Apr 30, 2018
The hardest part about getting your prayers answered is being able to recognize when they are being answered. This episode will help you to learn how to get the answers to your prayers, and more importantly how to know they are coming from God.
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Hey everyone, this is Russell Brunson. Welcome back to the Book of Mormon Challenge podcast. I’m so excited to have you here and I’m excited for today’s episode. The title for today’s episode is, The secret to getting your prayers answered and how to know it’s actually from God.
I’m picking up this podcast a couple of weeks after my last one and I feel kind of bad. If you remember I did a day, it was Parley P. Pratt’s birthday and I decided to take the whole day off and try to read the entire Book of Mormon in a day, and I was going to do a whole bunch of mini podcasts throughout the day and afterwards and try to share with you the things that were happening, and I recorded one or two of them, but they didn’t turn out amazing and I wanted to kind of put my thoughts together and really focus on helping, probably the biggest question I’ve been getting from people who’ve listened to this podcast is, “Russell, I’ve been reading the Book of Mormon, I’m going to try it, but I don’t know how to pray. How do I pray? How do I get answers? When I do get an answer, how do I know it’s actually from God?”
As I’ve been thinking about that and kind of putting together this episode, I didn’t, I decided to not post those other mini episodes, and I wanted to kind of recap it here first because actually during that day, I received answers to some of my prayers, and it was special so I wanted to kind of share some of those experiences with you on this podcast as we’re talking about how to get your prayers answered.
With that said, I’m going to jump right into this. As you know on Parley P. Pratt day I tried to read the entire Book of Mormon. I ended up spending about 18 hours doing it. I got about, actually I got to page 266, which is not quite halfway there. So I didn’t quite hit it, but I got almost halfway there. So I’m going to block out another day, and do the rest of it. And I will keep you in the loop of how that goes. But it was amazing. It was really neat to read it that way and try to keep my focus for 18 hours.
It was kind of tough, there were times where I’d get tired, and I’d have to stand up and read while I was walking around. And other times where I’d sit in different locations, or just a whole bunch of stuff. But it was a really special experience and I’m so grateful I had an opportunity to do that. And I cannot wait to do part two, coming soon. So I will let you know.
But as I was reading the book, and I remember I got an answer to a prayer while I was reading. And when I did that, I jumped off and I recorded my thoughts right afterwards. And I’m not going to share that recording, instead I’m just going to kind of share the thoughts right now, because it’s a pretty neat thing.
There’s a quote I heard on my mission, I don’t know who said it, so I’m not going to give them credit, unfortunately, but whoever said it was awesome. They said, “Prayer is how we speak to our Heavenly Father, and oftentimes the scriptures are how he speaks back to us.”
So I kind of heard that a lot in my life, and there have been times where I’d try to use the scriptures as a way to get answers and I knew that on Parley P. Pratt day as I was reading I was looking for some answers. But it was crazy, within the first hour of me reading, I got the first answer to my question. I was going crazy because it’s so cool when it happens.
I actually want to share with you guys a funny story before I tell you the prayer I was trying to get answered and how it got answered. It’s funny, on my mission I got about 7 months into my mission I got the dreaded “Dear John” letter. The girl I was dating at the time, who I was convinced I was going to marry and everything, sent me the letter saying that she was not only dating somebody, but she was engaged and was going to be getting married here very soon.
As a young 19 year old missionary, I was destroyed. I just remember crying and I could barely control myself, I was just like, I’m out serving the lord and this is the person who I’m supposed to be marrying. Why would you take her from me, I’m doing everything that you told me to do?
I remember a day or two later, I had a chance to go meet with my mission president, his name was President Giddons, and as I was meeting with him he must have either heard what happened or he saw it on my face, or maybe I told him, I don’t know. I was just broken, and I told him, “My girlfriend is getting married.” And he looked at me and said, “You know what, you can find comfort in the scriptures.”
And I remember when he said that I was kind of frustrated. I was like, you know what, there’s nobody in the scriptures who got a Dear John letter. There’s nobody in here who could even relate to me, there’s no way. And I remember going home that night kind of being a little frustrated and the next morning saying, you know what, I’m going to start over at the very beginning, start reading the scriptures and I don’t care if I have to read the Book of Mormon, the Old Testament, the New Testament, everything, I don’t care. I’m going to read the entire thing just to prove to President Giddons that there’s nothing in here that’s going to comfort me for this problem.
And that was 19 year old Russell. I started at 1 Nephi, chapter 1 in the Book of Mormon and I started reading and what was crazy is, by 1 Nephi Chapter 2:15 I got my answer. What’s happening in the book at the time, if you haven’t started reading it yet, I encourage you once again to go to Bookofmormonchallenge.com get your free copy of the book and go and read it, but at this point, Lamen and Lemuel are the older brothers of Nephi. Nephi’s this younger kid who is good, who is listening to his dad and following what the Lord says and trying to do everything.
But they were asked to do a really hard thing. They had to leave their family, leave their gold, their riches, all their money, their home and go into the wilderness and to basically leave. And it was hard for them. It was not an easy thing to leave everything you loved behind and wander into the wilderness. And they’re out there in the wilderness wandering and in Chapter 2 Verse 15 there was a scripture, and when I read this scripture it was like a punch in the face. It said,
“And Lamen and Lemuel being the eldest did murmur against their father and they did murmur because they knew not the dealings of that God who had created them.”
I remember reading that and I was sitting here listening to myself murmur about my girlfriend and how sad I was and all these things. And when I heard that, it said, Lamen and Lemuel, they murmured because they knew not the dealings of that God who had created them. And as I read that I felt the spirit and the spirit told me to quit murmuring, quit complaining, the lord’s got something special for you, just wait.
So I decided to wait. I stopped murmuring and I went on my way and served my mission the best I could and I got home. A few months after I got home from my mission I met a beautiful girl named Collette. A few months later than that, I somehow convinced her to marry me and since then we’ve had 5 amazing children.
We had a family night a little while ago with the kids and we were reading the scriptures from the beginning and we read this verse. And I told them, “You guys this verse is all about you.” And we read it and I said, “That’s Lamen and Lemuel being the eldest did murmur against their father and they murmured because they knew not the dealings of that God who had created them.”
And the kids said, “Dad, how is that about us?” I said “Because one day a little while ago I murmured and the only reason I murmured was because I didn’t know who Collette was, and I didn’t know who you guys were and I’m so grateful that I stopped murmuring and let the lord do what he wanted to do with me. Because if I didn’t I would never have had you guys.”
And it was such a special thing, looking backwards. A lot of times it’s hard to look backwards when it’s happening in the moment. But for any of you guys who are going through trials, I encourage you to do what I learned this day, and that’s to not murmur, because you have no idea what God’s got in store for you.
So that was one of the first times I got an answer from reading the scriptures. Again, prayer is how we speak to Heavenly Father and the scriptures is how he speaks back to us. So when I was going on this Parley P. Pratt day, I knew I needed an answer to some prayers and I didn’t know what to do, so I was praying for an answer and I jumped into the scriptures and what was cool, within the first, still 1 Nephi, the first section of the book, I got the answer to the prayer I was looking for.
