Joy
"In order to have joy, you need to understand that, as a child of your Heavenly Father, you inherited divine traits and spiritual needs--and just like a fish needs water, you need the gospel and the companionship of the Holy Ghost to be truly, deeply happy. Because you are the offspring of God (see Acts 17:28), it is incompatible with your eternal nature to do wrong and feel right. It cannot be done. It is part of your spiritual DNA, as it were, that peace, joy, and happiness will be yours only to the degree you live the gospel."
(Marcus B. Nash, "The Great Plan of Happiness," Ensign, Nov. 2006, 49)
I agree.
I believe that most of the unhappiness that we experience comes from not living up to what we believe. The unhappiness comes primarily from the internal struggle between our Spiritual self and our Physical self. The spirit is very sensitive to the prompting of the Holy Ghost and it craves it as we crave air, while our natural man believes that it can function without it.
Consider the pain when the Spirit of God left Christ. He cried "Why hast thou forsaken me." I do not believe that many men had been so bereft of the Spirit's influence as Christ was at that point. I definitely would dread the utter despair that would accompany such a complete withdrawal of the spirit.
I believe the more the Spirit of the Lord withdrawal from us the more anguish we feel in the Soul.
Rather off topic, but... I thought it interesting that brother Nash talked about Spiritual DNA. I am wondering if Spirit matter literally has DNA that we inherited from our Father in Heaven or was it a figure of speech? |