Receive the Holy Ghost

A dear sister once expressed her belief that the ordinance of confirmation, receiving the Gift of the Holy Ghost through the laying on of hands, is the same thing as being baptized with fire and with the Holy Ghost (as in 3Ne. 9:20). I believe this is inaccurate. They are two distinct events, though one may accompany the other.

In the Doctrine and Covenants, and in the Book of Abraham, we are taught that the eternal trajectory of this earth on which we live mirrors the trajectory or path of a mortal individual. The earth existed in a spirit form; we were spirits before we were born physically. The earth had a physical creation; we have a physical birth. The earth was baptized at the time of Noah and the flood; we are baptized at age 8. I think the appearance of the rainbow after the flood is to the earth what confirmation is to a mortal individual. The earth's equivalent of baptism with fire will occur at the Savior's return, when every evil person and every corruptible thing will be destroyed by fire. Our spiritual rebirth is not what happens when hands are laid upon our heads after baptism. Rather, it is what happens as we obey the instruction we receive when we are confirmed: "Receive the Holy Ghost."

This is not a passive description of what has just happened; it is a command to live in such a way that we are worthy of the constant companionship of the Holy Ghost, and to heed its promptings.

Think about the director, the liahona that Lehi found outside the door of his tent one morning.

It appeared when it was needed—at the very moment when they began their journey into unfamiliar territory toward the as yet unseen promised land. Imagine what would have happened if Lehi had left it on the ground where he found it. Unthinkable. But imagine if Lehi had picked it up, admired it for a while, and put it into his luggage, rarely or never to be seen by him or his family. Would that constitute receiving this miraculous gift? Hardly. The Lord's gifts are given to be used, not to be ignored or treated lightly.

The comparison between the liahona and the "word of Chirst" is clarified by Alma when he gives this national treasure to his son (see Alma 37:43-44). Where do we get the word of Christ from? Certainly from the scriptures. But many have had the scriptures, yet been in a state of apostasy because they lacked something more fundamental: direct revelation, the Holy Ghost. "No man can receive the Holy Ghost without receiving revelations. The Holy Ghost is a revelator" (Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, p. 328). To receive the Holy Ghost means to follow its guidance and directions.

President Taylor recalled something Joseph Smith told him: "Elder Taylor, you have been baptized, you have had hands laid upon your head for the reception of the Holy Ghost, and you have been ordained to the holy priesthood. Now, if you will continue to follow the leadings of that spirit, it will always lead you right. Sometimes it might be contrary to your judgment; never mind that, follow its dictates; and if you be true to its whisperings it will in time become in you a principle of revelation so that you will know all things" (Deseret News: Semi-Weekly, 15 Jan. 1878, 1).

Joseph Smith also taught: "A person may profit by noticing the first intimation of the spirit of revelation; for instance, when you feel pure intelligence flowing into you, it may give you sudden strokes of ideas, so that by noticing it, you may find it fulfilled the same day or soon; (i.e.) those things that were presented unto your minds by the Spirit of God, will come to pass; and thus by learning the Spirit of God and understanding it, you may grow into the principle of revelation, until you become perfect in Christ Jesus" (Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, p. 151).

It is tempting to say that the Spirit is everything. One would have to be omniscient to make such a statement with certainty, but it seems to be close enough to the truth to me. Our ordinances must be sealed by the Holy Spirit of Promise before they are valid in the next world; seeing angels only adds condemnation, and lacks converting power without the Spirit; without it, we are in pain (see D&C 19:20); without it, life cannot even exist. When it is withdrawn, ordained men lose the authority of the priesthood.

The Spirit is given to us in degrees, or portions, like a dimmer knob that makes a light grow brighter gradually as it turns. How can we receive more? D&C 88 says that when we live according to celestial law, we receive a portion of celestial glory. When we live a terrestrial or telestial law, we receive a portion of those. But a portion is only a part. It says we will receive a fullness when we are resurrected and reach our assigned glory, whether of celestial, terrestrial, or telestial. So obedience to God's law to us is a way to ensure the quality of the Spirit we are receiving. What about quantity?

As a missionary, I received a printed sticker with seven suggestions—ways to invite the Spirit. These included singing, prayer, and performing ordinances. While the notion is correct, that we can only invite, never force, the Spirit to be with us, these suggestions tend toward the drinking fountain, while only obliquely approaching the source, the river. "And ye shall offer for a sacrifice unto me a broken heart and a contrite spirit. And whoso cometh unto me with a broken heart and a contrite spirit, him will I baptize with fire and with the Holy Ghost, even as the Lamanites, because of their faith in me at the time of their conversion, were baptized with fire and with the Holy Ghost, and they knew it not" (3Ne.9:20).