So I’m going to give you some context into the question I was looking for and then the answer I got, just to show you guys the pattern of how this works. When you understand, when you see the pattern of something, then you’re able to replicate it and do it over and over again.
For me, about a year ago I got introduced to an organization called Operation Underground Railroad. I had never heard of this before, I found out about it through a really sacred experience that I don’t feel comfortable sharing on this podcast right now, but I got a call to see if I would be willing to help with Operation Underground Railroad, and I had never heard of it, I didn’t know what it was.
So I went online and started Googling and found Operation Underground Railroad and started watching the videos and I found out about this guy named Tim Ballard and Tim goes to the deepest, darkest places on this earth and goes and saves little children from horrible, horrible, evil people.
And I remember that night as I was watching the videos I was actually, I have a vlog that I do and I was recording myself and I said, “I feel like tonight the direction of my life is forever changed.” And I knew that it was something that I needed to be part of and to help in any way I could. So I decided I would jump in and help.
I’m not super talented at a lot of things, but there are a couple of things that I’m good at. And I said, you know what, I’m going to try to help this organization the best that I know how, and I know how to do it through this thing called a sales funnel. For most of you guys, you have no idea what that is, don’t even worry about it, but I was like I’m going to build a funnel for Operation Underground Railroad to try to get their message out to the world and try to shine a light on this evil, evil thing that’s happening.
They say when you shine a light in a room, all the cockroaches scatter to the corners. I said, if I could help magnify this message and shine a light in the room I’m going to do it. And I don’t know how I’m going to do it but I’m going to do it. So I started running as fast as I could and started putting together a plan based on my own ideas and the plan seemed good, but for some reason it didn’t seem….I don’t know, you know that feeling where you’re like, this is good but it didn’t seem great? Like I’m missing something.
So before then, I was supposed to drive down to Utah and meet with Tim Ballard and some other people who are involved in this organization and the day I was supposed to be heading down there I was praying in the morning, “I need help. I need inspiration. I’m supposed to present these guys with my plan and my plan’s not very good.”
And in the middle of that prayer I had a flash of inspiration from Heavenly Father. The inspiration was simple, you need to make a documentary and you need to call Nick Nanton. And at the time, you’re probably thinking who’s Nick Nanton, and that’s almost how I felt. I had met him five or six years earlier, we had a conversation for less than 5 minutes and I hadn’t seen him since. He’s the guy who had done documentaries in the past, he had a lot of success with him. So I said okay.
I messaged him on Facebook Messenger, I was like, “Hey Nick, we talked once five or six years ago, I know we don’t know each other that well, but I don’t know if you believe in God, but I do and he told me today that you are supposed to help me do a documentary for this group called Operation Underground Railroad, check them out and let me know what you think.”
I got a message back from him a few minutes later, he said, “Brother, I’m in.” I said, okay. We’re making a documentary. Then I drove down to Utah, I presented this to Tim Ballard and some of the other people down there and they said, “yes, that’s it. That’s right.”
So we went back to the drawing board and said okay let’s do it. I called Nick up and introduced him to Tim and said, “You guys, let’s make this documentary.” And they went for the next 3 or 4 months, flew around the world to Haiti and all over the place to capture this story in a way that not only shines light in the darkness but helps to capture hope.
We got back after the documentary, they finished the filming of it, I do a big event once a year for entrepreneurs and we had about 3,000 entrepreneurs coming to this event. We had Tim Ballard come and we had Nick Nanton come and we had them show, do a private screening for this group to show them the documentary. So we showed them this amazing documentary that talked about Operation Underground Railroad and the mission and what they were doing.
And I’m sure I’ll do a whole podcast in the future just on that topic alone, but after we showed that documentary, from the group of entrepreneurs we were able to raise over a million dollars right there that will go on to save hundreds of kids from sex trafficking, which was one of the most amazing, special moments of my life.
In fact, if you want to see the trailer and eventually the documentary, if you go to ourfilm.org, you can see. As of right now the trailer is there, and in the future the documentary will be there.
So we did that and it was such an exciting thing, but I knew that that wasn’t the end. I knew that was the beginning. We had this documentary, how do we get this out to the world? How do we shine such a light on this darkness that the evil goes away? And I didn’t know the answer to that. I honestly still don’t know the answer to that. And I was scared and nervous once again.
As I started my Parley P. Pratt day and started reading as fast as I could, as soon as I got to 1 Nephi Chapter 17 I read these versus. Some context of what’s happening here, Nephi, Leman and Lemuel have left Jeruselem, they’ve gone across the wilderness and they found this amazing place, they called it the land of Bountiful and there’s trees and an Ocean, and it’s probably like sitting in San Diego. It’s perfect weather, they’re loving it, their family is there, they’re prospering finally for the first time in years and then Nephi has a vision and the vision says, “Nephi you’ve got to build a boat and you’re going to leave this amazing land and we’re going to take you somewhere else.”
So Nephi, as he always does, says, “Okay I’m going to do it.” And he starts running, comes back down and starts building a boat and what happens? Immediately his brothers Lamen and Lemuel, they start murmuring again right. That’s all they know how to do. They’re complaining and they’re angry and frustrated with Nephi. And he’s like, “No this is amazing.” They even talked about killing him, they were so frustrated. And they said, “Nephi, you don’t even know how to build a boat. You don’t have any actual skills, you’re not going to be able to do this. The boat’s going to sink, we’re all going to die.” And Nephi said to them,
“I said unto them that they should murmur no more against their father, neither should they withhold their labor from me. For God has commanded me that I should build a ship. And I said unto them if God had commanded me to do all things, I could do them. If he should command to me I should say unto this water, be thou earth, it should be earth. And if I should say it, it would be done. Now if the lord has such great power and has wrought so many mighty miracles among the children of men, how is it he cannot instruct me that I should build a ship?”
“Russell, how is it he cannot instruct you how to launch this documentary? Russell, how is it he cannot instruct you how to get this message out?” That’s the message I heard that morning as I read this. And I felt the spirit so strongly. I was like okay, I’m just going to go forward and do it and the lord will instruct me how to do this mission he’s asked me to go on.
So that’s, you guys, that’s why I’m hoping you guys are catching some of this. I’m hoping you’re feeling it. That’s why these scriptures are so important. How many of you are like, “Where’s God today? Why is he not talking to me? Why is he not helping us?” He is, he wants to. But we have to be willing. And this is the lesson I’m learning over and over and over again.
I come doing this podcast and I’m nervous because I don’t want people thinking that I am perfect in any way, because I am so far from that. I struggle everyday to read the scriptures. It’s a difficult daily process for me, but man every time I do, I feel it. And that’s the key.
