Revelation

Religiously I have led an interesting life. I was born to two LDS parents, I was baptized at 8 like any other “ideal” Mormon kid. But I fell away from the church pretty quickly once I stopped relying on my father’s religion and testimony. That started around the beginning of 7th grade. My dad is very religious, and he attempted to force his beliefs on me by making me attend church and activities and by offering incentives to participate. And if you remember being a rebellious teenager, you know his methods accomplished the complete opposite of what he wanted. Physically, I was very active in the church, I was at almost every Sunday meeting, I attended almost every youth event, but mentally, emotionally, and spiritually, I was the definition of inactive. I very much consider myself a convert, because I never cared much for the church, I was just following the lead of my parents. Due to a lot of reasons, I hated the idea of God and I loathed the LDS church because it was the religion being forced on me, that being the main reason I was so anti-Mormon. I varied between belief systems for most of high school. I went through an atheism stage during my freshman year, followed by being agnostic for a year or two. I chose to be atheist because it seemed like the “cool” thing, but I realized I was agnostic. I had a mindset of “I believe God is there, but I don’t know which God and I don’t really care because He hasn’t done anything for me”. I always knew that there was a supreme deity of some sort, but I never cared to find out which religion was the right one. So for most of my high school career, I was agnostic. Up until my senior year.

At the end of the first semester of my last year of high school, I started dating this girl I knew was a member of the LDS church, and that wasn’t really my type at the time, but I knew there was something special about her. I was terrified that the minute she found out about my issues with religion and God, she would walk away because I wasn’t the kind of guy she wanted. On one date with her, I opened up about everything, and miraculously, she didn’t leave. She just accepted it and nudged me a little to find out for myself if it was true or not. As we kept dating and I kept falling for her, I decided to give her church a try. Her testimony was incredibly strong, and I knew she wasn’t a complete nutcase, so I figured she knew something I didn’t. I started reading the Book of Mormon, followed by praying. And as time went on, I started to get my own testimony.

There were a lot of things I wasn’t sure about, even when my testimony was starting to grow. I didn’t know if Christ really died for me and knew all my struggles, I didn’t know if Joseph Smith was a true prophet or not, among other things. Really, all I knew was that my girlfriend, my dad, and my family weren’t complete wacks. I didn’t know if anything was true or not, I just knew that all those people might have been onto something. Part of me was concerned that I had been in unbelief and sin for so long that there was no coming back. I was so worried because I wasn’t getting the answers I thought I needed. I was working through all my issues with my bishop, and in one of our meetings, he said something that made me think. He said, “belief is a choice”. I was so preoccupied with knowing if all this was true, I didn’t realize that belief had to come first. For 18 years, I had been listening to people stating “I know…”, that’s the cliche. Nobody stood up to bear their testimony and said “I believe,” which was what was tripping me up. I thought you had to have a knowledge to claim to have a testimony.

A few weeks later, my newly appointed bishopric-member father asked me to give a talk in sacrament meeting. At the urging of my girlfriend, I hesitantly and nervously accepted. The last time I had given a talk was five or six years before, and my dad had essentially written it. I was definitely out of practice, and all I remembered was how terrified I am standing up and speaking in front of a big congregation. The topic that I was assigned to speak about was really broad and really simple: “revelation”. As someone who had recently just started investigating the church again and wasn’t sure if I’d ever received revelation, this seemed kind of an odd fit. But that was the assignment and I did it.

I based much of my talk off of Elder David A. Bednar’s talk in the April 2011 general conference. This became my favorite talk. Bednar starts off his talk by relating revelation to two instances that everyone has had with light: a light switch being flipped on, sudden and instantaneous, and a sunrise, gradual and almost imperceptible. He says that most revelation isn’t something you even realize you’re receiving. Very rarely does one have an experience where they know that they have obtained answers. In my talk, I bore my testimony at the end, and I stated: “Honestly, I don’t know anything. But I believe, and that’s enough.” And, oh, how true those words are. The entire time I was looking for God to show Himself to me and give me an answer I couldn’t doubt, I was missing the little pieces of knowledge He was blessing me with. As I chose to believe all the things I had issues with- Joseph Smith, Jesus Christ, even the existence of God- eventually I gained a knowledge of them. And that was my revelation. I chose to believe one thing at a time until it became ingrained in me. Then it became knowledge. I realize now that I have received other forms of revelation, but never anything huge and undeniable. They have all been subtle but extremely powerful. I know that I’ll probably never see an angel or have a vision, but that doesn’t make my revelation any less powerful.

As members of the church, we are constantly hearing the words, “I know”. But we can’t let the testimonies of other’s or the knowledge of other people deter us. If all you can do is believe, then just believe. It doesn’t matter if you know or if you have to make the conscious choice to believe, it’s all personal, and as you stay faithful and continue to ask for revelation, you will gain that knowledge eventually.

There isn’t much I know about the church, but there is so much that I believe in with every fiber of my being. And I couldn’t see that until I realized that believing is just as good, if not better, as knowing.