Three Reasons Latter-day Saints Struggle to Receive Personal Revelation

With the focus by President Russell M. Nelson to #HearHim, many Latter-day Saints are seeking to develop an increased capacity to receive revelation. Yet, many Saints still struggle to actually receive the personal revelation they so deeply desire. From my experience, there are three roadblocks that prevent us from hearing Him and receiving the personal revelation we desire.

1st. We Attempt to Cede our Agency.

The first roadblock to personal revelation is the desire to cede our agency. What do I mean by that? I mean that we don’t want to make choices ourselves, we want God to tell us what to do. We simply want to pray for something and receive it. For example, you could be someone struggling to figure out where to go to college. You might be torn between UVU and BYU (like I was). Someone struggling with this roadblock would simply pray “Heavenly Father, should I go to UVU or BYU?” It sounds innocent, but it is actually an attempt to cede our choice to Him in hopes He will simply give us a command on what to do.

This is a common mistake among members of the Church, even Oliver Cowdry struggled with this roadblock. In Doctrine and Covenants 9:7 we read the Lord’s response to Oliver’s struggle to receive revelation: “Behold, you have not understood; you have supposed that I would give it unto you, when you took no thought save it was to ask me.”

Here the Lord is telling Oliver that he simply can’t ask the Lord and expect the Lord to do the rest. We can’t either. In the next verse (D&C 9:8) Lord instructed Oliver further, “But, behold, I say unto you, that you must study it out in your mind; then you must ask me if it be right, and if it is right I will cause that your bosom shall burn within you; therefore, you shall feel that it is right.”

From these two verses, we clearly can learn that we need to study out a topic and then come to the Lord with our game plan. IE, He wants us to use our agency and come to Him seeking personal revelation. The Lord further warned about Saints’ desire to cede our agency in Doctrine and Covenants 58:26 “For behold, it is not meet that I should command in all things; for he that is compelled in all things, the same is a slothful and not a wise servant; wherefore he receiveth no reward.”

Therefore, the first roadblock to receiving personal revelation and truly learning to #HearHim is the need to overcome our desires to cede our agency and be commanded by the Lord in all things.

What about all the stories of personal revelation where the Lord command or told people what to do?

Now, you might be thinking, “What about all the stories of the Lord/Holy Ghost commanding or telling people what to do?” And that is a valid question. There are a LOT of stories of people who received clear personal revelation that commanded them what to do. So how does one square these stories with this first principle? Well, the answer to that is actually quite simple. Almost every story of the Lord commanding people to do something is a spontaneous event that happened not because the person asked Him what to do, but because there is something mission-critical that needs to happen.

Take a minute and think of the stories. In almost all the instances of being commanded in personal revelation, it is not an answer someone got on their knees, it was spontaneous guiding that happened as they attempted to live righteously. Think about 1st Nephi 4 and the story of Laban. Nephi drew the sword in verse 9 and then spontaneously the Spirit commanded him in verse 10 to act. Therefore, we must be open to the spontaneous commands/promptings to act; but also realize they are not the standard operating pattern for the Holy Ghost.

2nd. We Attempt to Cede our Accountability.

Now, assuming you get past the first roadblock and you realize God wants you to study things out in your mind, then we come to the second major roadblock most people face trying to #HearHim. Namely, we seek, even if unintentionally, to cede our accountability. We do this when we want God to tell us our choice is the right choice. Therefore, it is His responsibility to make it work. “God told me to do it.”

Returning to our college example, after studying it out you choose UVU (like I did). You then kneel and pray, “Heavenly Father, I think I should go to UVU. Is this what you want me to do?” There are TWO reasons why these types of prayers are bad:

First, the prayer is framed with the assumption that there is only a single correct option for each choice. We want to know if the Lord wants us to go to UVU vs BYU, because we believe that there is a right choice and we are trying to uncover it via personal revelation.

But have you ever considered the fact that most decisions we make have more than only one valid option? It might not have mattered if I went to UVU or BYU because BOTH options might be acceptable to the Lord. But, if we are stuck asking the Lord to give a YES or NO if our choice is THE single right choice rather than a valid choice then we will struggle to get confirmation because of the flaw in our question.

Second, the prayer is bad because if the Lord did say, “YES, you need to go to UVU.” Then often we cede our accountability on the issue. “The Lord told me to do this, so He will make it work out.” This is dangerous because it presupposes that the Lord is going to override the consequences of our choices to make things work out if we did the thing He told us to do.

