Farewell Sermon and Farewell Post

As Nephi approached the end of his life, he chose to conclude his written record with the words of a powerful sermon to his people about the Messiah, the Holy Ghost, and prayer. Near the end of his sermon, he gave this warning to his hearers and to his eventual readers:

And now, my beloved brethren, I perceive that ye ponder still in your hearts; and it grieveth me that I must speak concerning this thing. For if ye would hearken unto the Spirit which teacheth a man to pray, ye would know that ye must pray; for the devil spirit teacheth not a man to pray, but teacheth him that he must not pray.
--2 Nephi 32:8

When I have opened my heart to the influence of the Holy Spirit, He has inspired me to pray. Prayer has become a natural response. Indeed, I yearn for prayer. It is not a chore or duty to which I force myself and rush through to get on to more important things. Rather, prayer has become a refuge and a refreshment I look forward to with anticipation and which I leave with reluctance. Itis the highlight of each day, an awe-inspiring interlude in which I commune with my Maker and Father. 

The scripture says the Spirit will teach us that we must pray. We cannot hope to build a relationship with God in any other way. Our prayers open the conduit of communication. God wants desperately to teach us, direct us, and bless us. He offers an eternity of good things, but we hold the key that unlocks all the good He wants to share with us. The key is to ask. And we ask in prayer. We must pray, or we will never know what our Father has in store for us. 

And thus, the devil knows how critical it is to keep us from praying if he has any hope of drawing us down to hell. He is happiest when we ignore God all together. He is just as pleased, however, when our so-called prayers are merely vain rituals full of empty phrases dashed off in a thoughtless stupor at the end of a busy day. One really good, sincere, thoughtful, faith-filled prayer can throw off his entire game plan for our destruction. For once we start to pray by the Spirit and open a genuine channel of communication with God, we will want more and more of the sweet peace and joy meaningful prayer brings, and we will slip inexorably from Satan's grasp.

It has been my privilege and joy over the past two years to have shared some of my thoughts and experiences with prayer. I undertook this project primarily to strengthen my own commitment to prayer. If the words of this blog have lifted or inspired you somewhere along the way, I am humbled and honored to have been an instrument in the hands of the Lord to spread his message of faith and prayer. My final encouragement to you who have followed along with my ramblings is, to use a popular meme on billboards, bumper stickers, and the internet: Be calm, and pray on. I know God lives and loves me, Jesus is the resurrected Christ, the Holy Ghost speaks, and prayer works. 

Praying with the Tongue of Angels

In the prophet Nephi's final sermon recorded in the Book of Mormon, he spoke extensively on prayer and the role of the Holy Ghost. He taught the following about the ability of the Holy Ghost to give us the language of angels:

Do ye not remember that I said unto you that after ye had received the Holy Ghost ye could speak with the tongue of angels? And now, how could ye speak with the tongue of angels save it were by the Holy Ghost?
-- 2 Nephi 32:2

The Holy Ghost enables me to speak the language of angels, which is the language of God. This promise certainly applies to the speech I use in prayer. I do not have to be limited to my imperfect mortal language as I speak to God if I let the Holy Ghost help me in my prayers. I find it interesting that I use prayer to invite the Holy Ghost to be with me, and the Holy Ghost invites me to pray in a better way to Heavenly Father. 

With the help of the Holy Ghost, I can speak God's language, which may require no words at all. C. S. Lewis spoke of wordless prayer, of communing with God without language, as perhaps the purest form of prayer. Maybe praying by the Spirit with the tongue of angels was what he was trying to describe.