Ep. 6 – The Holy Ghost from A to Z: Strengthens Your *Bonds* With Others

Discover how the Holy Ghost can strengthen your relationships with your family, friends, and others.

Also, you can now pre-order The Holy Ghost from A to Z, which will be released in June! Get it for $8.99 at Cedar Fort or $12.99 on Amazon.

Outline

• The Holy Ghost from A to Z: What the Spirit Can Do for You (by Liz Kazandzhy) will be published in June
  • Available for pre-order now!
  • On sale for $8.99 at Cedar Fort
  • $12.99 from Amazon, Walmart, and Target
• Quote from chapter B – Strengthens Your *Bonds* with Others
  • Have you ever wondered how best to minister to someone, how to grow closer to a family member, or how to resolve a conflict with a friend or coworker? These are all issues you can take to God through prayer, and He will answer you with revelation through the Holy Ghost. After all, God “knows all the thoughts and intents of the heart,” and therefore He knows how best to reach those hearts.
  • Example of the Spirit telling me to stop listening to audiobooks in the car and use that time to talk with my kids instead
• Takeaway
  • Think of a relationship you’d like to improve. Pray for the Lord’s guidance about that relationship, record the promptings He sends for how to improve it, and then make a goal based on those promptings.
• Next episode: The Gifts of Imperfection by Brene Brown

Transcript

I’m Liz Kazandzhy, and you’re listening to the cozy little podcast “Latter-day Saint Book Nook,” where we talk about books from a gospel perspective. Whether fiction or nonfiction, religious or not, great books are like wells of wisdom just waiting to be drawn from, and that’s exactly what we’re going to do. So if you love books, and you love the gospel of Jesus Christ, you’re in the right place. Come and learn from the best books to help you live your best life!

Welcome back! Today we’re going to be talking about something that’s very important to pretty much everyone, and that is relationships. And specifically how God can help you strengthen your relationships through the Holy Ghost.

So, for those who don’t know, all of these mini Holy Ghost episodes come from my book, The Holy Ghost from A to Z: What the Spirit Can Do for You. So today’s topic comes from the B chapter, which is that the Spirit can “strengthen your bonds with others.” (I couldn’t put relationships in the R chapter because that chapter is about remembering, but I thought “bonds” made for a good synonym, hence the B chapter instead.)

Anyway, before I get to that, I wanted to share something super exciting, which is that you can now pre-order the book! That means you can order now and then you’ll be among the very first people to get it when it ships in June. It’s on Amazon for $12.99 (and also websites like Walmart and Target), but if you order from cedarfort.com, you can actually get it for $8.99 if you’re one of the first 50 orders. So if you want to do that, just Google “The Holy Ghost from A to Z,” and it should pop up in the first results.

Alright, so let’s talk about relationships! They are so important, and so much of our lives revolve around them—our family, friends, coworkers, Church members. So many people, right? And, naturally, God wants to help us with our relationships because, well … He loves us and He wants us to be happy.

But here’s the thing: I don’t know about you, but I don’t always combine God with relationships the way that I probably should. Like I’m really good about praying for people—you know, bless my husband, my kids, my other family members—but I’m not as good at praying about people. Like “I’m having a hard time getting through to my kid, and I feel like our relationship is really rocky right now. Could you help me, Heavenly Father?” And that’s what this chapter is about. So, without further ado, here is a quote from the B chapter:

[2:37]

Quote from the B chapter

Have you ever wondered how best to minister to someone, how to grow closer to a family member, or how to resolve a conflict with a friend or coworker?

These are all issues you can take to God through prayer, and He will answer you with revelation through the Holy Ghost.

After all, God “knows all the thoughts and intents of the heart,” and therefore He knows how best to reach those hearts.

So let me share just a quick example of this. About a year ago, I had this prompting from the Spirit that was actually pretty random—kind of came out of the blue. And the Spirit told me, “Stop listening to audiobooks in the car.”

