D&C 6, 8, 11 on personal revelation

To get caught up with the Sunday School curriculum, I'm collapsing the readings for lessons 5 and 6, which are both on the subject of personal revelation. Here's a collection of some of my favorite passages on that subject from the assigned chapters.

If you will inquire,
you will know mysteries that are great and marvelous;
therefore you will exercise your gift . . . ,
that you may bring many to the knowledge of the truth—
to convince them of the error of their ways.
(D&C 6:11)

You have inquired of me,
and see, as often as you have inquired
you have received instruction of my Spirit.
If it had not been so,
you would not have come to the place
where you are at this time.
(D&C 6:14)

You have inquired of me,
and I did enlighten your mind;
and now I tell you these things that you may know
that you have been enlightened by the Spirit of truth.
(D&C 6:15)

Cast your mind upon the night
when you cried out to me in your heart,
that you might know concerning the truth of these things.
Did I not speak peace to your mind concerning the matter?
What greater witness can you have than from God?
(D&C 6:22-23)

I will tell you in your mind and in your heart,
by the Holy Ghost, which shall come upon you . . .
This is the spirit of revelation.
(D&C 8:2-3)

Put your trust in that Spirit which leads to do good—
to do justly,
to walk humbly,
to judge righteously.
This is my Spirit . . . ,
which will enlighten your mind;
which will fill your soul with joy.
(D&C 11:12-13)

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I've received personal revelation in various ways over the years:

• as an inflowing of ideas while writing out a reflection or lesson plan.
• as an out-of-the-blue flash of inspiration about what I should say in the middle of a conversation.
• as an unexpected, insistent, mounting feeling that I needed to speak up or do something, like stand up in testimony meeting or intervene in a tense situation.
• as a sudden, cathartic "breakthrough," where in the middle of a crisis, I'm siezed by a feeling of calm or release, and it becomes dramatically clear to me what I need to do.
• as a quiet, even tentative, sense of "Yes, I think X is the better option" in response to prayer for direction.
• as a gut reaction to something someone else has said: "Yes, of course," or "I absolutely do not believe that."
• as a feeling of certainty or confidence that builds gradually over the long term as I pray regularly for guidance while studying something out.
• as a retrospective realization that decisions I've made—decisions which I may later have regretted—have actually led me to good I hadn't expected, giving me the feeling of having been led along in ways I did not recognize at the time.

Of course, sometimes I've had feelings or promptings that I thought at the time were revelation but that in retrospect I've decided weren't really, based on the fact that they resulted in unhappy outcomes. That's the nature of personal revelation. It's always a gamble; a leap of faith; an act of trust in what you believe is the Spirit, combined with the humility of realizing that you may mistake your own fears or desires or limited understanding or wishful thinking for revelation. Living by personal revelation requires a spirit of ongoing discernment, a willingness to be corrected and change course.

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In my head, I'm hearing the voice of a skeptic friend, a former Mormon now turned what he would call "humanist" and I would call "positivist." In my mind's eye, he looks over what I've just written, shoots me an "I see through you" look, and says: "So basically, when you have ideas or feelings that seem to have good results, you say those were revelations from God; and when you have ideas or feelings that don't produce good results, you say that you mistook them for revelations from God." And in my mind's eye, I respond by putting on a look of calculated innocence and intoning, "My friend, thou art not far from the kingdom."

In a modern age, religious faith requires chutzpah, which fortunately, I do not lack. They who have ears to ear, let them hear.

Do not say that the Spirit does not really give people revelations. People who say this cannot receive my blessings.   (Easy-to-Read D&C 11:25)