Doctrine and Covenants 7:7-8

Behold, you have not understood; you have supposed that I would give it unto you, when you took no thought 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.

These are wise words for our day and age where there is so much information to sort through. We can't assume God will tell us everything we need to know.

However, if you remember Paul's words in 2nd Timothy 3:7, he says we will be "ever learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth."

We all know what that feels like. I fear too many of us have stopped the "study" part and are just relying on our feelings which are not necessarily the Spirit talking to us.

In today's world we may use Moroni 10:5 "And by the power of the holy ghost he may know the truth of all things" as a guide in spiritual matters but not in matters of secular knowledge. The great division among American LDS members in political matters is evidence of that.

Perhaps we neglect the simple fact that our past experiences have conditioned us to respond to new information in ways we often don't even recognize. Because we usually respond first on a feeling level, we can confuse our feelings with the Spirit.  A gut level response is not the same as the Spirit speaking.

And so the quest for truth is difficult and what the Lord says here in this section is important.

"Don't come asking me until you've done your homework. Study, research, look for original trusted sources, find out everything you can. Then I will confirm or discount your answer. But you need to be an educated person who does the work. How else will you become like me?"

Doctrine and Covenants 6:23

Did I not speak peace to your mind concerning the matter? What greater witness can you have than from God?

I am particularly fond of this verse because it talks about the mind. sometimes we feel peace in our hearts because it is our feelings that are hurting.

But for me, I have lived with conflicts in my mind and I have struggled to find peace.

I used to say that the problem was that I have an analytical mind. But that is not a problem. it's good to hear information and have a mind that like a computer sorts through that information and tells me when the pieces don't fit together

I have come to realize that I am inspired; that is, I feel the spirit through my intellect. My patriarchal blessing is a great encouragement to me.

• The Lord has blessed you with a good mind and body and it is expected that you will use your faculties and abilities to the furthering of His work.

• You have a desire to help your fellow men in intellectual ways

• I commend you for your studies. . . and pray that our Father in heaven will bless and sustain you in these; that they might be productive, that they might give satisfaction to you, and that you might be an instrument in the hands of our heavenly father in doing much good through these intellectual matters.

• I encourage you in your studies. You will be able to pursue them in a more fruitful and encouraging atmosphere and under more ideal conditions.

• You will excel in your teaching qualities. You Will be an effective teacher and an instrument in the hands of the Lord in bringing a knowledge of the Gospel to many.

• There will be other ways in which you will be able to promote the principles of peace and love which are found in the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

That's me. That's how the spirit talks to me. I can jump into reading materials - be it scripture or commentary - and I will be conflicted if the material is not true to my inner knowing that God loves us and is 100% on our side, wanting us to be successful.  To me, that is what the principles and peace and love represent.

I am grateful for Terryl and Fiona Givens whose writings have given me the inspiration to trust and follow my own feelings and to believe that I can have an impact in teaching Gospel truths. And that means that it's okay to call out anything I see as untruth - especially regarding the nature of God and our purpose here on the earth as His children.

It's funny that I used to feel like an oddball for challenging the thinking and ideas of others. It's hard to go against the crowd - especially when that crowd is your "LDS family".  But I'm okay seeing things differently because I know in my heart that I love the Lord and that my search for answers has always come from an honest heart. I love the Gospel as I have come to understand it. I sometimes wish I could have a forum to speak because I have so much to say about this wonderful story of who God is and who we who inhabit this earth truly are.

Doctrine and Covenants 6:7

Seek not for riches but for wisdom and behold, the mysteries of God shall be unfolded unto you, and then shall you be made rich, behold he that has eternal life is rich.

This verse is a reminder to not spend your energy and your time on things that don't matter. 

However - wisdom is the sum of the experiences we have had plus what we learned from them. And much of what we learn in life is learned from mistakes. We don't usually attribute wisdom to to a young person. Rather, we think of the elderly and look to them for that wisdom that comes from a lifetime of experience and learning and from the perspective of age.

I also have wondered about phrases like the "mysteries of God".  It hints of some secret society and only the insiders get to know the "mysteries".  

I like to look up words in an app that's called Etymonline. It looks at the etymology of a word - it's origins.  When I looked up the word "mystery",  it says mystery or "misterie" was used early in the theological sense to just mean a religious truth via divine revelation.

That makes sense, doesn't it? And it is consonant with the idea of gaining wisdom.  If life is really designed as an education that is preparing us to be more like our Heavenly Parents, then you would expect that the lessons we learn along the way will be "truths" that will help us to grow wiser and to be more like Them.

Truth is not a mystery as in either incomprehensible or mysterious. Truth comes when we become seekers of it and we value those things we learn because they bring such peace to our lives. We feel whole or complete and that is what this verse describes as "rich".

Once again, definitions mean everything.

We don’t receive wisdom; we must discover it for 

ourselves after a journey that no one can take for us or spare us. 

Marcel Proust

Good judgment comes from experience, 

and a lot of that comes from bad judgment. 

Will Rogers