Prayer Saves

A key purpose of prayer is to build a relationship with God. Now, I first acknowledge that a relationship with our Father is not new. In fact, it is as old as eternity. In the book of Job we read:

Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? declare, if thou hast understanding. Who hath laid the measures thereof, if thou knowest? or who hath stretched the line upon it? Whereupon are the foundations thereof fastened? or who laid the corner stone thereof; When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?
--Job 38:4-7

Like Job, we were all "morning stars" who "shouted for joy" at the creation of the earth. Though our mortality has hidden the memory from us, we will not remain separated from our Father forever. President Ezra Taft Benson taught: “Nothing is going to startle us more when we pass through the veil to the other side than to realize how well we know our Father and how familiar his face is to us.” (“Jesus Christ—Gifts and Expectations,” in Speeches of the Year, 1974, Provo: Brigham Young University Press, 1975, p. 313.)

For the meantime, however, our relationship with Heavenly Father is clouded by distance--not physical so much as spiritual. Elder Henry B. Eyring spoke about our long-distance relationship with God in these terms: "If you want to stay close to someone who has been dear to you, but from whom you are separated, you know how to do it. You would find a way to speak to them, you would listen to them, and you would discover ways to do things for each other. The more often that happened, the longer it went on, the deeper would be the bond of affection" (General Conference, April 1991).

The speaking and the listening of which Elder Eyring spoke is prayer. Our Father wants to close the gap between Himself and us. He wants to make the reawakening of our ancient relationship as easy as possible. So, He made prayer easy and universally available. No rules, no regulations, no specified forms. Just speak and listen. If we open some space in us, into the void the Father will come.

This is the start, but it is not the end. We are not finished when we start to pray. The cloudy distance is still real. The prophet Nephi taught, "no unclean thing can dwell with God" (see 1 Nephi 10:21). And we are all unclean before our perfect and spotless God, as the Apostle Paul wrote:

Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned.
--Romans 5:12

We want a relationship with our Eternal Father, and He wants a relationship with us. But we are stuck by our own mortal weakness. What do we do? Paul had the answer, and it is still prayer:

For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.
--Romans 10:13

Christ through His atonement pierces the cloudy distance and bridges the cavernous gap between us and our God. And how do we get the atonement to work for us? We pray.

Paul said that a prerequisite to salvation is calling upon God and acknowledging Him as the Savior. As much as God loves us with an unfathomable love, He will not swoop down out of the heavens and take us by surprise. We must build our relationship with the Father through His Son. Christ can save us. From what? From being eternally separated from God.

Thus, we are instructed to call upon God in the name of the Son (see Moses 5:8). We will not be saved by a stranger. To build a relationship with the Father, we must also cultivate a relationship with the Son--sooner or later. Sooner is better. The more frequently and regularly we call upon the Father and the Son in this life, the richer our relationship with them will be and the more natural we will feel when we enter their presence. If we call upon God daily, He can save us daily.

Making a Place to Pray

Following the trail of prayer in the Old Testament leads us to Abraham, the Father of the Faithful. This prophet developed a rich and powerful relationship with Jehovah through prayer. As a young man Abram prayed for deliverance from the hands of pagan priests who were about to sacrifice him to false gods. As a result of his prayer, an angel intervened and saved his life, setting him on a course of faithfulness for the rest of his life. We'll discuss Abraham's first prayer another time. Suffice it to say at this point that Abraham became a master at prayer, so much so that he heard the voice of God regularly. Abraham and Jehovah were on intimate terms.

In their old age, Abraham and Sarah had their only son Isaac. The family settle in a place called Beer-sheba. At this point in Abraham's long life, we encounter this verse:

And Abraham planted a grove in Beer-sheba, and called there on the name of the Lord, the everlasting God.
--Genesis 21:33

Abraham knew a temple was an appropriate place to pray. Lacking the means to build a proper temple, however, Abraham did the next best thing in his mind. He created a pleasant place of natural beauty in which he could approach God regularly. He created an abode that represented what he thought heaven might be like, and there he retired many days to commune with the Lord.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints builds temples for many reasons, not the least of which is to create houses of prayer. Temples are portals to heaven. The veil between heaven and earth is thin in a temple dedicated to the Holiness of the Lord. If God hears prayers offered anywhere, surely He hears those offered in one of His temples.

Nevertheless, for regular, intense, vocal prayer, we need to create our own place, private and apart, a physical and spiritual place where we can call on God without interruption or interference, a comfortable place where we can stay and linger in the presence of the Holy Spirit. Such a place is a gift to ourselves where we can offer ourselves as a gift to God.

Preparation is an important element of effective prayer, and retiring to a special place is an essential act of preparation. Some refer to such a place as our "prayer closet" (see Matthew 6:6). We will speak more of closets later. Of course, God hears us everywhere and in every circumstance. In a crisis, any foxhole will do. When we have the time and the means, however, turning in our special prayer place can set our minds and hearts in the receptive mode and can open the conduit to heaven, enabling the flow of peace to come. When we can block out the noise of the mortal world, the divine music of the celestial world can the more readily reach our ears and our hearts.