This is a more extreme description of receiving the Spirit than simply "having" it, or "feeling" it. "...baptize with fire and with the Holy Ghost..." is intense language. What is the prerequisite to receiving this greater portion of the Spirit? "...offer for a sacrifice unto me a broken heart and a contrite spirit..." Jesus also mentions faith. It appears from this that a little humility will cause us to receive a little portion of the Spirit, while complete humility (the Hebrew is literally "broken heart" and "crushed spirit") will receive a massive outpouring.

It is possible to be confirmed a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints without having a broken heart or a contrite spirit. That complete humility is the bar we have to clear before spiritual rebirth happens; confirmation is necessary to make rebirth formalized, complete, but it is not the only prerequisite.

Years ago, a wonderful young woman I knew announced to a Sunday school class that, after thinking about the enormity of being required to sacrifice willingly, anything and everything for the Lord, she honestly did not want to do it. She figuratively stepped back a pace from the edge of such a cliff in fear. Strangely, her guile-free admission that she found complete submission to the Lord difficult, something she would be unwilling to do, was a flat contradiction of the promises and covenants she had already made in the Temple. She hesitated to make the very sacrifice she had covenanted to make.

While this young woman was not guilty of any grievous sin, experiencing a mighty change of heart is necessary for us to get into heaven, whether we are the vilest of sinners or not (see Mosiah 27:25), and that means some kind of complete submission. When we drag our feet about making this offering the Lord might give us problems to humble us.

When I first started learning about these principles, the necessity of sacrificing our all to the Lord, and the attendant blessings the Lord pours out on those who are willing to make such a sacrifice, I mistakenly believed that I could "get it over with" in one shot. My college institute was holding a drive to buy new toys for needy children, and I thought that I could demonstrate my total commitment to the Lord by emptying everything from my bank account and donating it to this charitable endeavor. As I drove from the bank to the institute building, a sickening feeling started to come over me, what I would later come to recognize as a prohibiting prompting of the Holy Spirit. Without words, the message was, "No, Stop, Don't do this..." The feeling worsened as I came to the building. It was intolerable by the time I was ready to stuff several thousand dollars into an unsigned envelope. I caved, and only put in a fraction of what I had intended to.

I learn several important lessons from that experience. One of them is that we are to approach the Lord as a waiter approaches a restaurant patron. We are to offer Him the whole menu—a list of everything we own or love. He is the one who decides what is an acceptable offering from us to Him. "Will I accept of an offering, saith the Lord, that is not made in my name? Or will I receive at your hands that which I have not appointed?" (D&C 132:9-10).

My hypocrisy in this attempt to pay the Lord became clear to me later. God does not want a part of us, or a fraction of what we have. He wants everything—our whole selves, our time, our abilities, our every possession, our relationships, our dreams, everything we treasure, our hearts, now and forever. The Lord has already offered Himself to us in a similar way; it is fitting that we must respond in kind. If I am trying to get it over with so I can do other things I find more convenient or appealing, is my offering really a sign of love toward God?

"Holy, Holy, Holy, is the Lord of Hosts," says Isaiah 6:3. What does "holy" mean? "Clean" in a spiritual as well as physical way is one correct meaning. But another profoundly instructive definition of "holy" for us is "consecrated" or "dedicated." Temples are open to all tourists for inspection before they are dedicated. But afterward, they are used for specific purposes by people with certain qualifications only. To commit one's self half way to the Lord is like dedicating a Temple for ordinances in some of the rooms, but renting it as an apartment or a restaurant in other rooms.

When a Temple is dedicated, and no unclean thing is allowed inside, then the Spirit of the Lord dwells there, and is experienced there, manifested there, in ways that do not typically happen before it is dedicated. Similarly, when we devote our whole self to Christ and His service, we are filled with fire and with the Holy Ghost to a degree that can happen in no other way. We give our whole heart to Christ, and He gives us His heart, His nature, to replace it. The baptism of fire and of the Holy Ghost and the mighty change of heart are the same thing.