Now, let me give you some background so you understand this better. Back when covid started and everything closed, including parks, I went stir-crazy. I was at home with two little kids, just turning 4 and 2, and I was used to spending our days going places and doing things. Then all the sudden, there were no things and there were no places. So we stayed home, and I just could not handle it. It was just way too much non-stop interaction with little humans.

So as a respite, I would go on these long drives with my kids to relax. They were confined to their car seats, and there’s only so much fighting you can do in the car, so I got a break from them as they kind of just chatted with each other. And, as a bit of “self-care” you could say, I listened to audiobooks. Because, like you, I love books. And it was great. It got me through a very difficult time until the world started opening back up again and I could, you know, take my kids to parks again. Thank goodness!

Well, when life got back to semi-normal, my audiobook habit stayed in place. And it was only when the Spirit told me to stop that I realized why that might not be the best thing. And since I already wrote about this in my revelation journal, I thought I’d just read it to you. So here’s the whole entry, from January 19, 2021:

I often use long drives as an excuse to rest from the kids and listen to an audiobook while they chat with each other. But often that leaves me frustrated at the kids for incessantly interrupting me, and I doubt the kids appreciate being told to basically leave me alone. I had the feeling the other day from the Spirit to stop listening to audiobooks in the car and to instead use the time to talk with and listen to my kids.

I tried that for the first time today and really enjoyed it. I realized that “drive time” is a really valuable time together because the kids notice different things and ask different questions, and there’s literally nothing else to do besides just talk to each other. It’s the perfect place to talk about so many things without any distractions. And I think as the kids get older, they’ll have more to share and I’ll also want them to share more.

I remember when Mom would pick me up from school when I was growing up, and I’d always tell her all about my day, and she’d just attentively listen to me. Imagine how different our relationship would be if she had a headphone in one ear and was telling me to let her listen to that instead of listening to me!

Anyway, I’m very glad for that prompting from the Spirit because I think it will strengthen my relationship with my kids so much more now and in the future. And as long as I can keep a good balance with the rest of my life, I won’t feel as much of a need to “escape” into an audiobook instead of being present with my children.

And now, over a year later, I can report that it has made a huge difference. And I plan on keeping our car a kind of sacred, distraction-free place where we can just spend quality time together talking.

Anyway, I just wanted to share that story to give you an idea of how God can and wants to help us with our relationships. So whether you ask Him for help directly, or you just get a prompting out of nowhere like this one, pay attention to what the Spirit teaches you and what He prompts you to do. Because really, God knows what’s going on inside every person you know, and if your desire is to love and serve and help them, He will be more than happy to help you do that.

[6:55]

This Week’s Takeaway

So, finally, let me tell you about this week’s takeaway invitation. And this is actually straight from the book, since every chapter ends with 2 or 3 questions in what’s called the “Liken to Yourself” section. So here it is:

Think of a relationship you’d like to improve. Pray for the Lord’s guidance about that relationship, record the promptings He sends for how to improve it, and then make a goal based on those promptings.

So, in summary—pray, record, and act. Which is a pretty great formula for anything really, but this week make it specifically about a relationship. And then you too will have your own story to tell sometime about how the Spirit helped you strengthen your bonds with someone else.

And, like I’ve mentioned before, if you’d like to share that story with me, or you’d like to share anything with me, please do! I’d love to hear from you. Just go to ldsbooknook.com and scroll down to the comment form to send me a message.

Well, that’s it for today! I’m hoping to have an episode next week about The Gifts of Imperfection by Brene Brown. But if you listened to my Ukraine episode last week, you’d know that I’ve been having a hard time lately, so it’s been kind of difficult to stay up with this podcast. But I will try my best to keep giving you uplifting things to listen to, because I think lately we all could use some more uplifting. Have a good week, and don’t forget to go pre-order The Holy Ghost from A to Z. Thanks for tuning in!

Thanks for listening to Latter-day Saint Book Nook, hosted by Liz Kazandzhy! If you enjoyed this episode and you’d like to support the podcast, please share it with others, post about it on social media, or leave a rating and review. You can also visit ldsbooknook.com to stay up to date with me and the podcast. Thanks again, and I’ll talk to you next time!