How Can I Spend Time with the Lord?
The author lives in Utah, USA.
I returned from the Pennsylvania Philadelphia mission just 13 months ago. My feeling after coming home was similar to many of my fellow returned missionaries. I felt that I couldn’t feel the Spirit like I did as a full-time missionary. A mission is a unique time where you’re in a spiritual bubble, and it feels like the peak of your spiritual experiences in mortality—like something you can’t achieve again after your mission ends.
I had preached my entire mission that missionaries didn’t have to lose the obvious and constant companionship of the Holy Ghost when they went home, but then when my turn came, I started to wonder if all of those returned missionaries had a point. Maybe it was too hard to feel the Spirit as much as I had when I was walking the streets of Philadelphia.
Answers from General Conference
The October 2022 conference was my third general conference since coming home, and I still hadn’t gotten over that feeling. In the weeks leading up to the conference, I did some serious self-investigation. I asked myself, “Am I just not doing enough scripture study?” and “Why am I not as excited for spiritual things as I used to be?” Questions like these crowded my mind.
I wrote down my questions at the beginning of conference. It wasn’t long before an answer came! Elder James W. McConkie III of the Seventy stood up to speak. In his talk, he quoted a single short statement from Elder Joseph B. Wirthlin:
“Do you love the Lord?
“Spend time with Him.”1
Spending Time with the Lord
The quote reminded me of the purpose of the spiritual things I do. This is what feeling the Spirit and studying the scriptures are really about: spending time with the Lord! Those words became my new life motto. Spending time with Jesus Christ is the real key to rekindling your passion for the gospel.
I had been forcing myself to read the scriptures, thinking I could convince myself to learn from them and love reading them as I had on my mission. I thought that if I just prayed harder, I would find my prayers a delight instead of a chore, but that wasn’t true at all. Feeling the Spirit isn’t about how hard I pray or how diligently I read my scriptures, but about how I choose to spend my time with my Savior.
So now, instead of asking if I’m doing enough scripture study and then wondering why I don’t love it, I’m asking myself, “How can I spend time with the Lord today?”
It took only a few days after general conference for my outlook to change. Now I am seeing the Savior, loving His word, and looking forward to my prayers to my Heavenly Father every day.