Call Upon God Forevermore

Recently my daughter lost a few different things that we have been looking for and praying to find. She left her brand new coat at school last month and couldn’t locate it when we urged her to find it. On our family trip over the holidays her (very expensive) retainer disappeared, and despite all her searching and praying in the condo we stayed at she could not locate it before we came home. She also misplaced her bag of piano books she needed for practicing and for her lesson this week. Well, yesterday after I had given up mentally at least on two of the three, we found them all. Even though my daughter had already gone to the lost and found and come up empty at her school, my wife went there and was shown a back room with bags of lost and found items that were about to be donated. After much searching through the bags she found my daughter’s new coat. Then later when she was unpacking a small bag of one of our boys from our trip, the clear retainer was miraculously at the very bottom and gratefully she happened to see it. And then last night after my own failed searching my daughter had a sudden idea about where her piano books could be and sure enough there they were hanging up behind some coats and backpacks (despite the fact that both my wife and I had already looked there). We were very grateful to have found all of those items and felt that they represented answers to prayers. Of course some would suggest that it was simply luck that we found those items or that it was inevitable to eventually locate them, but I choose to believe that the Lord does indeed hear these kinds of prayers for help and answers them in His way and timing. He taught simply in the Sermon on the Mount: “Ask of God; ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you” (JST Matt. 7:12). I have found time and time again that He does answer our prayers for help, and often He waits just long enough so that if we are not careful we will have forgotten that we asked for help in the first place. It takes faith to ask and it often takes faith to remember and see that it was His hand which guided us to the answer.

                Today I read in 1 Nephi 15 the interchange between Nephi and his brothers when they were struggling with questions about what their father had taught. One of the messages of Nephi to them and to us is that we must learn to inquire of God as we seek knowledge and help. He wrote, “[My father] truly spake many great things unto them, which were hard to be understood, save a man should inquire of the Lord; and they being hard in their hearts, therefore they did not look unto the Lord as they ought” (v3). When they came to him with their complaint, Nephi’s immediate response was this: “Have ye inquired of the Lord?” (v8) Surely that should be our first reaction to anything we are seeking or struggling with—we must learn to inquire of the Lord. He gave them and us this promise: “Do ye not remember the things which the Lord hath said?—If ye will not harden your hearts, and ask me in faith, believing that ye shall receive, with diligence in keeping my commandments, surely these things shall be made known unto you” (v11). As we learn to ask in faith with diligence in doing our part to keep the commandments and seek as best we can, He will give us answers. As we learn to turn first to Him for help in all our struggles, we can as Nephi suggested “receive the strength and nourishment from the true vine” who is the Lord (v15).

                After Adam and Eve left the Garden of Eden and started their life on earth, the account in Moses highlights how important prayer was for them. “And Adam and Eve, his wife, called upon the name of the Lord, and they heard the voice of the Lord from the way toward the Garden of Eden, speaking unto them, and they saw him not.” After some time an angel came to instruct Adam and he taught, “Wherefore, thou shalt do all that thou doest in the name of the Son, and thou shalt repent and call upon God in the name of the Son forevermore.” I love that instruction for them and for us: “Call upon God in the name of the Son forevermore.” We must not cease to call upon the Lord throughout all our lives. And this is exactly what Adam and Eve did, for we read, “And Adam and Eve, his wife, ceased not to call upon God” (Moses 5:4, 8, 16). Like Moses, we all have “other things to inquire of Him” and we must not cease to call upon the Lord every day in prayer. As we do, we will indeed see that He gives us answers to those prayers of faith (Moses 1:18).