First Nephi 11:1

 For it came to pass after I had desired to know the things that my father had seen, and believing that the Lord was able to make them known unto me, as I sat pondering in mine heart I was caught away in the Spirit of the Lord, yea, into an exceedingly high mountain, which I never had before seen, and upon which I never had before set my foot.

Nephi gives us a formula for revelation:

1. Desire to know
2. Belief or faith that we can know
3. Ponder and study

Alma taught, "If ye can no more than desire to believe, let that desire work in you" (Alma 32:27). The desire to believe and to learn is a gift. We then have to believe that God will answer the desire that He placed in us to begin with. Knowing that God is unchanging and no respecter of persons is essential to this belief. If He reveals a thing to others, we can have confidence He will reveal the same thing to us. Finally, we have to do our homework. We must exert our best efforts to understand what God has already revealed to others. We must extend our faculties to the limit, and then the Lord will open them the rest of the way. The Lord explained to a young Oliver Cowdery after he had failed to help Joseph Smith with translating the Book of Mormon, "you have supposed that I would give it unto you, when you took no thought save it was to ask me" (D&C 9:7). When we apply Nephi's formula for revelation, we can be assured that the Lord will reveal to us all that we need to know to come unto Him and serve Him. He will withhold nothing from us that is for our good.