Meaningful Prayer Talk

I gave this talk in church at the end of August and I feel blessed to have been able to take time to reflect on how aware of our family the Lord is and how he knows the best blessings for us. We've been living in Lethbridge for just over a year and it has been just the right place for our family.

This is for Mom since I don't think anyone will read it!

I've been asked to speak on “having meaningful prayer”, which is a very personal topic to me.

Three years ago when Matt and I graduated from university we both found jobs in Lloydminster. At a time of economic downturn, many civil engineering students were having their job offers revoked and teaching openings for education graduates were slim because more senior teachers were putting off retirement in the hopes that their investments would pick up again. Clearly this was an answer to fast and prayers.

Neither of us would have put the city of Lloydminster in our “top five”, however, we felt that was where the Lord wanted and needed us to be so we pack up our few sticks of student furniture in a trailer. Within a year we were settled in our first home with a new baby boy, enjoying new friends and new experiences.

Then last summer, we felt that Lloydminster wasn't where we were supposed to be anymore. Matt’s job supervising highways kept him away from home a lot and his work environment was not an uplifting place to be. We started to fast and pray. We counselled with Him in prayer about a better work situation for Matt and our family. Shortly after, Matt felt like he should send a resume to two companies in Lethbridge, neither of which was seeking new employees. We thought to ourselves “We'll see what comes of it” without really expecting that much would.

Months later when the resumes were completely out of mind, Matt received a call to come into one of the company offices for an interview. A person from Idaho had recently accepted and then declined a job offer for a position with the company when Matt had sent in his resume. I was struck by the interviewer's explanation for calling Matt in for an interview. He said the name Matt Harker at the top of the resume stood out to him as a person who wanted to move his family back to his roots in Southern Alberta. Matt felt that the employer felt strongly impressed that he should hire him before he had even interviewed him but couldn’t articulate why.

Matt was offered the job early in September and asked to start work in Lethbridge by October 1. After our initial elation our thoughts turned to the long to-do list in front of us.  Matt would still be working 60-80 hour weeks until we moved. And I was pregnant and busy with an energetic little boy at the time. We wondered how it would be possible to sell our Lloydminster home, pack up its contents and find a place for us to live in Lethbridge... all within three weeks.

It was miraculous to witness the Lord's answers to our prayers as we met each of these challenges in what had seemed to be an impossible time frame.

Within 5 days of posting our home on Kijiji our home was sold for the amount we wanted.

My recently called visiting teacher, who had moved no fewer than 19 times in her life, knew exactly the help I would need. She made a meal, brought her teenage son over to babysit Jonas and we packed up the entire kitchen. Other friends brought boxes, helped me clean the home, and loaded the moving truck.

Matt and I found a house within hours of looking in Lethbridge and some very generous family invited us to live in their house in the meantime until our possession date.

As I reflect over this experience and my life as a whole I realize that it has been guided and blessed by the Lord's hand as a direct result of prayer.

What an incredible blessing we have to be able to communicate and be heard by our Father in Heaven. He knows and loves each of us perfectly. He knows our desires and what we need better than we know for ourselves. As a loving parent he has many blessings he wants to give us, but we have to ask and we have to seek.

Matthew 7:7-11

Ask, and it shall be ^bgivenyou; ^cseek, and ye shall find; ^dknock, and it shall be opened unto you:

 For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that ^aseeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened.

 Or what man is there of you, whom if his son ask ^abread, will he give him a stone?

 Or if he ask a fish, will he give him a serpent?

 If ye then, ^abeingevil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him?

Prayer is not a passive process of asking for what we need. Rather we need to humbly ask the Lord what His will is for us is and we need to exert great effort and work on our part to discover His answer. Elder Richard G. Scott of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles describes the process of prayer this way:

“Often when we pray for help with a significant matter, Heavenly Father will give us gentle promptings that require us to think, exercise faith, work, at times struggle, then act. It is a step-by-step process that enables us to discern inspired answers.”

I like that Elder Scott uses the word “gentle” to describe the promptings the Lord gives us. This is a reminder to me that I must be living the gospel in order to have the constant companionship of the Holy Ghost so I can receive and recognize answers to prayer.

As well, it reminds me that my activities throughout the day should not distract or detract from the spirit. I need to provide myself often with still moments such as reading the scriptures or going to the temple so I can be sensitive to divine inspiration.

Also notice that Elder Scott uses active words such as “think”, “exercise faith”, “work”, “struggle”, and “act”. One of the greatest blessings of making prayer an active process of work in our lives is that it becomes a means to grow and learn personally from our Father in Heaven. 