So the challenge for me, the reason why I did this whole Book of Mormon challenge, I’m hoping as many of you guys as possible come on with me, but I’m doing it for myself as well, to get me back into the scriptures. I forget these things. I’m going through this process and I felt the spirit that morning, when I’m reading this, or reminding me of when I felt the spirit earlier in my life, and it’s like, the lord is there, if we’ll just open the scriptures and read. If we’ll pray, pray, pray, open the scriptures and read, he’ll answer our prayers.
Alright, so I want to jump into this now. Again, the title of this podcast was The Secret to Getting Your Prayers Answered and How to Know it’s Actually From God. The whole reason why I’ve titled it this and why I’m doing this podcast is because a lot of you guys have been asking me that. “Okay Russell, I’m doing this thing now. How do I know that it’s true?” and I tell people, “You pray about it.” “Okay, I’ve prayed a lot in my life, what then? Is something going to happen? Is an angel going to come to me?”
Probably not, but let me explain to you how it’s worked for me. And I don’t know if this is the same way it works for everybody, but this is the pattern that I’ve learned, and I’ve used it and its helped guide me throughout my life. So I’m going to kind of walk you guys through that.
So with that said, the two questions I want to answer in this podcast. Question number one, if you’re writing these down, how do you get prayers answered? And question number two, how do you know it’s actually from God and not just some voice in your head?
So those are the two questions we’re trying to go for. As I was breaking this down I realized there’s kind of different types of answers we’re looking for. So I broke it into three types of answers and there’s probably more, but these are the three I was able to kind of think through and identify.
So the first one, the first type of answer is a yes, or a no. This is the kind of thing where it’s so important you’re not going to move forward until you get an answer. The second one is inspiration and guidance, try to take you somewhere. And then the third one is comfort.
So I’m going to kind of go through these. The first type of answer is a yes or no. This is the ones where you don’t move until you get an answer. So a good example of this is like marriage. Before I got married to my beautiful wife, Collette, I was not going to just go on this path with my eternal companion without asking Heavenly Father first, “you have the ability to see the future and everything that’s happened forever and what’s going to happen, is the right companion for me? Should I really marry her? I love her, she’s beautiful, I think she’s awesome, but what do you think? You have better vision than me, you can see a lot more than me.”
So we prayed, and it wasn’t just a prayer and the answer came, it was work. I had to pray, my wife had to pray, we prayed separately, we prayed together and we thought through it and it took a while, but we didn’t stop until we got an answer. I was not going to go kneel across the alter and be married for time and all eternity to my beautiful wife, unless Heavenly Father said, “Yes.”
So we did that, we prayed, I’ll also add that we fasted while we prayed. Fasting is where you don’t eat or drink while you’re praying. Usually fast for a day or two or however long you are, but fasting is amazing, fasting will amplify your prayer. So if you really want an answer, I recommend adding fasting with it as well. So that was one example. We prayed and prayed until we got an answer. And only after we got the answer did I make my movement. So that was the first thing.
The next big one, that happened earlier in my life was when I prayed about the Book of Mormon. Is the Book of Mormon true? Is there a God in Heaven? Is Jesus our Savior? Those questions we talked about two episodes ago during the three givens. All those questions I prayed and I was not going to move until I had a yes or a no.
It blows my mind to this day, that some people will leave the church or they’ll forget God without getting an actual answer. I would never move without the answer to something that’s so important. The quote I shared with you guys two episodes ago from Bruce R. McKonkie, talking about the Book of Mormon said, “These are deep, and solemn and ponderous matters, we need not think we can trifle with sacred things and escape the wrath of a just God. Either the Book of Mormon is true or it is false. There is no middle ground.”
So when I was reading that book and I was praying about it, I was like, I am not moving until I get a yes or a no. There’s no middle ground. I can’t be like, oh I’m just going to kind of go down the middle. There’s either a yes or a no and I have to know what it is. And I’m not moving until I get the answer. So those are the yes and no kind of questions. When you pray until you get an answer and those ones usually take more work. It’s usually not just a quick answer and you get it. They take a little bit of time.
That’s number one. Type of answer number two, I called it inspiration or guidance. This is where you’re trying to get inspiration for your life, for what you’re doing, trying to get guidance to make sure you’re doing the right things. There’s a quote I heard on my mission as well, and again I don’t know who said this one so I can’t give it to anybody, but it said, “Pray as if everything depends on the lord, and then work as if everything depends on you.”
This is where most of my answers come from. When I wake up in the morning and I know that I’m going in a direction, I kneel down and I start praying. I pray and ask the lord. I pray as if everything depends on the lord, and I end my prayer, I’m not looking for a yes or a no, I’m looking for inspiration and guidance. Then I go and work as if everything depends on me.
Operation Underground Railroad, I was asked to be part of this thing, so I prayed for inspiration and guidance and I started running. I started running and running and moving forward and then every morning I would pray for guidance. I would pray as if everything depended on the Lord, and I would work as if everything depended on me. I kept moving forward and moving forward and moving forward. And there’s something magic about moving forward.
When you move forward, the lord blesses you. Sometimes it’s not immediately. For me it was the 11th hour. It was literally the morning, getting ready to jump in the car and drive down to present my plan with these people and I didn’t have the plan yet. I’m sitting there praying in the morning. But the lord knew I was moving forward. I was working as if everything depended on me, and then just when I needed it he gave me the inspiration. This is what you should do. You need to make a documentary. This is the person you need to call. I was guided.
This is true in my business, I don’t know about you guys if you own companies or businesses, I get this every single day. I’m trying to make the best decisions possible. I pray every morning, guide me, lead me, make sure I do the right thing so I can serve my audience the best that I possibly can. Then I work as if everything depends on me. I cannot tell you how much guidance I get. Every single day there’s things that come up, there’s ideas, there’s things that just come to my head that aren’t my own idea. They show up, and then I’m able to go and move forward on those things, because I’m praying for inspiration and guidance. And when you pray for it, it appears.
Next on my list here, books. I’ve written two books now, and working on others. But when I’m writing my books, it’s crazy, I’ll be studying and praying and figuring things out and my books having nothing to do with spirituality or church. These are business marketing books, but still I’m looking for inspiration. How can I change somebody’s life with these books? And I’m praying and I’m researching and all the sudden in the middle of stuff, all the sudden these ideas pop up, these patterns show up, things that I didn’t know before come to my head.I’m like, “That is not my idea, I don’t know where it came from, it’s amazing.”
Same thing happens to me when I speak on seminars and stages. Before I get onstage every single time, I pray “Heavenly Father please give me the guidance to inspire these people and know what to do and to say to actually help people to change their lives.” And then I get onstage and start speaking and the most amazing things always happen. I don’t know where they come from half the time because they come out of my head, they come out of my mouth. I’m like, “I’ve never said that before, I don’t know where that came from, but it came. It showed up when I needed it.”
I talked to Tony Robbins about this and Tony said the same thing, “I have an outline of what I’m going to talk about, I get onstage and then it just, something magical happens. Something’s channeled through me, I don’t know what it is.” But I know, and you guys know. It just comes from me, as long as I’m in a place where I’m trying to serve other people, it just shows up. And it’s true.
