Thanks For the Holy Ghost

Church was amazing today.  We talked about faith, spiritual power, keeping the Sabbath day holy, prayer, and fasting which all help you to gain that power, and the atonement,  And I am so grateful for the gift that helps me do all things things: the gift of the Holy Ghost.

In The Infinite Atonement, it quotes Elder Parley P. Pratt who says one of my favorite things ever said about the Holy Ghost that I've ever read.  I'm going to split it up into sections because it is pretty jam-packed with delicious stuff:

"The gift of the Holy Ghost...quickens all the intellectual faculties, increases, enlarges, expands, and purifies all the natural passions and affections, and adapts them, by the gift of wisdom, to their lawful use."

Phew, this sentence packs a punch.  Let me break it down.  

#1: The gift of the Holy Ghost quickens all the intellectual faculties.  

According to the dictionary, intellect includes man's faculty of reasoning, understanding objectively, especially with abstract or academic matters, and man's mental powers.

To me this means the Holy Ghost can help us anywhere from homework assignments, to thinking through personal problems, family problems, nation-wide problems, world problems, to understanding principles (spiritual doctrine or mathematics...), and helps us have greater power to think through things.  

#2:  The gift of the Holy Ghost increases, enlarges, expands, and purifies all the natural passions and affections, and adapts them, by the gift of wisdom, to their lawful use.

We are natural men.  We have passions that can overtake use.  And think about the laws of God.  Law of Chastity--curves passion.  Law of the fast--curves hunger.  Law of tithing.  Word of Wisdom.  All of these laws help us to put off the natural man.  BUT we wouldn't be able to learn how to put our natural passions to our lawful use without the Holy Ghost.  We are completely dependent on God, Christ, and the Holy Ghost in our process to adapt and change our natural man.  

#3: The gift of the Holy Ghost "inspires, develops, cultivates, and matures all the fine-toned sympathies, joys, tastes, kindred feelings, and affections of out nature."

Emotions are crucial to our experience here in this life as well as our preparation to become like God's.  Christ felt deeply.  He wept for joy and for sadness.  God has mastered his own emotional faculties.  We must do the same, and with the guidance of the Holy Ghost, we can.  

#4:  The gift of the Holy Ghost "inspires virtue, kindness, goodness, tenderness, gentleness, and charity."

Every good feeling comes from God.  All of these words connect to the qualities of God that we want.  To become like God, to develop these qualities, we need the Holy Ghost.    

#5:  The gift of the Holy Ghost "develops beauty of person, form and features."

I've talked to you about this before how I can tell within my own countenance and that of others how I am/they are doing spiritually.  People who are spiritually full and healthy radiate light.  They shine their light and look beautiful.  The Holy Ghost enables this.  

#6:  The gift of the Holy Ghost "tends to health, vigor, animation, and social feelings.  It invigorates all the faculties of the physical and intellectual man.  It strengthens and gives tone to the nerves."

The professionals always place the idea of health into categories: physical, mental, spiritual, social, and emotional.  This part of the quote states that not only will we be healthy intellectually or emotionally, but we will also be healthy physically and socially.  The Holy Ghost gives us the energy to work to fulfill all of these categories of health and develop into a whole, unique individual.       

#7:  "In short, it is, as it were, marrow to the bone, joy to the heart, light to the eyes, music to the ears, and life to the whole being."   

This quote sums it all up well.  The Holy Ghost is MARROW, JOY, LIGHT, MUSIC, LIFE!  The Holy Ghost enables us to truly live our lives to the fullest capacity that we can.  And it enables that capacity within us to grow, grace by grace, grace for grace, as we learn to become like Jesus Christ and our Heavenly Father. 

I don't know about you, but this quote blew my mind.  I feel so full of gratitude for the Holy Ghost in my life and the Atonement that makes it possible for me to develop and learn how to live within the law that helps me live freely.

Enjoy your Sabbath!

Rachel