One Scripture
Although I had not been active in the Church for nearly 18 years, I had decided to say daily prayers. On one particular morning, each time I drifted out of sleep, I would say a silent prayer asking my Heavenly Father to help me wake up and stop being unhappy. I was weighed down by sadness and hopelessness, which I had often felt throughout the past year or so, but today was particularly difficult.
Then I heard a voice speak very clearly, “Psalm 24:7.” I hadn’t thought about the scriptures in years. I got dressed and headed toward my bookshelf, but I began to doubt. I didn’t make it to the bookshelf until later that day when sheer curiosity got me to open the scriptures. I read the passage carefully: “Lift up your heads, O ye gates; and be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors; and the King of glory shall come in.”
“What a coincidence,” I thought. “Does God speak to people this way?” I decided to search for further answers in the scriptures. One passage stood out to me:
“Wherefore, now after I have spoken these words, if ye cannot understand them it will be because ye ask not, neither do ye knock; wherefore, ye are not brought into the light, but must perish in the dark.
“For behold, again I say unto you that if ye will enter in by the way, and receive the Holy Ghost, it will show unto you all things what ye should do” (2 Nephi 32:4–5).
From that passage I learned I needed to ask, knock, enter by the way, and receive the Holy Ghost in order to know all things I should do.
It was such a small thing—one passage of scripture. It was such a small voice, one that seemed it could have been my own thought. I could have shrugged off the experience as my mind playing tricks on me, but instead I continued to ask, knock, enter, and receive—here a little and there a little. I have been an active member of the Church since this experience and have also received my temple endowment.