In the Temple we make covenants to commit everything we have to God. The words HOLINESS TO THE LORD written on the outside of modern Temples, do not mean "praise God." "Holiness to the Lord" means "consecrated to the Lord," in other words, "we gave this to God; it is His." HOLINESS TO THE LORD was engraved on the golden crown worn by the High Priest in the ancient Temple. He belonged to God; he could only see certain things, hear certain things, do certain things, and go certain places, because he was not his own anymore, but God's. God does not overstep agency. If we want to be holy, we have to give everything we are, everything we have, to the Lord. When we are His, then He can cause that mighty change of heart, a transplant that replaces our flawed nature and installs His nature where ours was. D&C 109, the dedicatory prayer for the Kirtland Temple, lists as one of the purposes of the Temple that those who come there "may receive a fulness of the Holy Ghost" (v. 15). When we make the covenants of the Temple with all sincerity, and strive to keep them with all our hearts, we will realize that great blessing—to receive the Holy Ghost.

I hope that we will see the first principles and ordinances of the Gospel as the real meat, the real mysteries, and the real center of our mortal probation. Receiving the Holy Ghost is the work of a lifetime, not something we can get over and done with.

Heavenly Mother

Here is an excerpt from a conversation I had, to the best of my memory:

Friend: "Why don't we read or hear more about Heavenly Mother?"

Me: "I think the reason is because...why are you doing that?" (The friend I was talking to had raised her hands to her ears as if to improve her hearing, in a histrionic, playful fashion.)

Friend: "Because I want to hear you say what EVERYONE else says—God doesn't reveal anything about Her because He doesn't want Her to be disrespected."

Me: "Actually, I was going to say that we don't hear much about Her because our mortal experience, our salvation here, is not Her job."

My friend did not like that answer very much. Aside from Eliza R. Snow's hymn, "O My Father," and the words "Heavenly Parents" in The Family: A Proclamation to the World, we have no direct canonical references to Heavenly Mother. If we learn about Her, it must be through the same means that Eliza R. Snow mentions in her hymn—reason. We must read between the lines, infer, see implications, follow the dominoes of syllogistic lines of reasoning. If God is veiled from us in a cloud of mystery, His Partner is doubly veiled. Why the cover-up? And why do we not worship or pray to Her?

Concerned women were asking such questions online recently, and I take this moment to chime in and give my response here.

President Uchtdorf said, "God the Eternal Father did not give that first great commandment because He needs us to love Him. His power and glory are not diminished should we disregard, deny, or even defile His name. His influence and dominion extend through time and space independent of our acceptance, approval, or admiration.

"No, God does not need us to love Him. But oh, how we need to love God!

"For what we love determines what we seek.

"What we seek determines what we think and do.

"What we think and do determines who we are—and who we will become.

"We are created in the image of our heavenly parents; we are God’s spirit children. Therefore, we have a vast capacity for love—it is part of our spiritual heritage. What and how we love not only defines us as individuals; it also defines us as a church. Love is the defining characteristic of a disciple of Christ" (The God of Love, October 2009 General Conference). Notice the mention of "parents."

Worship is for our benefit, not God's; it is not to make us feel good about being male or female. We pray to God and worship Him because He is the One, along with Christ and the Holy Ghost, charged with getting us out of the telestial pigsty we live in. When someone is baptized, the person performing the ordinance says, "Brother/Sister ________, having been commissioned of Jesus Christ, I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen." He then lays the person down in the water, and brings them back up again. As Jack Christensen quipped in one of my institute classes, "There was no second-string Savior," no substitute to perform the Atonement if Jesus decided to back out or quit. Jesus Christ is the only Savior. "And moreover, I say unto you, that there shall be no other name given nor any other way nor means whereby salvation can come unto the children of men, only in and through the name of Christ, the Lord Omnipotent" (Mosiah 3:17).

Regardless of what beloved friends or family we left behind premortally, we can only look one place for salvation while we are here. I believe that if we could establish direct communication with Heavenly Mother, she would immediately redirect us to Father. Why? Because there is no one else for us to hold onto in order to be pulled to safety. This life is spiritually perilous; it is like walking a tightrope with Satan hurling rocks and rotten tomatoes at us the whole time. A firm grip on our covenants made with God, His Son, and the power of the Holy Ghost, is all we have to stabilize us and bring us safely back. There will be a whole eternity to spend with Mother; for now, focusing on anyone but Christ (we covenant weekly in the sacrament to "always remember him") would be a potentially dangerous preoccupation.

We worship and pray to God because of the urgency of holding to the Father and Christ and none else. We follow the promptings of the Holy Ghost back to them, and they escort us back to heaven. Till then, as Paul says, we are in peril every hour. Just as Peter's focus on the Savior allowed him to walk on the water, our focus on the Savior will bring us across the gulf of misery. THEN the reunion Sister Snow envisions can occur:

"When I leave this frail existence...Father, Mother, may I meet you In your royal courts on high?...Let me come and dwell with you."