Stupor of Thought

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As people around me, well-meaning though they may be, attempt to dissuade me from what I know to be right, I have put a lot of thought to the concept of revelation. In some particular matters of late, I reflected a few weeks ago in my journal, "I have felt burnings in my bosum and never a stupor of thought". Elder Jeffrey Holland said "Beware the temptation to retreat from a good thing. If it was right when you prayed about it and trusted it and lived for it, it is right now."

When God speaks of revelation, he promised us how to tell if it comes from him. If it is true, he will cause that our bosum shall burn within us, and if it is wrong, we shall have no such feeling, but a stupor of thought. It is, in my experience however, much more common that people speak of doubts and fears than genuine stupors of thought. They retreat from good things many times based on these fears, which are founded not in truth but in things that have not happened and may never happen to them at all. Most of the time, your fears don't turn out to be accurate predictors of the future.

In Letter XV of the Screwtape Letters, CS Lewis speaks of this phenomenon. The devil wants us to live in the future. The past is real because it happened, the present is real because it lies before us and the future enflames hope and fear. To quote him on the matter at hand:

He would therefore have them continually concerned either with eternity (which means being concerned with Him) or with the Present—either meditating on their eternal union with, or separation from, Himself, or else obeying the present voice of conscience, bearing the present cross, receiving the present grace, giving thanks for the present pleasure...In a word, the Future is, of all things, the thing least like eternity.

The devil wants us to constantly fret about the future, about things concerning which we generally have no knowledge and thus create misery within us, "a whole race perpetually in pursuit of the rainbow's end, never honest, nor kind, nor happy now". The devil wants you to think about what happens to you; God wants you to think about what you do.

If something is true, then it always was true and always will be. If something is true for you, God will provide you the means to accomplish the thing he commands of you. My cousin told me back in May that God never commands men to do the impossible; some things just take a little longer.

When you come upon a decision that is incorrect, God will lead you away from it. At times when I have pursued something that ran contrary to his will, I found myself easily distracted from it by other things...ooh, look a butterfly...

Elder F Enzio Busche spoke on this matter. He said that God will give you correction and direction. Questions may arise, but "if something is wrong, God will give you clarity, but never doubts". Doubts are not the answer. If something is wrong, God has promised that he will cast the thought from our minds entirely.

Our enemies desire our destruction. They will pull all the tricks they can to keep us from our highest choice, from our mission in life, and from a fulness of happiness. Their opposition intensifies when we approach important crossroads in our lives. By this you may know in part that what you do is right. Opposition and struggle are almost always guaranteed when we stand on the cusp of greatness. To close, with Elder Holland again, "Trust in that eternal truth. If God has told you something is right, if something is indeed true for you, He will provide the way for you to accomplish it."

Stand for truth. Stand for right.