From Messages for a Happier Life, Inspiring Essays from the Church News, compiled by William B. Smart:
Some years ago news reported the death of a Missouri minister after a fast of forty days. In the papers after his death he reveled his purpose: “I am seeking the more perfect will of God for my life and asking God to show me why the gifts of the spirit do not follow my ministry as Jesus said they would.” The gifts of the spirit—precious enough that one man died in search of them. How precious are they to us today?
Nearly a century ago, President George Q. Cannon spoke these blunt challenging words to the saints: How many of you . . . are seeking these gifts God has promised to bestow? How many of you, when you bow before your Heavenly Father in your family circle or in your secret places, contend for these gifts to be bestowed upon you? How many of you ask the Father in the name of Jesus to manifest Himself to you through these powers and these gifts? Or do you go along day by day like a door turning on its hinge, without having any feeling upon the subject, without exercising any faith whatever; content to be baptized and be members of the Church, to rest there, thinking that your salvation is secure because you have done this? . . . .
“God is the same today as he was yesterday . . . [He is willing to bestow these gifts upon His children. I know that God is willing to heal the sick, He is willing to bestow the discerning of spirits, the gift or wisdom, and of prophecy, and of other gifts that may be needed.” These, and others, are the gifts of the Holy Ghost promised in 1 Corinthians chapter 12, Moroni Chapter 10, and Doctrine and Covenants, section 46. How precious they are, these gifts of wisdom and knowledge and discernment, of faith to heal and be healed, of miracles and prophecy and tongues.
How eternally precious, especially, is the greatest of gifts, the knowledge that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, the Savior of the world. But the gifts are not limited even to these. Paul opened a broader vision. In what may have been the last of his great epistles, written from a Roman dungeon from which he would soon walk to his death, he exhorted his young disciple, Timothy, to: “. . . stir up the gift of God which is in thee by the putting on of my hands. For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power and of love, and of a sound mind.” (2 Tim. 1:6-7.)
With such a testimony from such a man ” in such circumstances, who can deny man’s responsibilities as spelled out in discomforting clarity by President Cannon:
“If any of us is imperfect, it is our duty to pray for the gift that will make us perfect. Have I imperfections? I am full of them. What is my duty? To pray to God to give me the gifts that will correct these imperfections. If I am an angry man, it is my duty to pray for charity which suffereth long and is kind. Am I an envious man? It is my duty to seek for charity, which envieth not. So with all the gifts of the Gospel. They are intended for this purpose. No one ought to say, “Oh, I cannot help this; it is my nature.” They are not justified in it, for the reason that God has promised to give strength to correct these things, and to give gifts what will eradicate them.
God does not expect us, like the fasting preacher of the Ozarks, to die in search of His gifts. He expects us to do something far more important. He expects us to live in search of them. Messages for a Happier Life (Salt Lake City Deseret Book, 1989), p. 74-75
