Digital Only: Young Adults
Following Promptings Can Help Us Trust God—Especially When It’s Hard
How could I follow a prompting I didn’t understand?
Growing up, I thought I knew what serving a mission would be like. My older siblings had served missions, I had seen movies about missionaries, and I was ready to get to work. But as my mission got closer, my plan quickly fell apart.
Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, I was reassigned from my original call in the Philippines to my home country of Australia. When I arrived in the mission field, my experience was different than what I had expected. I desperately wanted to go home.
After I talked with my mission president, he gave me the option to finish my mission early and return home—exactly what I wanted. But when I was presented with that choice, I felt an overwhelming feeling from the Spirit that I should stay in the mission field.
I had a choice to make: act on revelation or act on my own desires.
Sometimes God invites us to do things outside of our comfort zone to help us grow. President Jeffrey R. Holland, Acting President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, said, “Christianity is comforting, but it is often not comfortable.”
Because of past experiences following promptings, I trusted that even though it wasn’t what I wanted to hear, this prompting to stay on my mission would ultimately be for my good.
I ended up serving a full two years and completing my mission. I wish I could say that the remainder of my time was super easy, but it wasn’t. However, the things I learned, the daily habits that connected me with Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ, and the deeper testimony I gained from serving have kept me grounded in the gospel.
Elder David A. Bednar of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles addressed this sort of situation when he said: “Very rarely does one prompting bring an answer. There’s almost always a sequence, ‘line upon line, precept upon precept’ (2 Nephi 28:30).” Even though my mission was tough, I was able to press forward with hope that God had a plan for me and that my struggles wouldn’t be in vain, because of the revelation I had received.
I find comfort in a scripture my mom used to recite that says:
“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord.
“For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts” (Isaiah 55:8–9).
I’m still trying to understand how everything I experience, even the hard stuff, is for my benefit and good, but I keep trusting that God sees more than I do.
Following spiritual promptings might not always be the most intuitive thing to do, and we might not see the payoff right away, but we will never regret trusting in the Lord. Increasing our own capacity for personal revelation and having that connection with Him each day will help us remember that He knows what’s best for us. And if we align our wills with His, we can trust that we can get through everything that comes our way.