Moroni 7:19

No more than a couple months ago was the time of New Year's ringing out 2019 and welcoming the new decade with 2020. In New Haven, Connecticut with my wife and one-year-old son, we were excited about the new future that lay ahead. Yet, through various experiences that had just recently unfolded in the previous months, I had learned that there was at least one very critical piece of knowledge that I absolutely needed to improve upon in order to ensure a truly successful future: how to receive true revelation from God.

Throughout the past couple years the Lord's living prophet President Russell M. Nelson, and many other church leaders, had made it clear that, "In coming days, it will not be possible to survive spiritually without the guiding, directing, comforting, and constant influence of the Holy Ghost." He furthermore said, "I urge you to stretch beyond your current spiritual ability to receive personal revelation..." (Revelation for the Church, Revelation for Our Lives, Apr. 2018) While I certainly had had many experiences of receiving personal revelation throughout my life, I knew at the turn of the year that I needed to improve.

At this very time, the study schedule for The Church was going to begin focusing primarily on The Book of Mormon, Another Testament of Jesus Christ. For the first week of the year, the Come Follow Me - For Individuals and Families encouraged a focus on the introductory pages of The Book of Mormon which detailed its coming forth in the 1820s. Clearly, with angels, visions, light, the gift and power of God to translate, and heaven-inspired testimonies, the coming forth of The Book of Mormon was filled with examples of receiving revelation from deity. Sensing that the Lord was attempting to teach me more about this revelatory process in answer to my need to improve, I studied it further by finding scriptures regarding revelation. After finding many, one near the very end of The Book of Mormon stood out to me:

"Wherefore, I beseech of you, brethren, that ye should search diligently in the light of Christ that ye may know good from evil..."      ~ Moroni 7:19

While I had certainly read this scripture before, the particular counsel to "search diligently in the light of Christ" meant something new to me now. I already knew that revelation often requires searching diligently, self-evident through the context of finding this scripture through intent personal study. The new insight gained this time was that the sources and the context of our diligent searching makes all the difference. Searching in the light of Christ, rather than personal desires or worldly influences, is God's pattern for receiving revelation. To improve my capacity to receive revelation, I learned that my search needed to be Google-search free, void of personal opinion, and surrounded with humility and selflessness. This, to no surprise, was the pattern Jesus Christ followed. It was also mirrored by the prophet Joseph Smith many times. Now it was my turn to learn this pattern.

Of course such a pattern of receiving revelation wasn't, and isn't, easy. But with a firm desire to know the answers to questions in a way that I could undoubtedly testify that it came from God, I concluded to follow this revelation recipe. And amazingly enough, while washing dishes one day, the answer came! It did not come at a time I expected, nor was the answer what I presupposed or initially hoped. But the mere fact that I knew it was an answer from God filled me with great joy! I had learned how to improve my ability to receive revelation from my Father in Heaven.