My new daughter-in-law, Sarah, was baptized on 28 December 2010, and I was asked to speak on the gift of the Holy Ghost. Here’s the talk I gave:
To understand the role of the Holy Ghost, it is first necessary to understand something about ourselves. Each of us is made up of two parts, our spirit and our body.
The relationship between these two parts becomes clearer if you imagine a hand to be your spirit and a glove to be your body. When we are born, our spirit, which is eternal, enters our body, like putting on a glove. Just as a glove responds to and conforms to the desires and movements of the hand inside it, our body responds to and obeys our spirit. At death, our spirit leave our body, like removing a hand from a glove. The hand, like our spirit, is still alive and able to move, but the glove, like our body, is no longer animated and lies unmoving and lifeless.
At the time of the resurrection, our body will be reconstituted in a perfected state and our spirit will enter back into it, never to be separated again.
During our earth life, with our spirit inside our body, we communicate through our senses: hearing, smell, touch, taste, and sight, and by speech and movement. It is easy, here, for us to mishear things, to misconstrue meanings, to misunderstand intentions. And it is difficult for us to communicate with others and make ourselves perfectly understood.
The Holy Ghost is a personage of spirit. He is a member of the Godhead, but unlike the Father and the Son, who have perfected bodies of flesh and bone, the Holy Ghost is a spirit without a body. This gives Him the ability to communicate directly with our spirits–spirit to spirit–bypassing our clumsy physical equipment.
When the Holy Ghost tells us something, He speaks it directly to our spirits, causing us to know and believe what He tells us more firmly than is possible by any other type of communication or evidence.
The Holy Ghost has several important jobs. Foremost among them is to testify of the Father and of the Son. Another of His responsibilities is to reveal the truth of all things. Another is to influence people to choose the right, to obey Heavenly Father’s commandments, to do good. He also serves as the Great Comforter, speaking peace to our souls in time of anguish or loneliness or trouble.
When the Holy Ghost speaks to our spirits, how do we know what he said?
Sometimes people hear an audible voice, but this is extremely rare. Sometimes His words enter our consciousness as thoughts or impressions. Most often, for most of us, we receive communications from the Holy Ghost through our feelings. His messages are freuently referred to as coming by a still, small voice, a voice that, if we are sensitive and trying to be in tune, we can feel.
In 1 Nephi 17, Nephi says to his brothers, Laman and Lemuel, “Ye are swift to do iniquity but slow to remember the Lord your God. Ye have seen an angel, and he spake unto you; yea, ye have heard his voice from time to time; and he hath spoken unto you in a still small voice, but ye were past feeling, that ye could not feel his words.”
President Ezra Taft Benson said, “When you do good, you feel good, and that is the Holy Ghost speaking to you.”
The Holy Ghost functions in two ways, through the power of the Holy Ghost and through the gift of the Holy Ghost.
The power of the Holy Ghost can come upon a person before baptism. It is the convincing witness that Jesus Christ is our Saviour and Redeemer. Through the power of the Holy Ghost, sincere investigators can acquire a conviction of the truthfulness of the Saviour’s Gospel, of the Book of Mormon, of the reality of the Restoration, and of the prophetic calling of Joseph Smith.
The gift of the Holy Ghost is the right to have the power of the Holy Ghost with you all the time.
The gift of the Holy Ghost, in a way, is like being given a musical instrument. The instrument–think of a shiny, new trumpet–has been given to you. It is yours. You can open the case and admire it any time you want. But to get the most from your trumpet, you have to learn to play it. The more you practice with it, the more useful it becomes and the more joy you have in the gift.
President Spencer W. Kimball put it this way. “The gift of the Holy Ghost grows with worthiness. If you are baptized when you are eight years old, of course you are a child, and there is much you would not be expected to know. But the Holy Ghost comes to you as you grow and learn and make yourselves worthy. It comes a little at a time as you merit it. And as your life is in harmony, you gradually receive the Holy Ghost in a great measure.”
I’m thankful for the gift of the Holy Ghost and for the influence of the Spirit in my life. I hope you, too, will find joy in this gift and allow yourself to be guided by it.