All my callings in church, on my mission, I saw it over and over and over again. One of my favorite stories of my mission, there were these things called media referrals where somebody will see on TV an ad for the Book of Mormon or a movie called the Lamb of God or something. So I got this call one day on my mission saying, “Hey, this girl requested..” I can’t remember if she requested a bible or what she requested, “if you could deliver it, here’s her address.” So we jumped in the car, drove over, met her, gave her the thing she ordered and asked her if we could teach her a lesson, a missionary discussion.
She said, “Yes.” We came in and taught her the first discussion, told her about Joseph Smith, about the Book of Mormon and we gave her a Book of Mormon, she was so excited to read it and we scheduled the appointment for two days later. We came back two days later and knocked on the door and her mom opened it and she said, “Sorry, she’s not here right now.” And we said, “Where is she?” “She’s actually in jail for a little while.”
We’re like, “Oh, are you serious? She was so excited, we could have helped her, we could have shifted her life. I know that this message, it could have been the thing for her.” She’s like, “Yeah, I’m sorry but feel free to come back, maybe she’ll be out in a couple of weeks.” So we came back a couple of weeks later, she was still gone. Came back a couple weeks later, and then finally after a couple of tries we just kind of gave up.
Fast forward a month or two later, my companion and I were sitting there, and all of our appointments that morning had followed through, it was raining outside and we thought, we have to go out and knock on doors to find someone, and to be completely honest we didn’t really want to go out in the rain and get soaking wet. So we’re sitting there and we’re like, “You know what, let’s pray. Let’s ask Heavenly Father where we should go. Maybe he’s got someone prepared for us today.”
So my companion and I sat in our car, we sat down and folded our arms and prayed, we said, “Heavenly Father, please give us the inspiration we need, please guide us to somebody today who is ready to hear this message.” We ended the prayer and sat there for a few minutes and I was like, “You know what, I don’t remember that girl’s name, but we visited her a couple of months ago and she’s the one who went to jail.” My companion looked at me and he’s like, “Are you kidding me?” I’m like, “What?” and he’s like, “I honestly was thinking of the exact same person right now.” I’m like, “Are you serious?”
That person, her face or whatever came to both of our minds at the exact same time, and we got so excited, so we jump in the car, we were trying to find her house, race over to her house, go knock on the door. The door opens and her mom comes out again and we’re like, “how’s it going? Is so and so here.” And she’s like, “No you guys, I told you. She’s in Jail.” And we’re like, oh I guess we weren’t paying attention or maybe…
We were kind of frustrated and were about to turn away and walk away, and then the mom, her name was Monica, she said, “I have a quick question. You guys keep coming by, how do you know her. What are you visiting for?”and we said, “We’re from the Mormon Church and she had called before and we had given her the Book of Mormon.” She said, “Oh I’ve seen it here. The Book of Mormon is here by her bed. What is that? I’m just curious what it is you guys do, what you talk about?” and we’re like, “Do you have a few minutes and we’ll tell you?” She’s like, “Sure, come on in.” we were like, really?
So we came in and we had a chance to teach her the first discussion. Told her about the Book of Mormon, about Joseph Smith and Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ coming to him and setting up this church and all the amazing stuff I’ve been sharing with you guys on this podcast and Monica felt it. She felt the spirit and she said, “Please come back.”
We came back a day or two later and talked about Jesus Christ and his sacrifice for her and how he had died to save her from her sins, and how she could repent for her sins, and we told her about that and she was so excited. And we came back and taught the third discussion, the fourth and all the way on and she ended up getting baptized. It was one of the most amazing experiences.
And what’s cool is fast forward to the time I got home from my mission, I actually got an email from Monica’s daughter after she got out of jail. She said, “Hey, I got out of jail and my mom got baptized, as you know, and now I’m going to church with her.” It was just such a cool thing. I remember thinking how special it was to know that our Heavenly Father knew that Monica was prepared, knew exactly where she was at. And as soon as I was willing to pray, as if everything depended on the lord, then he opened it to me. And showed us exactly where and how to find her.
The same thing is true inside of our families. Pray as if everything depends on the lord and then work as if everything depends on you.
The third type of answer we’re looking for, the first one again was yes and no questions. Number two was inspiration and guidance and number three is comfort. I’ve used this so many times in my life. Someone who’s struggled, who needs comfort right now, I testify to you that the Lord will comfort you through prayer. This is the way he answers our prayers.
I know my girlfriend got married on my mission, as funny as it is now looking back on it, prayer is what gave me comfort. I have a handicapped sister who is two years older than me, and when my handicapped sister, Stacy passed away, I didn’t know how to take that. It was hard, it was scary, it was all those things wrapped into one and prayer is what comforted me. There’s trials in our family and society, things that happen all the time and prayer is how we get comfort.
So those are the three types of answers. We have our yes and no’s, we have our inspiration and guidance, and we have comfort. That’s usually where we’re, at least for me personally, where I’m looking for how to get my prayers answered.
Alright, so I’m going to dive back into this. There’s two questions, number one is how to get your prayers answered, and number two is how do you know the answer is coming from Heavenly Father, not something you just made up in your head?
So question number one I broke down into a couple of steps. So step number one to how to get your prayer answered. Step number one is you have to sanctify yourself. What does that mean? There is a scripture in Joshua 3:5 it’s one of my favorite scriptures. It’s really simple, really easy, but it was a turning point for me. In Joshua 3:5 Joshua is actually meeting with his people and they’re about to go in and try to recapture, repossess their promised land, which is obviously a scary thing. There’s armies and wars and this crazy that they have to do.
So in Joshua 3:5 it says, “And Joshua said to his people, sanctify yourselves, for tomorrow the Lord will do wonders among you.” So what does that mean to sanctify yourself?
Sanctify means to clean yourself, be prepared, be clean, the Lord wants to do wonders among you, but you have to be clean first. If you are out there breaking all the commandments and doing all sorts of horrible, evil things, the Lord’s not going to come to you, he’s not going to answer your prayers. You need to be clean if you want answers from God, you want his spirit to visit you, you have to clean yourself, you have to sanctify yourselves.
So how do you do that? You do that through a process we call repentance. Repentance is basically asking our Heavenly Father to figure you. Maybe we’ll do a whole episode on repentance because it’s important and there’s a lot that goes into it. But it’s basically, repentance is as simple as stopping what you’re doing, turning your heart to God and asking him for forgiveness. That’s what repentance is.
On my mission it was interesting, I told you guys before, I went in the mission field and I was praying and asking, “Is the Book of Mormon true?” and what’s funny is I asked that question over and over and over again for months and I never got my yes or my no. I was asking, I was praying, I was moving forward, but I never got my yes or my no and I was always stressed out.
Then I remember one day getting the answer, and it wasn’t the answer that I thought. I was looking for a yes or a no, but the answer I got was not that I needed a yes or no, the answer I got was that I needed to be clean. I needed to sanctify myself. I’m like, what? I’m on a mission. If you know anything about the Mormon church, going on a mission is not simple. You have to be clean, you have to prepare yourself, there’s all these things you don’t do before you go on your mission to be ready.
