A Prayer of Faith

We are currently on vacation visiting a friend who is a widow.  She is basically blind with serious health challenges, and she is alone most of the time in her small apartment waiting for her Father in Heaven to take her so she can join her husband she loves so much.  Yesterday I explained to my seven-year-old daughter that our friend’s husband died many years ago and that’s why she lives alone.  Today after Church I was sitting outside with my daughter and she asked me about our friend, with clear concern in her voice: “If someone prays that her husband can come back to her, will it happen?”  This seemed at first to be a hypothetical question, but I soon realized that this “someone” was my daughter; after learning out our widowed friend’s loneliness, my daughter had prayed on her own that our friend’s husband could come back to her.  I was touched by her genuine love and concern and I explained that he probably wasn’t going to come back, but rather that someday our friend would join her husband when she passed away.  I tried to convince my daughter that this was okay because it would be sometime relatively soon when our friend would die and this wonderful reunion would take place.  But to this she responded, “But then I won’t get to see him for a really long time!”  I was moved both by her clear compassion towards our widowed friend as well as her faith that God could answer her secret prayer in behalf of someone else. 

               The scriptural phrase that comes to mind as I think about this experience is “prayer of faith”.  My daughter didn’t just pray; she had pure faith that God will bless our friend, and I’m certain that in some way He will because of her prayer.  James taught us that “the prayer of faith shall save the sick,” highlighting that it is not the casual prayers that bring miracles but those offered by the truly believing (James 5:15).  The Doctrine and Covenants uses the same phrase several times, teaching us that “all things” are to be done “by the prayer of faith” (D&C 28:13).  We learn that “the Spirit is given unto you by the prayer of faith” and that we should uphold our leaders “by the prayer of faith” (D&C 42:14, 43:12, 93:51).  Missionaries are to teach “that which is taught them by the Comforter through the prayer of faith” (D&C 52:9).  We are given what we need from the Lord “according to the prayer of faith” and we obtain blessings by “diligence and humility and the prayer of faith” (D&C 93:52, 104:79).  It’s easy to pray, but to obtain our most important desires from the Lord we have to learn to pray with real faith, to truly believe and trust in our Heavenly Father’s power.  My daughter had no problem believing that if she prayed for our friend, He could bring back her husband to her.  That’s the kind of faith we must put in our prayers—just like the Nephite prophets of old had “faith in their prayers” according to the Lord—to help others, receive the Spirit, teach the gospel, and obtain the Lord’s greatest blessings for us (D&C 10:47).