Through prayer the Lord can teach us patience, humility, diligence in seeking, faith, trust, obedience, gratitude, and charity, among other Christlike attributes. Thus, through prayer we become more like our Saviour and more worthy to return and live with our Heavenly Father.

The scriptures provide many examples of men and women who, looking beyond the limitations of their abilities and experiences, have meekly sought the Lord’s help through prayer. Esther could never have persuaded the King to spare her people or Nephi have obtained the plates from Laban had they not sought the help of a supreme being. When we trust in Heavenly Father he can make us more than we are.

Having meaningful prayers is a vital pattern that will bring us closer to our Heavenly Father and to realizing the potential he sees in us. We need to approach Him in humility, we need to align our will with His, and we need to actively seek and respond to the promptings he gives us in answer. We also need to “pray always”.

D&C 10:5 teaches:

 ^aPray always, that you may come off ^bconqueror; yea, that you may conquer Satan, and that you may ^cescape the hands of the servants of Satan that do uphold his work.

D&C 19:38 further teaches:

 38 ^aPray always, and I will ^bpour out my Spirit upon you, and great shall be your blessing—yea, even more than if you should obtain ^ctreasures of earth and corruptibleness to the extent thereof.

The Lord promises great blessings if we will pray always. But what does it mean to pray always?

I thought to pray always meant to keep a prayer in your heart and mind as you go about your day. When I read Elder David A. Bednar’s conference address “Pray Always” I realized the meaning is much deeper than that.

He applies the familiar story of God creating the earth as a pattern to teach us how to have more meaningful prayers.

Moses 3:4-5 reads:

 4 And now, behold, I say unto you, that these are the generations of the heaven and of the earth, when they were ^acreated, in the day that I, the Lord God, made the ^bheaven and the earth,

 5 And every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew. For I, the Lord God,^acreated all things, of which I have spoken, ^bspiritually, before they were ^cnaturally upon the face of the earth. 

Just as God “created all things…spiritually, before they were naturally upon…the earth” so Elder Bednar says “meaningful morning prayer [should be] an important element in the spiritual creation of each day- and [precede] the temporal creation, so [that] meaningful morning and evening prayers are linked to and a continuation of each”.

He suggests that after expressions of gratitude we should we counsel with the Lord in our morning prayer about characteristics or behaviours that are not in keeping with our spiritual growth. We should “[plead] for understanding, direction, and help to do the things we cannot do in our strength alone”.

Then as we go about our day we should keep a prayer in our heart for continued help and direction. As we do so, we will recognize increased strength from the Lord.  

He concludes:

“At the end of our day, we kneel again and report back to our Father. We review the events of the day and express heartfelt thanks for the blessings and help we received. We repent and with the assistance of the Spirit of the Lord, identify ways we can do and become better tomorrow. Thus evening prayer builds upon and is a continuation of our morning prayer. And our evening prayer also is a preparation for meaningful morning prayer.”

It is important that like the one leper, we return to the Lord in our evening prayer and express gratitude for the healing influence of his assistance offered to us throughout the day. Not only should we always be sure to give thanks when we pray, Elder Bednar advises that sometimes we should offer prayers of only thanksgiving, simply rejoicing in the blessings we have received and asking for nothing.

As I studied the life of our Saviour, the scriptures, and the General Conference messages to prepare for this talk I found many ways we can have more meaningful prayers with Heavenly Father. In fact I found so many ways that I was left with a long list that I struggled to narrow down. Last week when I went to the temple I felt impressed that I should talk about how praying for others. I had come across this topic a few times but it wasn’t until I was in the temple that I was struck by the true importance of including it in my talk and applying it more to my prayers.

The Savior provides the supreme example of praying for others. Even in last earthly act, in the agony of His suffering as he hung on the cross, His prayer was “Father, ^bforgive them; for they know not what ^cthey do”.

In Gethsemane, He who was spotless, shouldered our sins, and bled at every pore as pleaded in prayer to the Father for us.

As disciples of Christ we must pray for others, for our family and friends, as well as those who “despitefully use us”. Jesus taught through his words and example that charity is the most important virtue we can attain to. We practice charity and follow our Savior’s example as we look outside ourselves to learn, pray for and strive to meet the needs of others. Interestingly, it is often when we pray earnestly in behalf of another that we find answers to our own prayers.

I bear my testimony that I know that as we earnestly seek to have more meaningful prayer with God, our Father, he will bless us the highest of blessings we can obtain.

In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.