My Beer-sheba is a comfortable chair wrapped a warm blanket to ward off the cool of the morning with the early rays of sun filtering through the open blinds in a southeast-facing window. It's quiet, and my heart reaches out in gratitude and joy and hope. There is some pleading going on these days as well. But especially, in my Beer-sheba I hear the whispers of love. 

Where is your Beer-sheba?

To Call Upon God

In the previous two posts I introduced the Prophet Joseph Smith as my "prayer hero," the young man who set the model for my prayer life. Now I want to go back to the beginning--not my beginning, but the scriptural beginning. Back to Genesis in the Bible, when men first began to pray.

And to Seth, to him also there was born a son; and he called his name Enos: then began men to call upon the name of the Lord.
--Genesis 4:26

So, how did Seth and Enos know to call upon God in prayer? Seth's father Adam taught them about prayer as he learned it directly from God Himself:

Wherefore, thou [Adam] 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.
--Moses 5:8

To call upon someone can be interpreted two ways: either to visit them or to request or demand something of them. To call upon the Lord is perhaps a combination of both.

When we pray in faith and with real intent, we approach God and try to come closer to Him. We visit Him, albeit by long distance, in His realm in heaven. We attempt to transport ourselves to His thrown, which we approach boldly, according to Paul (see Hebrews 4:16). In other words, we don't belong there, but we go there anyway in hopes of being received by grace and mercy.

While God is always aware of us, we may not be always aware of Him. Thus, we must make an effort to connect with Him, open our end of the portal, lift the receiver on our end of the line, and put ourselves in position to commune with Him and hear Him. Prayer is not for God, it is for us, to put us in touch with the Being who already knows us, knows what we need, and is anxiously waiting to bless us. He is calling upon us constantly. He stands at the door and knocks all the day long. When we call on Him, we are really just answering His call. We complete the circuit and open the door, and there He is, where He has been all along.

The other meaning of "calling upon" is to make a request or demand. We certainly do not demand attention or blessings from God in an arrogant or haughty manner. But we do make requests, and in faith our requests may be quite direct and forthright. We acknowledge our weakness and our dependence. We ask for what we cannot supply or do for ourselves. Thwarted constantly by our limitations, we call upon our limitless God to enhance and expand our efforts and to accomplish in us and through us what we could not possibly do on our own.

Through our calls to Him, we open ourselves to the unleashing of His power in our lives. Our calling on Him is the key. Respecting our agency, He will not act openly in our lives unless we invite Him. He will not show us His hand unless we ask for it. He will not reveal His face unless we seek it. But when we do, stand back, get out of the way, and watch Him work! "Be still, and know that I am God," He says (see Psalm 46:10). The battle is His, the trouble is His, our enemy is His enemy, and He will put all enemies under His feet.

We need not fear when we call upon God, for He is always and forever on our side when we are on His side.

A Need and a Question

Joseph Smith's first prayer was a resounding success far beyond his humble expectations. In answer to his question about which church to join, the heavens opened, the Father and the Son appeared to the young man, and an entire new dispensation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ was initiated. Joseph learned much about the reality and nature of God in his first encounter with a heavenly manifestation, and he learned about the role he was to play in God's plan for the "last days," the Second Coming of Christ, and the Millennium. Nevertheless, Joseph still had much more to learn about many things, including about prayer.

in the three years after the First Vision, not much of spiritual import occurred in Joseph's life. He had told his story and garnered a fair amount of ridicule and persecution. He was now seventeen and wondering what he should do next. He certainly did not feel like a prophet, nor did he, in his own estimation, conduct himself like a messenger of God. His next lesson in prayer was about to burst upon him.

In consequence of these things, I often felt condemned for my weakness and imperfections; when, on the evening of the above-mentioned twenty-first of September, after I had retired to my bed for the night, I betook myself to prayer and supplication to Almighty God for forgiveness of all my sins and follies, and also for a manifestation to me, that I might know of my state and standing before him; for I had full confidence in obtaining a divine manifestation, as I previously had one.
--Joseph Smith - History 1:29


Joseph approached God with a need and a question. He knew he needed forgiveness for having given in many times to weakness and temptation. He felt he had not lived up to God's expectations of him following the supernal revelation of the First Vision. He had certainly not lived up to his own expectations. So, his need, acutely felt, was forgiveness.

We all have this need. Surely none of us live up to God's desires for us, and if we are striving to any degree to keep commandments and covenants, we are not meeting our own expectations. Whether we recognize and feel godly sorrow for our imperfections is determined by our humility and our attenuation to the Holy Spirit. If we are serious in our desires for discipleship, our imperfections will drive us to prayer, as they did Joseph.

