In my experience, the word of God does not come when trying to prove your particular religious view. It didn't come that way on my mission. I believe in this case it is absent and you wind up making a lot of foolish judgements and statements. However, if there is a disagreement, and you leave it to the Lord, He often enables information to distill upon your own mind such that you hear Him give intelligence to you in a way you hadn't thought of before. This process is refining and exciting. And in that state, without guile, without angst or contention, you can communicate the new things you've learned in His way and leave the result to Him without any bitterness, but a full heart.

This, of course leaves no guarantee of how anything will be received by others, even if given in a humble, curious, childlike manner. Intent is often misjudged and the way we see others is often like looking into a mirror of ourselves.

And by this means, the gospel is hidden from the contentious. 

It is the contentious who think they know the gospel. Who use its precepts which they don't understand to cement their arguments. It is they who are so rigid, that they cannot see it anew every day but who suffer by accepting creeds devised by men from a gospel originally revealed in its purity.

The gospel may be plain and precious, but obtaining a knowledge of God requires unfolding those things that are hidden, meaning the mysteries which God will not give except to those who seek Him with all their heart.1 Him, and not an idol.

The scriptures are sealed books to those who reject the Word of God, or because of other sins they lose light, they cannot be understood, and they cast many things never noticed or never allowed to be noticed as of no worth.2

 

Notes

1. "And ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart." (Jeremiah 29:13)

2. "But behold, there are many that harden their hearts against the Holy Spirit, that it hath no place in them; wherefore, they cast many things away which are written and esteem them as things of naught." (2 Nephi 33:2)

 

See Also

Article: Christ is the Prototype of the Saved Man

Article: Todd White on the Holy Spirit

Article: The Plainness of God