But as I heard that I started thinking, what have I not cleaned up in my life? What have I not repented of? I’ve stopped doing a lot of bad things that I was doing. I mean nothing grievous or super evil, but what did I not repent from? What have I not asked forgiveness of? And I started thinking back and I was remembering, oh my gosh, there’s a lot of things that I’ve done that I never asked for forgiveness.
So I started praying and asking Heavenly Father for forgiveness. And after I asked for forgiveness, that’s when the answers came. So for you guys, it’s important to understand, you have to be clean, you have to repent first. There’s a talk by Elder Jeffery R. Holland that he gave, and he’s one of my favorite apostles, he’s an amazing person. In this talk he was talking about people like us, who are trying to do things, trying to have the lord help us with whatever it is, answers to questions, to help change the world, whatever it is we’re trying to do inside of our sphere of influence.
And he was talking to us, he said, “Brethren, if you are struggling with self control, I ask you to pray to your Father in Heaven for help. Pray to him as Enos did, who wrestled before God and struggled mightily in the spirit. Wrestle like Jacob did with an angel, refusing to let go until a blessing had come. Talk to you mom, your dad, your bishop, get the best help you can from all the good people who surround you. Avoid at all costs others who tempt you, weaken your will or perpetuate the problem. If anyone does not feel worthy tonight, he can become worthy through repentance and the atonement of the Lord Jesus Christ. The Savior wept and bled and died for you. He has given everything for your happiness and salvation, he is certainly not going to withhold help from you now.”
When I hear that I just start thinking, okay I need to get away from the people that are distracting me, I need to get clean. I don’t know how to explain it more than that. We’ve got to become clean.
Sometimes we think, there’s no way that based on all the stuff I’ve done in the past, I’ve done so many bad things and there’s no way that I could be forgiven. I get that. It’s one of Satan’s great lies that he tells us, that what you’ve done is too bad. The lord’s not going to come to you. He’s not going to forgive you. He’s not going to help you. And I think this last line is so powerful.
“The Savior wept and bled and died for you. He has given everything for your happiness and salvation, he’s certainly not going to withhold help from you now.”
One of my favorite phrases that I ever heard that actually came from the Savior’s lips, it was before the crucifixion and he was outside of Jerusalem looking at the entire city, looking at this people, the people who were eventually going to crucify and kill him, and in Matthew Chapter 23 he said this, “Oh Jerusalem, Jerusalem thou that killest the prophets and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not.”
And then fast forward, this is when it comes back to the two different witnesses, so fast forward, not even that far in the future, but across the world on the other side of the world, after Christ was crucified, then he came to the people here on the American continents and what’s cool, in the Book of Mormon, in 3 Nephi 10:6, the Lord actually came to the people in America, I talked about that earlier, it was one of the most amazing things. But when he came here he said almost the same thing to the people in America.
He said, “Oh ye house of Israel whom I have spared, “
So these people here in America, they were part of the house of Israel that he had taken away from Jerusalem and he spared them over here in America.
He said, “how oft will I gather you as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, if ye will repent and return unto me with full purpose of heart.”
I hear those scriptures twice now, I think of a hen and chickens, and I don’t live on a farm, but I’ve been to a farm once or twice, and you look around and there’s these chickens running around and a hen gathers them together and the chickens run away, and they gather them together and they run away, and it keeps happening over and over and over again.
And how many times do we look like those little hens, those little chickens who are running around and messing up and messing up and messing up. And the lord is like the hen saying, “Come back. Come back.” It’s Satan who’s telling you it’s too late to come back. You can, no matter where you are, and no matter what you’ve done wrong, you can come back.
Literally, he’s looking at his people who are about to crucify and kill him and he says, “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how often would I have gathered thy children together even as a hen gathers her chickens under my wings and you would not.” He will continue to forgive us over and over again.
So that’s the key. So I’m going to kind of repeat this. Step number one is you’ve got to repent. You’ve got to sanctify yourself. The lord is going to do wonders. He’s going to answer your prayers, he’s going to lead you and guide you and help you know exactly what to do. He is going to answer your prayers and when he does that, your life is going to change, and when your life changes, you have the ability to change other people’s lives. That is the marvelous work and wonder that the lord wants for you.
So if you were going to go on this journey and change yourself and change other people and if you want those blessings, you have to do what Joshua said, you have to sanctify yourself because tomorrow the Lord wants to do wonders among you.
That’s number one, step number two, after you’ve cleaned yourself, you’ve repented and you’ve tried your best to do what’s right, and again, we’re never going to be perfect. But you’ve done your best to repent and try to make those shifts in your life, the second step is you’ve got to study it out. Now this is a really cool scripture that helped me to really understand that, a lot of times I would go and say a prayer, “Hey I have a question.” I’d pray and nothing would happen.
I’m like, huh. Maybe the lord doesn’t know, maybe he doesn’t care, maybe he’s not even there, or whaever. And I had all these thing, I’m sure all of us have had those same feelings sometimes. Oliver Cowdery was a guy who was helping Joseph Smith to translate the Book of Mormon. Joseph Smith was translating and Oliver Cowdery was writing it down by hand on this paper.
In Doctrine and Covenants section 9, there’s some verses where the Lord’s talking to Oliver Cowdery and he says something that when you read this and you hear this, it will make your mind open like, “Oh, that’s how I receive answers to my prayers.” So this is what he told Oliver Cowdery, he said,
“Behold ye have not understood, ye have supposed that I would give it unto you when you took no thoughts, save it was to ask me. But behold I say unto you that you must study it out in your mind, then you must ask me if it be right. And if it is right I will cause that your bosom shall burn within you, therefore you shall feel that it is right. But if it not be right, you shall have no such feelings, but you shall have the stupor of thought that shall cause you to forget the thing which is wrong.”
I want to kind of emphasize a couple of things, at the very beginning it says, “You took no thought, save it was to ask me.” So, all you did was just asked me. If you go to a teacher like, “Hey, what’s the answer to the question.” The teacher’s going to be like, “I’m not going to tell you. How are you supposed to learn and grow if I just give you the answer?” So the Lord tells Oliver Cowdery here, you took no thought, save it was to ask me. You have to do more than just ask me.
He says, “Behold, I say unto you, you must study it out in your mind.” You gotta study it, you gotta figure it out first. Study it out in your minds, “And then you must ask me if it is right. And if it is right, then you shall feel that it is right.” You will feel the spirit. The spirit will tell you that it is right. But first you have to study it out in your mind. And then if it be not right, then you should have no such feeling.
So that’s how it works. We can’t just go ask him, we have to do the work first. We have to study it out in our minds, figure out the answer and then pray about it, and when we do, we’ll feel if it’s right. Or we will have no such feeling.
