talks part two

Prayer

Purpose of prayer
Prayer is the means by which we communicate with our Father in Heaven.

When do we pray?
There is no limit on how many prayers we can offer or how long they can be. In fact in D&C 10:5 we are commanded, “Pray always, that you may come off conqueror, yea that you may conquer Satan, and that you may escape the hand of the servants of Satan that do uphold his work”

While it is not possible for us to be on our knees at all times, we can have a prayer in our heart throughout the day
-To me this means that we are constantly thanking the Lord for our blessings recognize them throughout the day.
-It means that we ask for help when we are struggling at work, or school
-When I call my wife in the middle of the day and tell her about the hard time I am having at work, she is always very quick to remind me to turn to the Lord.
-When Alma and Amulek teaching some of the Zoramites the gospel, who had never heard t before, one of the first things they taught them was how to pray. On teaching the people how to pray Alma 34:27 reads, “Yea, and when you do not cry unto the Lord, let your hearts be full, drawn out in prayer unto him continually for your welfare, and also for the welfare of those who are around you.” The passage continues in verse 38 “live in thanksgiving daily, for the many mercies and blessings which he doth bestow upon you.”

How do we pray?
-When we pray we address our Heavenly Father and no one else. We pray in the name of our Savior, Jesus Christ.
-Prayer should be treated as a two-way conversation between you and your Heavenly Father.
We should say our prayer as if we were speaking face-to-face with Him.
-Our Father in Heaven knows how thoughts and our hearts, but he wants us to communicate with him and let him know our thoughts, desires, and what we are thankful for.
-Recounting the teachings of his father, Moroni wrote that, “if he shall pray and not with real intent of heart; yea, it profiteth him nothing, for God receiveth none such.”
-When we pray we should be sincere. It is important to avoid using vain repetitions, that said, it is not wrong to pray for the same thing more than once if we are sincere in our desires. President Hinckley said, “The trouble with most of our prayers is that we give them as if we were picking up the telephone and ordering groceries—we place our order and hang up. We need to meditate, contemplate, think of what we are praying about and for and then speak to the Lord as one man speaketh to another."
-Elder Wirthlin said, “Will prayers that do not demand much of your thought merit much attention from our Heavenly Father? When you find yourself getting into a routine with your prayers, step back and think. Meditate for a while on the things for which you really are grateful. Look for them. They don’t have to be grand or glorious. Sometimes we should express our gratitude for the small and simple things like the scent of the rain, the taste of your favorite food, or the sound of a loved one’s voice. Thinking of things we are grateful for is a healing balm. It helps us get outside ourselves. It changes our focus from our pains and our trials to the abundance of this beautiful world we live in. Think of those things you truly need. Bring your goals and your hopes and your dreams to the Lord and set them before Him. Heavenly Father wants us to approach Him and ask for His divine aid. Explain to Him the trials you are facing. Set before Him your righteous desires.”

Receiving answers to prayer
-Often we make requests through prayer and I believe that our Father in Heaven wants to help us, but if we are to progress in this life we have to do our part to receive the blessing.
-Speaking to Oliver Cowdrey about prayer and receive answers the Lord said in D&C 9:7-9 “Behold, you have not understood; you have supposed that I would give it unto you, when you took no thought save it was to ask me. But, behold, I say unto you, that you must study it out in your mind; then you must ask me if it be right, and if it is right I will cause that your bosom shall burn within you; therefore, you shall feel that it is right.”
-I have found that most times I have earnestly prayed for a blessing or an answer to a question, it has taken time and happens in a way I am not expecting.
-How Annalisa and I found ourselves here in New York was certainly an answer to many prayers.
-About a year before I was to graduate from BYU-Idaho, I made the decision that I wanted to pursue a career in finance and work in New York City.
-I knew it would be an uphill battle, but was determined to do my best.
-In the process I had to make many cold calls to people in the industry trying to impress them and asking for their help in my job search. Every time I did this my wife reminded me to pray and ask for the Lord help.
-In all of our family prayers and my personal prayers, I would sincerely ask for the Lords help in my job search. When we prayed we felt as if we were making the right decisions and that things would work out.
-After a few months passed, I had talked to many people but had only been able to line up a few interviews that ended with, “we’d love have you in our company, but we don’t have a position for you.” It seemed to me that it wasn’t going to work out, and I should look at other options.
-I came to New York 4 times during my senior year, and I remember specifically on one occasion feeling the spirit touch me as the plane was landing at LaGuardia airport, telling me that I was home.
-As graduation approached is was becoming clear that I was not going to have a job when I graduated, and Annalisa and I were faced with a tough decision: should we move to NYC and trust that it will work out, or be conservative and move in with one of our parents and try to find a job?
-We made the decision that we would go to NYC whether I had a job or not, and trust that the Lord would bless us.
-Soon after we made this commitment, we started to see the blessings pour in. Annalisa was able to secure a job with the company she had done an internship with a year and a half before, and they offered her a relocation bonus to help us move from Rexburg to New York. I received a random email from the business department letting me know that I qualified for a scholarship.
Annalisa and I took one last trip to NYC about 3 weeks before I was to graduate so I could do more interviews and we could look for an apartment. Interviewing was not that fruitful, but we were able to find an apartment that was well within our budget in inwood. The night before we were to leave the city, I got a call back from HR of a company I had interviewed with 7 or 8 months before. They had a position that they wanted me to interview for but I was leaving the next day and wouldn’t be able to do it. We scheduled a phone interview for the next week, and after that they wanted to meet me in person. After graduating, we flew to New York the following Monday morning and got the keys to our apartment and I made it to the interview that afternoon. After writing samples, background checks, and more interviews they finally offered me the position about 2 weeks after we had moved to New York.
-I learned many things from this experience; the most important being that the Lord answers prayers in his own way, and in his own time. It is our job to trust that he will bless us as we obey his commandments.
-Over the past year, my boss has told me many times that the thing that impressed him the most when I was interviewing was that I was so determined to work on Wall St that I moved to NYC without a job. Had we not followed Lord’s guidance and moved to NYC, I would have never got the job I have today.
-Elder Wirthlin taught that, “The rich blessings that can come into our lives through prayer are available to all. The poor have as much access as the rich. The movie star has no advantage over the laborer. We are all equal in our ability to approach the throne of our Heavenly King. The Savior tells us, “Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me” (Rev. 3:20). As we approach our Heavenly Father in the name of Christ, we open the windows of heaven. We can receive from Him truth, light, and knowledge. Prayer is the doorway through which we commence our discipleship to things heavenly and eternal. We will never be alone so long as we know how to pray. It is my earnest desire that members of the Church will reexamine their own lives through the context of prayer. That we may ever lift up our voices to our Heavenly Father and fill our souls with celestial light is my prayer.”

Family prayer
-Finally I would like to speak on the importance of praying as a family.
-Elder John H Groberg taught, “Our Father in Heaven wants us to have strong, loving families. One of the great helps he has given us to achieve this is family prayer. All of us, single or married, are eternally part of some family—someway, somewhere, somehow—and much of our joy in life comes as we correctly recognize and properly develop those family relationships. We come to this earth charged with a mission: to learn to love and serve one another. To best help us accomplish this, God has placed us in families, for he knows that is where we can best learn to overcome selfishness and pride and to sacrifice for others and to make happiness and helpfulness and humility and love the very essence of our character. We learn that friends and neighbors come and go but family is forever, and as we learn this, we find that we are eternally our brother’s keeper and we begin to realize how much help we need. How we should thank God for the opportunity of family prayer!”