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.