But not everything is known. The Ninth Article of Faith is not a decorative platitude. It is a theological commitment to humility, an admission that the Restoration is ongoing and that God has not yet finished speaking. Hold your testimony and hold your questions at the same time. They are not enemies. They are companions on the same road.
“Yea, behold, I will tell you in your mind and in your heart, by the Holy Ghost, which shall come upon you and which shall dwell in your heart. Now, behold, this is the spirit of revelation.”
Personal revelation is one of the most radical doctrines in Latter-day Saint theology. It asserts that every individual has the right—and the responsibility—to receive direct communication from God about the direction of their life. Not through a proxy. Not through an intermediary. Directly, in their own mind and heart, through the Holy Ghost.
For a gay Latter-day Saint man, this doctrine is either the most liberating truth in the Restoration or the most terrifying, depending on whether you trust what God tells you when He tells you something the institution does not want to hear.
The institution has a complicated relationship with personal revelation. On one hand, it teaches that every member has the right to receive it. On the other hand, it insists that personal revelation cannot contradict institutional revelation—which, in practice, means that if God tells you something the handbook does not support, you are expected to assume you got the message wrong.
This book does not make that claim. This book claims—as the scriptures do—that the Spirit speaks to individuals in their own mind and heart, and that what the Spirit communicates is trustworthy. If you have knelt in prayer and asked God whether He loves you as you are, and the answer that came was yes—warm, unmistakable, suffused with peace—then that answer is real. It is revelation. And no institutional handbook has the authority to overrule it.
This is not a license for moral anarchy. Personal revelation operates within a framework of principles: love, service, honesty, compassion, accountability. If a prompting leads you toward kindness, toward generosity, toward deeper love of God and neighbor, you can trust it. The Savior taught that you shall know a tree by its fruits, and the fruits of authentic personal revelation are always the fruits of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, gentleness, goodness, faith.
Many gay Latter-day Saint men have had powerful spiritual experiences that the institution would struggle to explain. They have felt the Spirit confirm their identity as whole and good. They have felt the love of God pour over them in moments of honest prayer—not after repenting of their orientation, but after embracing it. They have felt directed by the Spirit into relationships, communities, and paths that the institution would not sanction. These experiences are real. They are valid. And they are between you and God.
The Ninth Article of Faith declares that God will yet reveal many great and important things. Some of those revelations may come to the institution. But some of them, beloved, will come to you.
Describe a time when you felt the Spirit confirm something about your identity or your path that the institution would not approve of. What did that experience feel like?
What does your personal revelation practice look like? If you do not have one, design one. Include prayer, meditation, scripture study, and time for stillness.
I trust the still, small voice. God speaks to me directly, in my mind and in my heart, and His voice is reliable. I have the right to seek personal revelation for my life.
Personal revelation does not typically arrive as a thunderbolt. It arrives as a whisper—a quiet impression, a feeling of warmth, a sudden clarity, a sense of peace in the midst of turmoil. For many gay Latter-day Saint men, the noise of institutional shame has been so loud for so long that the whisper has been nearly impossible to hear. Developing a personal revelation practice means creating the conditions in which the whisper becomes audible again.
Begin with stillness. Set aside time each day—even five minutes—in which you do nothing. No phone. No music. No scripture study, even. Just silence. This may feel uncomfortable at first, because silence gives space to feelings you have been suppressing. Let those feelings come. They are not enemies. They are messages from your own heart, and many of them contain the seeds of revelation.
Next, bring your real questions to God. Not the questions you think you are supposed to ask—not “Please help me overcome my same-sex attraction” or “Please help me be more obedient.” Your real questions. The ones that keep you awake at night. Father, do You love me as I am? Father, is my love sinful? Father, what do You want for my life—not what the Church wants, but what do You want? These are brave questions, and they deserve brave answers. Trust that God is not offended by your honesty. He already knows what you are thinking. Speaking it aloud is for your benefit, not His.
Then listen. This is the hardest part. Listening requires patience, because God’s answers rarely arrive on our timeline. It requires discernment, because not every thought that enters your mind during prayer is revelation. And it requires humility, because sometimes the answer is not what you expected. But if you persist—if you return to the stillness day after day, bringing your real questions and listening with your real heart—the answers will come. They always do. Not always in words. Sometimes in feelings. Sometimes in the form of a person who appears at the right moment. Sometimes in the unexpected opening of a door you thought was permanently closed.
Keep a revelation journal. When you receive an impression, a feeling, a sense of direction, write it down. Include the date, the circumstances, and what you felt. Over time, this journal becomes a record of God’s communication with you—a personal scripture, written in real time, documenting the ongoing revelation that God offers to every one of His children who is willing to listen.
The psychologist Pargament (2011) distinguishes between positive religious coping—turning to God for comfort, seeking meaning in suffering—and negative religious coping—feeling punished by God, questioning His love, feeling abandoned by the faith community. For LGBTQ Latter-day Saints, both forms frequently coexist. This simultaneous experience is not cognitive dissonance. In Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), it is called dialectical tension: the capacity to hold two apparently contradictory truths at the same time. “I love my faith AND my faith has wounded me.” Both things are true. The tension is not a problem to solve. It is a space to inhabit—with patience, with honesty, and with the confidence that God is big enough to hold all of it.
Jana Riess’s The Next Mormons (2019) documents significant generational shifts in Latter-day Saint attitudes toward LGBTQ inclusion, suggesting that institutional change—while painfully slow—may already be underway. Critically, many who step away from the institutional church do not leave their faith. They leave a specific expression of it. This program supports you in articulating what you believe, what you choose to hold, and what you release—without requiring you to abandon the Restoration or pretend the institution has not caused harm.
This is the question that keeps many gay Latter-day Saint men paralyzed: What do I do when what God tells me in private contradicts what the Church tells me in public?
The honest answer is: this happens to everyone, not just gay members. Throughout the history of the Church, individuals have received personal revelations that were ahead of institutional revelation. Black members felt the Spirit confirm their worth and their standing before God long before the 1978 revelation ended the priesthood and temple ban. Women have felt called to roles of leadership and spiritual authority that the institution has not yet sanctioned. Individuals have felt prompted to marry, to move, to serve in ways that bishops and stake presidents did not endorse. Personal revelation that precedes institutional change is not aberrant. It is a pattern.
If you receive a personal revelation about your identity, your worth, your relationships, or your path that conflicts with current Church policy, you are not wrong. You are not deceived. You are not listening to the wrong spirit. You are experiencing the same phenomenon that every prophet and reformer in the history of God’s dealings with humanity has experienced: receiving light before the institution is ready for it. That light is real. Guard it. Nurture it. Live by it. And trust that the God who gave it to you knows what He is doing.