“Revelation is a reality. It comes in the Lord’s way and according to the Lord’s timetable,” says Elder Dallin H. Oaks of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles in an address published in the August 2013 Ensign and Liahona* titled “In His Own Time, in His Own Way.”
Elder Oaks says we can qualify for revelation by doing “all we can with our own efforts and judgment. … Then we wait upon the Lord.”
The Lord’s way in most cases is “the still small voice.” When we receive revelation, it is through the power of God’s Spirit, Elder Oaks teaches, “which enlightens our minds and speaks peace to us concerning the questions we have asked.”
“Being taught by the Spirit is not a passive thing,” he says. Often confirmation, which he describes as “a feeling of peace and warmth and serenity and goodness,” doesn’t come until we have studied it out in our minds first.
Even though we should “pray continuously for guidance,” Elder Oaks teaches that “we shouldn’t expect continuous revelation.” People who do are often confused, he said. We can, however, expect “continuing revelation”—the assurance that we will have the revelation that “a wise and loving Lord chooses to give … to us.”
*This address was first delivered to new mission presidents on June 27, 2001.