Joseph's question was about his standing before God. He wanted to know, despite his mistakes, if he was still acceptable to God and if God still wanted to use him. Had he messed up so bad and procrastinated so long that God had turned away from him? Had he lost his chance to build a lasting relationship with God? This was not a passing curiosity. It was not just one of a hundred things Joseph thought about each day. It had become his primary focus, the question that vexed him the most. He needed to know more than anything else if he was lost or still salvageable.

If we are at all serious about our faith and spirituality, we are also vexed from time to time with a similar question. For all my efforts and despite all my failures, how am I doing? Am I at least on the right path and leaning in the right direction? Have I made so many mistakes that I am lost? Am I broken beyond repair? Have I made so many wrong turns that I can never reach the goal God set for me in the beginning? Have I wasted my life? That's a tough question for a seventeen-year-old. It is an excruciating question for a sixty-seven-year-old.

One other thing to note about this prayer experience of the young prophet-to-be: unlike his experience in the grove where he was alone and could speak out loud, he was not alone in his attic bedroom with his brothers sleeping peacefully next to him only inches away, and he could not pray vocally. He did not say whether he knelt by his bed or simply stretched out under his comfy quilt. Yet his heartfelt, silent prayer penetrated the heavens just as effectively as had his spoken prayer the years earlier.

He showed us that the form of prayer is not as important as the content and intention of our prayer, supported by our faith and confidence in God's ability to hear and answer. Joseph's narration indicated his expectation of an immediate response. Not that he may not have been willing to be patient, but he felt that an answer would be forthcoming. He humbly recognized sincerely his shortcomings and did not try to hide them. He desired to repent. He understood his need for forgiveness and grace. And he had a legitimate, burning question, the answer to which he was fully committed to obey. He seemingly had no other plan, no alternative strategy, no fallback position. He was willing to be all in if God still wanted him.

We can pray the same kind of prayer if we put in the same kind of preparation and exercise the same kind of faith. Vocal or silent, alone in a lovely grove or surrounded by a crowd, if our heart is right, if we are humble, if we are willing to confess our faults and truly want to change, if we will accept God's grace and stop trying to save ourselves, if we bring to God our most burning, fundamental question, and if we cry to Him with the full intention of accepting and obeying whatever His answer for us is--if we are all in with our faith and hope--God will hear and answer. Immediately. Instantly. Unequivocally. Directly. Unmistakably. And to our totally satisfaction. We will know what we need to know. It is up to us, then, to act on that knowledge.

A Prayer Hero

Let me state at the beginning, I am not an expert on prayer. I'm practicing and learning as I go. I know a few things about prayer, believe other things, and am completely baffled about a lot of things. One thing I know from personal experience and innumerable evidences is prayer works. Or more accurately stated, God works through our prayers. One thing I believe is God hears every prayer. What baffles me are the how's and why's. Nevertheless, just because I don't know how electricity works or how to wire a circuit, I still flip the switch when I need light. Prayer is not a switch, and God is not a light bulb, but you know what I mean.

I want to begin the conversation with a consideration of one of my prayer heroes. My introduction to meaningful, powerful, effective prayer started with a teenage boy living in rural upstate New York in 1820. I first heard about this young man when I was a teenager myself, so I felt like I could relate in some ways to his experience.

So, let's start our exploration of the prayerful life with Joseph Smith's first prayer. After grappling on his own with weighty questions of faith and which church he should join, he decided to turn the matter over to God.

He described his approach to his first prayer in these words:

In accordance with this, my determination to ask of God, I retired to the woods to make the attempt. It was on the morning of a beautiful, clear day, early in the spring of eighteen hundred and twenty. It was the first time in my life that I had made such an attempt, for amidst all my anxieties I had never as yet made the attempt to pray vocally.
(Joseph Smith--History 1:14)

The inference in this statement is that Joseph had prayed silently, perhaps many times, for an answer to his question about religion, but the results were not satisfactory. So, he upped the ante by offering his first audible, vocal prayer.

He does not say why he had not used vocal prayer before, nor does he explain why he decided to speak out loud this time. What we know, however, is that the results were different for his spoken prayer than for his previous silent prayers. God answered young Joseph's prayer with a personal visitation to introduce His Beloved Son to instruct the prophet-to-be. The answer changed not just Joseph's life, but the lives of millions.

From the narrative, we can assume that the urgency and sincerity of this particular prayer was intensified. Perhaps Joseph had heard ministers and others offer powerful vocal prayers in the various congregational meeting he had attended. Or perhaps the power of the emotions in his heart simply could not be contained but could find full expression only in his audible voice.

As I consider my own prayers, have I wanted something desperately enough to cry aloud to the heavens and raise my voice to break the silence around me? God does not need to hear my voice. He knows my every thought and hears every silent prayer. But sometimes I may need to hear my own voice. It is true I can hear songs in my head and play music in my ears, but sometimes there is no substitute for rolling down the window, cranking up the volume, and singing along at the top of my voice.

Why does praying out loud make a difference? We can talk about this another day. For today, I'm satisfied that at least in some situations and circumstances, using our voices increases the power of our prayers. While I may not pray aloud all the time, when the Spirit says "speak", I must not remain silent.

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