Homecoming Talk Oct. 2008 Prayer

1.     Who do we pray to?

Elder Faerch, Elder Christensen

There is a surprising number of people in the world today, even amongst us members of the church, who do not fully understand who or what we pray to.  In Preach My gospel the very first line of the very first lesson that we teach says. “God is our Heavenly Father. We are His children. He has a body of flesh and bone that is glorified and perfected. He loves us.” To me you couldn’t explain anymore clearer than Preach My Gospel does about who our Father in Heaven is, and this is who we pray to. Not some spirit that doesn’t have a body that just floats around everywhere, we don’t pray to the mother Mary, or the Holy Ghost, we don’t even pray to Jesus Christ. We only pray to God, our Father in Heaven. There are so many people in the world today who are confused about the true nature of God, we are so blessed to be taught at a young age in Primary the Difference between God and Jesus Christ and the Holy Ghost, there are so many people who don’t have a clue who they pray to. Thankfully if someone is sincere and has pure motives, God will come down and help them to there own level of understanding. As members of the only true and living church, we know who God is, but how often do we stop to think about who we are actually praying to? There was a senior missionary couple who I served closely around.. And I had many opportunities to speak and interact with this particular couple, Elder and Sister Ward. Now Elder ward shared with me something that I will always remember and that I have thought about and used every day since he shared this special bit of information with me. He was at our boarding for some reason or another and we got talking and the subject of prayer was brought up, and he told me “I can never pray until I can see who it is that I am praying to.” Well I thought about this for a while and it made a whole lot of sense to me. How often do we take the time to think and to visualize our Father in Heaven? It can make a world of difference in our prayers. When we can see who it is that we are praying to our prayers become more meaningful, more sincere, I have found that it is easier to understand what my Father in Heavens will for me is.  The bible dictionary helps us to understand why we need to learn our relationship with God to have meaningful prayers. It says. “As soon as we learn the true relationship in which we stand towards God (namely, God is our Father, and we are his children) then at once the prayer becomes natural and instinctive on our part.  Many of the so called difficulties about prayer arise from forgetting this relationship.” I know that what the bible dictionary says is true. When we come to know who God is our prayer will flow naturally, we won’t have to worry about our clumsy thought and we can just pray, and this will benefit ourselves and others greatly.

How do I pray? Why am I praying? Homecoming Talk 2009

2        How do I pray? Why am I praying?

  What is the order of prayer? When should I pray?  God has given to His prophets instructions about how and when He wants us to pray to him. How to pray is very simple. God does not want it to be difficult for us to communicate with Him. He loves us and wants very much to hear from us. We first start by addressing Our Father in Heaven. Any respectful way to do this is appropriate. Next we can express gratitude for our many blessings. Then we can ask about anything that concerns us, or for direction or guidance. Finally we always close in the name of Jesus Christ. It is that easy. As a missionary I had made up a card with these four simple steps of the order of pray that I could carry around and give to people who were concerned with what to do and say when they pray. It had 4 simple steps. #1. Address Heavenly Father. #2. We thank thee…#3. We ask thee…#4. In the name of Jesus Christ Amen. I remember giving one of these cards to a young man about 16 years old who was concerned that he would not be able to pray, I quickly gave him one of these prayer cards, and explained to him how to use it. He agreed to pray, and he prayed the following. Heavenly Father……. We thank thee for blessing us…….we ask thee for…..blessing us. And then he concluded his prayer. Well his prayer was very short… maybe didn’t make the most sense, but he had probably the most important element we need in prayer. He was sincere. He was willing. He never had really prayed before but he was willing to give it a try. Now that is the order in which we should pray for most occasions, and with this order of prayer There is a special language we use, we show our greatest respect when we pray to God. We can do this by using words like Thee and Thou instead of saying you. We take time to think about the desires of our heart, rather than mumble out meaningless words and sentences that do not come from the heart. Now this is how we should pray, but just as important as knowing how is when. This answer is very simple though and can be found in 2 Nephi 32 V. 9 where it says. 9 But behold, I say unto you that ye must pray always, and not faint; that ye must not perform any thing unto the Lord save in the first place ye shall pray unto the Father in the name of Christ…. We always need to be praying. Just before I came home I had an interview with my mission President. President Probst... and we discussed about how many times a day we pray as missionaries… and we came up with 30 prayers a day could be quite a normal day. He told me that lots of missionaries will go home and will not feel the spirit like they did when they were on a mission and it discourages them… he said it was because they were not praying like they used to. If we are always praying at every opportunity, we will always see the Lords hand in our life; we will always feel the spirit. Last about the order of prayer is we need to always remember to close in the name of Jesus Christ. He is the one who makes it possible to return to live in Gods presence, He is the one that makes anything good possible. Now that is the order that we most often use when we pray, and it is an important part of prayer, but still like I mentioned before, sincerity is the most important thing we need in our prayers. One thing that I have been able to learn that makes sincere prayers even better though is sincere prayers with a specific purpose. I have come to learn that sincere, specific prayer with a specific purpose, get specific answers with specific blessing. Now I know that Heavenly Father knows what we need, and He wants so much to give it to us, but unless we ask for it, He will most likely not give us that which we desire. The scriptures tell us “Ask and ye shall receive knock and it shall be opened unto you.” (Share story of investigators asking specifically to know if the Book of Mormon is true.) Now that we have established how we pray, let’s go over why we pray. Well if you think about it whenever we pray it is because we want something… I’m not saying that we are selfish, but when we pray we have a purpose we want to get something done. Whether its we want to have a safe trip as we travel, or we want our food to be blessed, or we just want to express our thanks to God because we have been blessed so much, and we want Him to know of our gratitude. There is always something we should want to accomplish in our prayers. God is this way also He always wants to get something done, he doesn’t do things that don’t have any meaning. The trick though is we need to be willing and able to find out and accept what it is that God wants for us. We may think we already know what we need, what we want accomplished. But God really does know so much better. I think that the key to finding out what it is that God really wants for us is simply diligence and obedience. If we do what we have been asked and continue to do it, regardless of what the outcome may be, we will prove ourselves worthy to do Gods will, thus God will revile His will to us because we will do something with the instructions that He gives us. When we can accomplish this we will have a perfect understanding of why we pray and what it is that we need to pray for.

