The Sacrament and the Prayer of Faith

Perhaps the most succinct instruction on how to obtain the Spirit is this statement in the Doctrine and Covenants: “And the Spirit shall be given unto you by the prayer of faith” (D&C 42:14).  I believe that this is telling us that as we pray with real faith—wherever we may be or whatever we may doing—the Lord will, according to His will, bless us with His Spirit.  The key ingredients are asking and believing; in other words we have to really want to have the Spirit with us to guide us. 

               As I partook of the Sacrament today, I thought of that verse and wondered if I might interpret it to mean specifically the Sacrament prayers.  Both the prayer on the water and the bread promise that we “may have his Spirit to be with [us]” as a result of the covenant that we make there (D&C 20:77, 79).  As so perhaps more than any other prayer that we offer, these two specific prayers can work to bring us the Spirit in our lives more than any others.  But we have to offer those prayers in faith.  And how do we do that?  First, the Sacrament prayers must be our prayers.  It’s very easy to attend Sacrament Meeting and hear the prayers without offering them ourselves.  The Lord commanded each of us: “Thou shalt go to the house of prayer and offer up thy sacraments upon my holy day” (D&C 59:9).  I believe that means that even though the exact words of the prayers are known in advance, we still must offer them individually in our hearts as we hear them in our ears.  Another way that we need faith in our offering of the Sacrament prayers is a belief in ourselves and our ability to keep the commitments we are making.  We promise that we will take upon us the name of Christ, that we will always remember Christ, and that we will keep God’s commandments.  Those are not promises to be made lightly and it takes conscious and concerted efforts to try to live up to those commitments (which we of course never fully do).  And I think it takes faith in ourselves to make the covenant in the first place.  So we offer that prayer in faith that we can live up to our end of the covenant.  Of course it also take faith to trust that the Lord will hold up His end of the agreement that is stated in the Sacrament prayers.  We must truly believe that as we keep the commandments and remember the Savior, that He will indeed grant unto His Spirit.  We must trust that He is both able and willing to guide us with His Spirit as we live up to our promises.  In short, it takes faith in Him.

               To me everything about the Sacrament prayer calls for our faith—faith in ourselves, faith in God, and faith that the Spirit really can come into our lives.  The prayers on the bread and the water can, at least in one sense, constitute the prayer of faith by which the Spirit is given unto us.