Open Your Heart to God in Prayer

Several times during the most recent general conference President Nelson mentioned how he prays for us. He said as he spoke of the challenges we have faced this past year: “My heart goes out to each one of you who has suffered these or other losses. I pray constantly that the Lord will comfort you.” He also remarked, “I marvel at your resilience and spiritual strength in the face of illness, loss, and isolation. I pray constantly that, through it all, you will feel the Lord’s unfailing love for you.” In his final address he said, “We are grateful for your patience and devoted service during this changing and challenging period. I pray that your desire to worship and serve in the temple burns more brightly now than ever.” And he finished that message with these words: “As we close this conference, we again express our love for you. We pray that God will shower His blessings and watchcare upon each of you. Together we are engaged in His sacred service. With courage, let us all press on in the glorious work of the Lord! For this I pray.” He prays for the Lord’s comfort, love, blessings, and watchcare to be upon us; He prays for our desires to be righteous that we will press on with courage in the word of the Lord. Surely we should similarly pray for those in our own lives and in the lives of others.

                President Nelson also invited us specifically to pray. In his opening message he said, “I invite you to pray to identify the debris you should remove from your life so you can become more worthy.” Not only should we look to the Lord in prayer to see how can improve our lives with His help, but we should pray specifically to know how He has already helped us in the past: “But if you look at your life prayerfully, I believe you will see many ways in which the Lord has been guiding you through this time of hardship, helping you to become a more devoted, more converted man—a true man of God.” He also gave us more generally this simple invitation: “Open your heart to God in prayer.” President Nelson also spoke of an experience visiting members of four island nations who “had experienced heavy rains for days.” He recounted,  “Members had fasted and prayed that their outdoor meetings would be protected from the rain.” He then described the result of those prayers: “In Samoa, Fiji, and Tahiti, just as the meetings began, the rain stopped. But in Tonga, the rain did not stop. Yet 13,000 faithful Saints came hours early to get a seat, waited patiently through a steady downpour, and then sat through a very wet two-hour meeting.” His message was that sometimes prayer will work the miracles we desire through faith, and other times prayer will give us the strength to persevere in faith even when our immediate desires aren’t granted. Either way, prayer and faith “will  always propel us forward. Faith always increases our access to godly power.”

                When the Savior visited the Nephites He similarly prayed with them and invited them to more fervently pray themselves. In 3 Nephi 17 we have a powerful account of how He prayed to the Father for them in such a moving way that the people described, “And no tongue can speak, neither can there be written by any man, neither can the hearts of men conceive so great and marvelous things as we both saw and heard Jesus speak; and no one can conceive of the joy which filled our souls at the time we heard him pray for us unto the Father” (v17). In the next chapter, He then gave several invitations to the people to follow His example and pray. He said to the disciples, “Verily, verily, I say unto you, ye must watch and pray always, lest ye be tempted by the devil, and ye be led away captive by him. And as I have prayed among you even so shall ye pray in my church, among my people who do repent and are baptized in my name.” He similarly said to the whole multitude: “Behold, verily, verily, I say unto you, ye must watch and pray always lest ye enter into temptation; for Satan desireth to have you, that he may sift you as wheat. Therefore ye must always pray unto the Father in my name…. Pray in your families unto the Father, always in my name, that your wives and your children may be blessed. (3 Nephi 18:15-21). He similarly invited them to pray for those who would come unto them when they met, and He specifically asked them to pray for those among them who were unworthy of the sacrament. Clearly for the Savior prayer was of singular importance for Him when teaching the Nephites, and President Nelson’s words remind us that it is the same for us today. We must seek to more earnestly open our hearts to God in prayer fervently each day for His help and for His blessings to be on all of us.