Installment 3 on Homecoming Talk Oct. 2008Elder

Elder Swasey, Elder Ronny, Elder Christensen   King Williams town South Africa

3        Recognizing, and responding from answers to prayers.

   I don’t think it is always easy for us to recognize answers to our prayers.  God makes us put forth some sort of effort on our part usually and He works in this pattern to cause us to learn and grow. Elder Richard G. Scott says that our responses to prayer often come a piece at a time until we receive the whole answer. When me and my companion would go and follow up on a lesson that we had taught to an investigator, we would have them explain as much as they could to us, and then we would help them with the parts that they were missing. We could have easily just re-taught them the lesson, but we knew that when they had to think and participate they would gain so much more from our visits. I think the same principal we used is very similar with what our Heavenly Father does. He could easily just tell us everything we need to know, but then the effort on our part is lost and we won’t grow. Answers to prayers are always available, whether its yes, no, go here, go there, do this or do that, be patient I’ll take care of it, or answer could be simply use your best judgment it will be fine. We just have to be able to be in tune with the spirit enough and listening and we will always find our answers whatever it may be. Being in a place that is conducive to the spirit will always help with us accomplishing this task.  (Tell in Your own words I remember an experience I had just a few months ago, were my companion and I were preparing a meeting for the missionaries in our area, we knelt down and prayed before we started planning …. Nothing…. In a place where the spirit could prompt and the spirit prompted me that we needed to pray again. We responded to the prompting that we received and then the revelation flowed) When we respond to the answers that we have identified that God has given us.  He gives us more. Because we have proven that we will respond. As a missionary you get to watch the restoration dvd many times, and you begin to be able to quote it. One of my favorite quotes from that film is a part where…… I contend that God has given to each of us the ability to think… to reason for our selves.  And it is true although we should always seek instruction and guidance from our Heavenly Father, we should also use our own skill and judgment for many things. For example God will probably not tell you what flavor of  ice cream to buy while you are at the store. PMG explains this really well there is a quote by Dallin H Oaks in PMG under the chapter following the spirit where it says.

Prayer...Sacrament meeting talk Oct. 2009

4        Expressing Gratitude

We need to account for what our Father in Heaven has given us. One of the best ways to do this I have found is each time you receive a specific blessing that you have been in need of, as soon as you can kneel down and express your gratitude to your Father in Heaven, and tell Him about what you plan on doing with the blessings that you have received, this makes you much more likely to receive further blessings. In my first area in Kwa Magxaki My companion and myself prayed specifically to be led to a area where we would find someone who would receive us and be baptized, we felt prompted to go down Mqokolo street, and our prayers were answered as we soon later found Nceba and some of his friends. I will always remember that day, we knocked on his door he was there studying with some of his friends and he welcomed us right in, we taught what I thought was the best Restoration that had ever been taught, the spirit was so strong, immediately after we got out of his home we offered a prayer of gratitude, and it felt so good. From that time on every time we taught Nceba it was a awesome spiritual experience, a few months later Nceba was baptized and some of his friends soon followed his example. ( Nceba then did this and that … I got to go to Magxaki just a few weeks ago, and he will be leaving for mission this next year…) When we receive answers or blessings and then report on them. We will receive more.  I can relate this to when we would ask the members for people to teach, If we gained there trust and they gave us a referral, if we acted promptly with that referral and treated it like the gold that it was, and then told the member who gave us the referral about how our visit went with there friend and asked further for there help, they were always willing to give it.

