By LaNae Valentine

LaNae Valentine, "Removing Roadblocks to Revelation", New Era, Jan. 2011, 18–21

LaNae Valentine, Ph.D., is the Director of Women's Services and Resources at Brigham Young University. This article is taken from a BYU devotional address, "Discerning the Will of the Lord for Me," given on June 29, 2004.

Making decisions isn't always easy. But it's easier when you get the obstacles out of the way.
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Some choices are easy: What cereal should I eat? What shoes should I wear? Should I watch TV or read the scriptures?

But other choices are more difficult: Where should I go to college? When should I go on a mission? Who should I marry?

How can we make these "big" decisions when we don't know what the future holds? After all, we don't want to make a mistake. But if we are going to become like our Heavenly Father, we have to learn how, with His guidance, to make important decisions for ourselves.

We know Heavenly Father loves us and wants us to succeed. So when we are having difficulty discerning His will, it may be because we are doing something to complicate the process. Here are six barriers that might interfere with our ability to receive personal revelation.