So before I got an answer to my question of if the Book of Mormon is true, I had to actually read the Book of Mormon. I had to read it, study in my mind, I had to think is this logical, does it make any sense? And then I got an answer to my prayer. Before I was going to marry Collette, I didn’t just say, “Oh she’s cute. Let me pray. Should I marry her?” I had to study it out. I had to go on dates with her and figure it out and ask her questions and we had to figure out if we were a right fit. I had to think about it and pray about it, I had to fast about it. Allthese things I had to do and then I got an answer to my prayer.
Before we moved to this home I was like freaking out. If I move to this home, is this going to be a good place for my kids, is it going to be bad. I don’t know if it’s going to be good. So before we made the decision we prayed about it, we studied it out. We looked at the school systems here, we figured things out and studied in our minds and prayed and then if the answer is true, we’ll feel if it is right.
Now one thing about this, this is especially true with yes or no questions. We don’t come to the Lord, “is the answer yes or no.” because he has to have us feel something and we’re like, wait was that for the yes or the no? We gotta figure out, I think this is the right way. Then we say, “Heavenly Father, I feel like the Book of Mormon is true. I read this thing, I studied it, I feel really good about it. Is the Book of Mormon true?” Boom, you’ll feel it.
“Heavenly Father, I met this girl, I’ve been dating her. I fasted, I pray with her, I’ve done everything I can. I know about her, I met her family. I feel like she’s the right one. I think I should marry her. Heavenly Father, should I marry Collette?” Boom, I got my answer.
So don’t do what most people do and take no thought, save it was to ask me. Do what you’re supposed to do. Study it out in your minds, and then after you’ve studied it out in your mind, then ask him if it is right. And if it is right, then you shall feel that it is right. The spirit will tell you, you’ll feel it. If it’s not right, you will not feel the spirit.
Is this making sense? So that’s step number two. Step number one was sanctify yourself, step number two is to study it out, and step number three now, you have to listen, and recognize, and follow the voice of the spirit. And this is where we transition to the second big question now. How do I actually know that this voice is from God, it’s not just something in my head that I’m just making up?
I don’t know about you, but that was my biggest concern all through high school. I would pray for something and I’d have an inspiration and I’m like, “Wait, was that from me? Did I just think that? Or was that from God? Or was that just something I thought from a movie I saw? Or was that evil?...” and I didn’t know. How many of you guys have felt that before? It’s scary. What if I have inspiration and it’s from somewhere that’s wrong or evil? I don’t know. How do I know what the spirit actually is?
For you guys, one of the biggest things is, and I’m going to share with you guys a really powerful tool that I’ve learned. The biggest thing, you need to start recognizing. I remember I had some really good teachers when I was younger and I would be in class with them and they would teach something where the spirit would be there and they would feel it. And they would ask us, “Hey do you feel that.” We’d be like, “Yeah I do.” “That right there, that’s the spirit.”
I remember on my mission we knocked on a lady’s door and we came in and started teaching her about the scriptures, we showed her the Book of Mormon and read about it, and then I remember showing her the picture of Joseph Smith in the First Vision. I remember I told the story of the first vision and I felt the spirit so strong as I told that story. And I looked at her and I could tell that she felt it. I said, “Did you feel that?” and she had tears in her eyes, she said, “Yeah.” I said, “That’s the spirit telling you it’s true.”
If you listen to my other podcasts, I encourage you if you haven’t or if you have, go back and maybe listen to them again, and as you listen to them, notice what you feel. If you don’t feel it with me, then go read the Book of Mormon, or go read the Bible, or go…a big key for us, one of the things we have to learn is we have to learn to feel and then recognize that spirit. So you’re putting yourself in spiritual situations, you’re going to church, learning about Christ, doing things that are good. Notice how you feel.
Because as soon as you start recognizing, “oh that’s what the spirit feels like. Oh wow, that’s what it is.” Then you can start becoming, it becomes a lot easier. As soon as I realized, and it was sometime through high school, towards the end of my junior or senior year, were the first couple of times I felt the spirit. And what was neat is that, fast forward on my mission when I started praying and I asked if the Book of Mormon was true, and I felt this thing I was like, “That’s the feeling, there it is. That’s the spirit.”
So that’s the thing that’s going to take, and I don’t’ know how to explain it other than you feel something. It’s like, for me, it’s weird when I feel it, because I’ll be reading the scriptures or something that’s not, I don’t know. Sometimes when you go to the movies or something and you see this big amazing thing and you feel like an adrenaline rush, it’s almost like I’m in a situation where there should be no adrenaline rush and all the sudden I get this adrenaline rush. I don’t know, it’s hard to explain and it’s going to be different for everyone. So as you feel it, I want you to start recognizing it, because that’s how you’re going to, the more clear you understand what the feeling is, the better you’re going to be able to recognize it as you’re moving forward on things.
Again, the question, how do you know it’s actually coming from God and not just in your head? The best explanation I’ve ever heard about this, ever, is from a book called Following the Light of Christ into His Presence by John Pontius. I was actually listening to the audiobook of this probably almost a year ago now, and I was listening to it and as I got into it, there was this one section that he called, The Voices. It had such a huge, profound impact on me. In fact, so much so that I’m not even going to try to teach this to you, I’m just going to read this from the book, because it was so powerful.
So I’ll kind of set this up. He basically said that there are three voices inside of our mind. So when you’re hearing stuff inside your head, thoughts and things like that, there’s three voices. We start learning how to distinguish which voice is which, man it makes things so much easier.
So the three voices, I’ll kind of give you what they are ahead of time. Number one is your mind, this is your brain, this is the conversations you’re having inside your head. Number two is Satan’s temptations, this is Satan, this is the adversary, this is the person who hates us, who’s trying to destroy us. Now as I read this, there’s some things that will make sense for Mormons, for those who aren’t Mormon, I’ll give a little preface just so you understand what this means.
I think the next podcast episodes I’m going to do, I think the next three I’m going to talk about the three main questions, where do we come from, why are we here, and where are we going? But so the next episode, if that’s where I’m going with where do we come from, I’ll talk more about this. But as you know, we believe we came, we lived with our Heavenly Father ahead of time, and if you read in the Book of Revelation it talked about Satan was there, there was a big war in heaven and he left with a third of the stars, so we believe that a third of the hosts of heaven, a third of Heavenly Father’s children came to earth here, with Satan and they are basically, they work for Satan, tempting us.
So as we get to Satan’s voice, the voice of the adversary, it’s Satan or the people that are here, his minions that are tempting us and trying us at the same time. There’s that voice of Satan that’s there all the time. Then the third is the voice of the spirit.
So these are the only three voices that are happening inside of our head. So when you start understanding what they sound like, now you can start becoming very clear like, “Oh, this is what that meant. This is what I should be doing.” So I’m going to read these sections. So again, the book is called Following the Light of Christ into His Presence by John Pontius.