The way to overcome this roadblock is to understand that there is more than one valid option to most of our choices. Therefore once we have studied our options, and have chosen what we think is best, we then are seeking to receive confirmation that our choice is acceptable to the Lord. This then shifts the accountability to ensure our choice works out back to us. We know that what we are doing is not wrong and that it is an acceptable option, if we are willing to pay the price it can work out.

What happens if I still don’t get the personal revelation that my choice was correct??

Now, what happens when we study it out, come up with a plan, take it to the Lord and ask if it is acceptable, but we still don’t get an answer? We move forward with the knowledge that God will warn us if the option is not acceptable before we go astray. This knowledge stems from a promise by Dallin H. Oaks, who taught, “We are often left to work out problems, without the dictation or specific direction of the Spirit. That is part of the experience we must have in mortality. Fortunately, we are never out of our Savior’s sight, and if our judgment leads us to actions beyond the limits of what is permissible and if we are listening to the still small voice, the Lord will restrain us by the promptings of His Spirit.” (Teaching by the Spirit (address delivered at new mission presidents’ seminar, 22 June 1994), 8.)

Why would a loving Father not just tell us if it is acceptable? Why leave us hanging? To answer that I turn to the Oct. 1989 General Conference, where Richard G. Scott of the quorum of the twelve apostles explained:

He is our perfect Father. He loves us beyond our capacity to understand. He knows what is best for us. He sees the end from the beginning. He wants us to act to gain needed experience:

When He answers yes, it is to give us confidence.

When He answers no, it is to prevent error.

When He withholds an answer, it is to have us grow through faith in Him, obedience to His commandments, and a willingness to act on truth. We are expected to assume accountability by acting on a decision that is consistent with His teachings without prior confirmation. We are not to sit passively waiting or to murmur because the Lord has not spoken. We are to act.

3rd. We Seek Personal Revelation that is Outside of our Purview

The third and final roadblock to hearing Him is potentially the most important mistake we can make. We ask for things outside of our purview. When we seek personal revelation on topics outside of our purview we need to realize that we cannot receive an answer from God, we can only receive false revelation from Satan. Dale G. Renlund taught this in the Oct. 2022 General Conference, “we receive personal revelation only within our purview.” Our purview is a combination of our stewardship and what we can act on.

Stewardship, encompasses all that we are responsible for. If you are single your stewardship is yourself. It does not extend to others, including girlfriends (which means no, you can not receive revelation someone should marry you). If you are married, then your stewardship includes your kids until they are adults. And in the Church, your stewardship includes ONLY those whom you have calls to serve. That means you won’t receive revelation telling the Bishop what to do unless you are the Stake President.

NOTE, when someone asks for assistance, they are extending your purview to you. For example, if your Bishop asks you for your opinion on something, he has extended, for a brief moment, part of his purview to you. This is one of the main reasons for ward counsels.

Ability to Act, the second half of purview is the ability to act on information. God is not in the business of randomly doling out information for fun. He gives us knowledge so we know how to act. Our prayers require real intent. Real intent is when we pray with the intent to obey. How can we pray with the intent to obey if we are asking for things we can’t act on? Also, this means that when we do receive revelation we need to ask ourselves, what am I expected to DO with this information?

Understanding what our purview is, and that we cannot receive revelation From God outside of it, helps us to remove this roadblock by ensuring we are only asking for what God can even provide. But more so, understanding how purview works will allow us to detect counterfeit revelations from the adversary. People claiming revelations that are NOT within their purview are not receiving that revelation from God. Returning to Dale G. Renlund, he compares our purview to runways at an airport when he emphasised how understanding purview can protect us from false revelation:

Years ago, I received a phone call from an individual who had been arrested for trespassing. He told me it had been revealed to him that additional scripture was buried under the ground floor of a building he tried to enter. He claimed that once he obtained the additional scripture, he knew he would receive the gift of translation, bring forth new scripture, and shape the doctrine and direction of the Church. I told him that he was mistaken, and he implored me to pray about it. I told him I would not. He became verbally abusive and ended the phone call.

I did not need to pray about this request for one simple but profound reason: only the prophet receives revelation for the Church. It would be “contrary to the economy of God” for others to receive such revelation, which belongs on the prophet’s runway.

Therefore What?

Now that you understand three major roadblocks that hold people back from receiving personal revelation, I hope that you avoid them and open the doors to personal revelation. But, receiving revelation is only half the equation! Because Satan will gladly give us false revelation! It is, therefore, vital that we not only learn to hear but that we also discern who we are listening to. To dive into that topic see this article: “Did you hear Him; or hear him?“