Not A Conversation

In the Face to Face event with Elder Holland and Elder Eyring, a question was asked about how we can make our prayers more like a conversation with God.  They suggested that this was in fact not the right way to think about our prayers, and that we shouldn’t expect them to be conversations like we would have with a friend.  They stressed that we should see our prayers in the light of approaching the throne of God—and that is not something to be taken lightly.  Even though we believe that the Lord is indeed close and hears all of our prayers, we should not assume that we can command responses from Him or that it will be easy to receive communication from Him.  As the Bible Dictionary states, prayer is a form of “work” on our part, and we should not feel that we are doing it wrong if we don’t get answers immediately. 

I believe the scriptures support this teaching that prayer is a sacred process and one that we participate in with great humility and respect for our Father in Heaven. We can see in the language of the prayers of those in the scriptures a great reverence for Deity and a correct understanding of our relationship with Him.  For example, this is how the Brother of Jared approached God: “Now behold, O Lord, and do not be angry with thy servant because of his weakness before thee; for we know that thou art holy and dwellest in the heavens, and that we are unworthy before thee; because of the fall our natures have become evil continually; nevertheless, O Lord, thou hast given us a commandment that we must call upon thee, that from thee we may receive according to our desires” (Ether 3:2).  We can hear the meekness of his words; He did not speak to His Father like a casual friend but rather like a perfect omniscient Being who knew him intimately.  We sense this same humility in the words of the father of King Lamoni: “O God, Aaron hath told me that there is a God; and if there is a God, and if thou art God, wilt thou make thyself known unto me, and I will give away all my sins to know thee, and that I may be raised from the dead, and be saved at the last day” (Alma 22:18).  There’s no sense of entitlement in his words; he was unpretentiousness and hoped with simple faith that God would condescend to answer his prayer.  Christ Himself gave us an example when He addressed His Father when He was on the earth, and He showed that same deference to Deity.  We can sense that perfect humility in His great intercessory prayer: “O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was….  Holy Father, keep through thine own name those whom thou hast given me, that they may be one, as we are….  O righteous Father, the world hath not known thee: but I have known thee” (John 17:5, 11, 25). 

Other prayers in the scriptures also help us see that obtaining answers to prayers—hearing the voice of the Lord—can take a significant amount of effort.  We shouldn’t expect that even if we have much experience with prayer that we can quickly obtain answers like in a normal conversation with another person.  This was certainly the experience of Enos who said, “I kneeled down before my Maker, and I cried unto him in mighty prayer and supplication for mine own soul; and all the day long did I cry unto him; yea, and when the night came I did still raise my voice high that it reached the heavens” (Enos 1:4).  It took an enormous amount of effort and pleading on his part to hear the voice of the Lord come to him.  And even after that experience, it doesn’t appear that it necessarily got much easier for him to receive answers to prayers: “After I, Enos, had heard these words, my faith began to be unshaken in the Lord; and I prayed unto him with many long strugglings for my brethren, the Lamanites” (Enos 1:11).  The phrase “many long strugglings” certainly suggests a great amount of work on Enos’s part to hear the voice of the Lord.  In Liberty Jail this seems to have also been Joseph’s experience: “O God, where art thou? And where is the pavilion that covereth thy hiding place?  How long shall thy hand be stayed, and thine eye, yea thy pure eye, behold from the eternal heavens the wrongs of thy people and of thy servants, and thine ear be penetrated with their cries?” (D&C 121:1-2)  The answers did come for Joseph, but it was in the Lord’s timing and in the Lord’s way.  As Paul taught we should “come boldly unto the throne of grace,” knowing that He will hear us and indeed answer our earnest petitions (Hebrews 4:16).  But we do so also knowing that it is the Supreme Creator of the Universe that sits on that throne and that we are “unworthy creatures” before Him (Mosiah 4:11).