“There are three main sources of voices in a healthy mind, the first is the voice of your own mind. You hear yourself think, you talk with yourself, you discuss things with yourself, you argue with yourself, berate, praise, and jabber with yourself all day long. This voice is distinguishable because it is unsure, or in other words, it questions things. It’s seldom definite or decisive. It almost always asks questions. ‘What is that? Who is that? Why did you say that? What does that mean? Do you suppose? What would happen if? I wonder…’ Even when it is empathetic it leaves open the possibility of change. ‘I’m definitely going to bed now, okay? I’m going to go to town if the car will start.’
“You’ll notice that this voice usually takes the personal case. ‘I think I should fast today.’ The Holy Spirit would have said, ‘Fast today.” Okay so that’s the first voice, that’s your mind. Your mind is the one always asking questions. So remember that.
“The second voice comes from Satan’s realms. It is unlikely that we receive much personal attention from the king of kingdoms personally, rather we deal with his minions, his messengers, and his tempters. These beings have been in the business of tempting mankind for as long as the earth has existed, perhaps even longer. They are undoubtedly very skilled and highly motivated. Each has probably tempted thousands of people just like us, they have spent thousands of years in intimate contact with mortals. They have much more experience with tempting mortals to sin than we could possibly ever have in resisting it.
“They know the subtleties and the tricks necessary to entice and trick us into failing. The undoubtedly specialize in their works, meaning that there are certain men that specialize in anger, marital infidelity, family disharmony, murder, drugs, illness, depression, hate, or a million of other maladies, sins and vices. Once successful, they linger with year after year with those that they afflict. When we hear the voice from this source it will be cleverly disguised and enticing. It will appeal to the natural carnal, central, and devilish side of us. There are real intelligences in the message and malice of forethought. They plan and plot against us, and their messages are carefully chosen.
“A prompting from this source will nearly always be stated as an absolute. ‘Don’t let them get away with that. You’re too tired to pray. You deserve better. Pay them back. No one will ever notice. It should be yours anyway. Just take it. She’s your wife, not your mother. Football only happens once per year, church can get along without you for one Sunday. She wants you. It’s only natural. He loves you more than your husband, how can you not love him back.’
“These promptings will always lead us away from the truth. They prompt us to disobey, to not pray, to abandon church assignments and family responsibilities to commit sin and walk in forbidden paths. They have destroyed millions of souls and you’re simply the next on their list. They are confident, efficient and successful and they hate us with unimaginable intensity. From their perspectives they are engaged in an all out war against us. Our perspective barely even includes a realization that they exist. It’s no wonder that they win so frequently.
“One of their weaknesses is that they can rarely voice just one lie. While the Holy Spirit generally prompts us just once, the tempter often voices many objections to each prompting. The Holy Spirit may prompt us to call everyone to family prayer. Thereafter the evil suggests many reasons why you should not obey. ‘Everyone’s tired; they’re just going to complain. You don’t feel like it. The wife is already in bed, it’s late, and it’s useless. You can do it tomorrow.’ This is actually one of the ways we may discern the voices. The Holy Spirit whispers the truth, and thereafter the opposition tirades against it.”
Okay there’s number two, which are Satan’s temptation. This one’s interesting to me the more I think about it, because when I first was listening to this as an audiobook, I started thinking, we always talk about how everyone’s got their pet sins, or their things that they fall back on. And I honestly believe that when we’re born, Satan’s got these people tempting us to do all sorts of things, and when we find out, “the thing I struggle with is pornography.” Or “My struggle is Lying or cheating or stealing.” They figure out what our things are and then we literally have someone assigned to us that’s trying to tempt us. They know, “That’s what Russell falls for every single time.” They’re coming back and they’ll keep tempting us with that thing over and over and over again.
Alright, so there’s number two. Now number three…So number one was your mind, number two is Satan’s temptations, and number three is the Spirit. It says,
“The third source of information in our minds is the voice of the Lord through the Holy Spirit. This voice always entices us to do good. To believe, to serve, to pray, and to repent. It often prompts contrary to where you were headed. If you were just settling into the super bowl on Sunday morning, it would tell you to go to church. If you were already on your way to church, it would prompt nothing but would give us the feelings of comfort and satisfaction. The voice of the conscious is easy to recognize because it is the only one of the three that prompts us to do good.
“These promptings come as an absolute statement. The Holy Spirit would say, ‘Fast today.’ Your mind would have said, ‘I wonder if I should fast today? Or perhaps I should fast.’ Any time you have a prompting to do good it has come from God.”
So the mind has questions, it’s trying to question things. Satan is typically telling you either to do bad or it’s bombarding you with a whole bunch of things, and the spirit prompts you to do something once. As I was reading this, it was interesting. The spirit will tell you to do something. Like the spirit will say, “Hey you should fast today.” And then instantly Satan’s going to come tempt you and be like, “You shouldn’t fast today, you’re hungry. Instead you should go do whatever.” It will like bombard you with five or six different things to try to fight against that.
And then your mind’s like, “That’s true, I shouldn’t fast. What if I did this today….” And it starts questioning it. So if you look at that, almost every situation you’re going to be hit by all three of those things. The spirit’s going to come and say, “Go to church.” Or it’s going to say, “Read the Book of Mormon.” So you hear that spirit says, “Read the Book of Mormon.” It’s precise, it tells you to do something. It’s a still, small voice and it usually says something once and it stops.
Then instantly Satan comes in with his temptations and doesn’t say something once, he usually comes in and like, “No, don’t read the Book of Mormon. You don’t even have a copy and it’s going to take a long time and it sounds like scripture and it’s going to be a lot of work. You’re catholic anyway, you already have a scripture.” All these things, it won’t just be one, it’ll be one, two, three, four, five.
And your mind will be like, “That’s a good point. What about this?” and your mind will start questioning it, and that’s how you’ll know. So the voice we listen to is the still, small voice. The command that’s leading us towards good. There’s one more paragraph I want you to read because he kind of bundles these all together. He said,
“We have been talking a lot about promptings, perhaps even the term needs clarification. A prompting is information that originates outside of one’s mind. The Holy Spirit prompts to do good, the Devil prompts to do evil. Our mind’s consider and analyze the promptings and make decisions concerning them. These promptings all appear and sound exactly like our own thoughts. The only way to differentiate between them is the way we have already discussed. Good comes from God, evil comes from the adversary, questions and analysis comes from within. It really is just that simple.”
So I don’t know about you guys, but when I heard that, it just made so much sense. It made things so clear. All the sudden I was like, okay. I just need to pay more attention. When something comes to me, I’m listening. Was it a still, small voice that just told me to do something once? And what happened afterwards? This isn’t just church stuff. Every single day when I’m doing my work, what I do for my business, I’m going in there, I’m listening for voices.
Usually it will be like, “Hey you should do this.” Something that’s leading towards good and instantly Satan comes in and is like, “Oh, you could do this.” And just shortcuts to the ways that aren’t serving my audience the highest will immediately come in. And my brain’s trying to figure out, what was the first thing?