The picture is special because Lena just had her "farewell" and is going to serve in Canada!  She is going to be a great missionary just like her brother.  This picture is one of the last we have of Bryce ...a few days before the accident.  He was wearing this coat that he got at DI...a girl's coat.  He loved it.  

How Can I Make Sure that My Prayers Reach Heaven?

Brad looks a little strange with his arm suspended.  This is his reception and he had a picture taken with his friends...his arm is where Bryce would have been in the picture.  I think he was probably there.  It is hard to see all these boys grow up but Bryce stays 21 years old to all of us. 
I was searching my Documents and found Bryce's original talk that he gave when he got home from South Africa.  I thought I would post it.  It is pretty darn nice.    I will start at the end and work my way to the beginning for reasons that will reveal themselves as I continue to post. 

5        How can I make sure that my prayer reaches Heaven?

In Enos verse 4.  Enos says that he did raise his voice high that it reached the heavens. When Dallin and I were younger and we gave a not so heart felt prayer, our mom would say something like “ well I don’t think that one made it past the ceiling. So to conclude my talk I would like to speak real briefly about some things that can help our prayers to be heard, and to help them to go past the ceiling up to Heaven. I was reading Nephi 2 v. 16 this week and I found a place where it explains why Nephi’s prayer was heard, why they reached Heaven. In verse 16 Nephi says “having great desires to know of the mysteries of God, wherefore, I did cry unto the Lord; and behold he did visit me..”  Great desire is what caused Nephi’s prayer to be answered as he received a visit from the Lord. How do we gain a great desire? What is a great desire? I think it would be safe to say that a great desire is anything that is on the same course as what God desires, or basically we could say anything that will help us and other to gain eternal life. Those types of things are great desires. We can also have our own desires of the world, that wont really help us to achieve what God’s desire is, we often come across our own desires of the world and get them mixed up with the things that we think are of the most importance and we often wonder why we receive no answer. In those times if we could stop and evaluated what it is we are praying for, we could soon come to the realization that we need to get our priorities straightened out. I know that God would be willing to help us do this. When the Lord visits Nephi He even tells him why he had Great Desires and why his pray was answered in verse 19 the Lord says “Blessed art thou, Nephi, because thou hast sought me diligently, with lowliness of heart.” Nephi was diligent therefore he was also obedient. He did what was right what he knew he was suppose to do, this made him eligible for the spirit and when we have the spirit we have great desires. This is how we make our prayers reach Heaven; our great desires carry it speedily all the way.  While I was serving in a place called George there was a single mother named Sonja who felt the spirit as she learned about the restoration, she acted on the instructions she received, she followed the spirit and gained great desires, she had been smoking heavily and drinking coffee and tea for over 20 years, but was able to stop in one day. Her great desires caused her to know that she could change through the Atonement of Jesus Christ; she came to know that her desires could be the same as Gods. Sonja was baptized; her family came hundreds of miles for Christmas and found out that she had joined the church. They promptly left after hearing that news, condemning her for what she has done. Her co workers gave her a hard time, and she received many other trails, but because of her great desires and the answers she received from prayers which led her to be able to experience the healing power and peace that comes from the Atonement, she was able to withstand those trails. She was able to make the 14 hour trip to Johannesburg to go do baptisms for the dead a few months later, and after membership in the church for a year she was able to go back and to take her endowments out. She has remained active and strong in the church despite the great adversary because her prayers reached heaven and came back to her with peace and direction.  I know there is so much power in prayer, I know that God knows us and loves us. He does answer our prayers. I know that the pray of the prophet Joseph Smith was answered, when he prayed to know which church was true. I know that God and Jesus Christ did appear to him, and he was soon later called to be a prophet of God. I know that we still have a prophet on the earth to this day, even Thomas Monson. I know that the Savior Jesus Christ lives. I know that He suffered for each and everyone one of us so we could be made clean to return and live with our Father again. In the name of Jesus Christ Amen.