Any answer to any question can be found online, but those answers often cannot be trusted. God is the only one who has all the answers for every personal life experience. To block him out is to block out the very source of all the love, direction, and joy every soul craves.
Several days after this experience, I went on a run with my sweet friend Melissa Johnson. Right in the middle of relaying my experience to her, we came across these signs: “Talked to God lately?” “Now would be a good time.” “James 1:5” We were laughing about the crazy coincidence and took pictures by each sign. What is James 1:5? It is the very scripture that led 14-year-old Joseph Smith to pray out loud for the first time in his life. A prayer that opened the heavens and began the dispensation of times.
“11 While I was laboring under the extreme difficulties caused by the contests of these parties of religionists, I was one day reading the Epistle of James, first chapter and fifth verse, which reads: If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him.
12 Never did any passage of scripture come with more power to the heart of man than this did at this time to mine. It seemed to enter with great force into every feeling of my heart. I reflected on it again and again, knowing that if any person needed wisdom from God, I did; for how to act I did not know, and unless I could get more wisdom than I then had, I would never know; for the teachers of religion of the different sects understood the same passages of scripture so differently as to destroy all confidence in settling the question by an appeal to the Bible.
13 At length I came to the conclusion that I must either remain in darkness and confusion, or else I must do as James directs, that is, ask of God. I at length came to the determination to “ask of God,” concluding that if he gave wisdom to them that lacked wisdom, and would give liberally, and not upbraid, I might venture.
14 So, in accordance with this, my determination to ask of God, I retired to the woods to make the attempt. It was on the morning of a beautiful, clear day, early in the spring of eighteen hundred and twenty. It was the first time in my life that I had made such an attempt, for amidst all my anxieties I had never as yet made the attempt to pray vocally.
15 After I had retired to the place where I had previously designed to go, having looked around me, and finding myself alone, I kneeled down and began to offer up the desires of my heart to God. I had scarcely done so, when immediately I was seized upon by some power which entirely overcame me, and had such an astonishing influence over me as to bind my tongue so that I could not speak. Thick darkness gathered around me, and it seemed to me for a time as if I were doomed to sudden destruction.
16 But, exerting all my powers to call upon God to deliver me out of the power of this enemy which had seized upon me, and at the very moment when I was ready to sink into despair and abandon myself to destruction—not to an imaginary ruin, but to the power of some actual being from the unseen world, who had such marvelous power as I had never before felt in any being—just at this moment of great alarm, I saw a pillar of light exactly over my head, above the brightness of the sun, which descended gradually until it fell upon me.
17 It no sooner appeared than I found myself delivered from the enemy which held me bound. When the light rested upon me I saw two Personages, whose brightness and glory defy all description, standing above me in the air. One of them spake unto me, calling me by name and said, pointing to the other—This is My Beloved Son. Hear Him!"
Over the last several years, I have come to love this account from Joseph Smith. I have experienced my own “anxieties” and “desires of my heart.” I have also felt “thick darkness” and felt as if I were “doomed to destruction.” And although I have not seen a vision of God and His Beloved Son, I too have experienced delivery from despair and destruction. I too have experienced the light, brightness, and wisdom of God. And I too, cannot deny the existence of a loving Heavenly Father and a Savior who has delivered us all from physical death, and can provide peace to every person who turns to Him.
I love that we all hear God differently. I love that we can all have a unique relationship with God. We can hear Him in the innocent voice of a child. We might see Him in the beauty of the blossoming spring or feel His touch in the warmth of the summer’s sun and the crispness or the autumn breeze. We can know Him through the kindness of a friend and the miracle of giving birth to new life and watching that life grow and change and create a life of their own. We understand Him through developing our unique, individual creativity, because He is the ultimate creator. We can breathe in His love and grace through music that touches the soul, the simple love and loyalty of a furry friend, and the hope and change each new day brings. He is real. He is as real as you and me. His existence and His love should not be discounted. To do so would be to limit the reception of His goodness, wisdom, and never-ending gifts. To do so would be to deplete life of the hope that comes from this Eternal truth: that God lives. And because of this, there is no death, there is no end! Change, peace, and joy can always be found!
I am grateful for the lessons God has so graciously taught me over the last several years of difficult trials. I know that He can use our weaknesses, trials, and challenges for our benefit and the benefit of others. He is wise. He is good. He is love. And his goodness, wisdom, and love should be trusted above all else. I hope to remember this lesson time and time again when I am tempted to search for instant answers online. I hope to always remember the peace and answers He provides cannot be replicated by anything else. He lives, He loves us, and He can provide all the answers we need, if only we will ask in faith.