It’s interesting, I read a book a little while ago called Blink by Malcolm Gladwell, he’s one of my favorite authors. But in Blink, the subtitle of the book is The Power of Thinking Without Thinking. And it’s interesting, the premise of the entire book is like if you look at the majority of decisions, most people their instinct, their initial reaction is truth. And then they come back and try to rationalize it, and figure things out, and most of the time when they do that, they actually end up with the wrong answer.
They said that the blink the decision, the immediate thing that you hit with initially is typically the right answer. And as I was reading that, listening to that, I was like, I think that that’s the spirit. I think what happens, we have a situation and instantly the spirit comes and tells us what to do with a still, small voice and then the borage of tempters come into us and start fighting things and we try to analyze things and half the time we end up on the wrong path. But if we listen to the blink instinct, the first thing, that’s almost always the truth. It’s interesting.
I just thought it was kind of an interesting tie in as I read that book and thinking about this. And I don’t know how these things correlate, and obviously Blink wasn’t written through a spiritual eye, but as I read that I was thinking about this, it became very, very interesting to me.
So for me, as I pray for guidance every day in my business, I’m always trying to listen to the voice of the spirit. It’s happening in business, happening in my family, it’s happening as I’m praying and moving forward on things.
Alright, so the last step in this process, step number four. Step number one if we come back here, was to sanctify yourself, step number two was to study it out, step number three is to listen and recognize the voice of the spirit, step number four is to follow the voice of the spirit. After we hear, then we must do. Movement is essential. I think a lot of times the Lord gives us little things. He tests us, tries us, gives us little things to see if we’re going to be good stewards of what he gives us. And when you do little things, he gives you more. And when you do more, he gives you more. And when you don’t pay attention, you fall back. It’s interesting.
So movement is essential. It’s important when you know the truth that you act on it. In times of my life where I follow promptings from the spirit and I move forward I get more of them. Times in my life where I ignore, or I fight against them, or follow Satan instead, I’ve noticed the voice gets quieter and quieter and I hear it less often.
So I want to kind of end this back in Joshua, back in the Old Testament because if you read the entire Joshua chapter three, the story keeps on getting good. So Joshua 3:5 is the verse I shared earlier where it said, “And Joshua said to his people, sanctify yourselves, for tomorrow the Lord will do wonders among you.”
Then you fast forward, the nice thing about history is we have a chance to actually see what happens. So the people didn’t sanctify themselves, and then the Lord said unto Joshua, if you go down to verse 7. “The Lord said unto Joshua, this day will I begin to magnify thee, inside of all of Israel that they may know, as I was with Moses, so I will be with you.” So you remember Moses took the children of Israel out and came to the Red Sea, parted the Red Sea and everyone moved through it. So then he told Joshua, I’m going to let all of Israel see that you are just like Moses.
And he said, “And thou shalt command the priest that bared the arc of the covenant saying that when ye come to the brink of the water in Jordan, ye shall stand still in Jordan.” So coming to Jordan, which is this huge body of water, they’re coming down to it and then in verse 15 he tells these guys, “you’re going to need to come down and we’re going to cross this water.” And I’m sure the people, you know, you’r ecoming down to the water, you’re like, “There’s water there. There’s not a bridge.” It’s not like Moses where everything had been parted. It was like go.
If you keep reading down, 15 says, “and as they that bare the arc were come unto Jordan and the feet of the priest that bare the arc were dipped in the brim of the water.” So their feet actually, they didn’t stand on the side and wait there, wait for a miracle. Like Joshua said, “We gotta go, we’re going across the water, so let’s go.” So it said, they walked down and the brim of their feet were actually in the water. It says in verse 17, “and the priest that bare the arc of the covenant of the Lord stood firm on dry ground in the midst of Jordan and all the Israelites passed over on dry ground, until all the people were passed clean over Jordan.”
So they walked down to the water, they had to move and then they stepped in the water, and as soon as their feet hit the water, then it parted and they were on dry ground and able to walk through it. They didn’t walk and wait, “Okay, we’re waiting Lord. We’re waiting.” They said, “Alright, he told us to cross this water, go.” And they started going, and as soon as they did, as soon as their foot hit the water, boom, it parted underneath them.
That’s the kind of movement we have to have. We have to follow the voice of the spirit, we have to get good at listening and then acting. Listening and then acting, that’s the key you guys. That’s how we get answers to our prayers. And if we listen to the little prayers and act on them, then the Lord will bless us with bigger things. If we follow the bigger things, then he gives us more. But it’s essential that we listen and we act.
So that covers the core things I wanted to share on this episode, you guys. So right now what I wanted to do was I wanted to testify to you guys that the Lord does answer prayers. If he’s never answered your prayer in the past, he will. I promise you that. He’s answered my prayers over and over and over again. There have been times in my life where I haven’t received answers and sometimes it scares me, but it’s also helped me to realize that maybe it’s because I need to cleanup myself first. Maybe the answer right now is no. Maybe whatever it is, but if we pray and we have faith and keep moving forward, the answers will come. I promise you that.
Now I want to kind of recap everything really quick. So once again, step number one, sanctify yourself, for tomorrow the Lord will do wonders among you. Number two, study it out in your mind, “For behold, I say unto you that you must study it out in your mind and then you must ask me if it be right. And if it be right, ye shall feel that it is right. But if it be not right, ye shall have no such feeling. Ye shall have a stupor of thoughts which will cause you to forget the thing which was wrong.” Sanctify yourselves, study it out in your mind.
Number three, listen for the voice of the spirit. The voice always entices us to do good, to believe, to serve, to pray and repent. It’s promptings always come as absolute statements. Number four when you hear the voice then you have to move. Turn off all the other voices and just run. I testify to you guys that when you do these steps, the Lord will answer your prayers.
You can and should be using this process every single day, when you need inspiration or guidance, when you need comfort, when you need answers. If you are here with me on this podcast, then one of the biggest questions I want you be answering and asking yourself every single day is this, is the Book of Mormon true? That’s the Book of Mormon challenge you guys, is it true.
I want you guys to find that out, because when you find that out there’s so much more I can share with you. There’s this whole world of possibility and things that when you know the Book of Mormon is true, you’ll know they’re true as well. And I want you guys to understand that. So it is now time for you officially to find out. I challenge you to do that. If you don’t have the Book of Mormon yet, go to bookofmormonchallenge.com and get a free one there, and start reading it. Or we’re still working on the app, we’re going to have reading lessons and plans and stuff like that to help you guys get through it. But now is the time, go to bookofmormonchallenge.com and get a copy of the book and then you gotta read it.
Like I said, the steps are simple, sanctify yourself, clean yourself, repent, make sure you are right with God. Number two, read it, study it in your mind, understand it, figure out if you think it’s true. And then pray about it, number three, that is where you start listening for the voice, listening for the spirit. Start paying attention so you can recognize the voice, recognize the spirit. Then number four is when you do hear the voice of the spirit, then you gotta move, then you gotta act. When you do that the Lord’s going to bless you.
I promise you that, I cannot wait for you guys to have that experience, now is the time, go to bookofmormonchallenge.com, thank you again so much. This is Russell Brunson and I’ll see you on the next episode.