Prayer

What is prayer?

Communication between man and God. Opportunity to recognize life's blessings, petition God for help, and come to know His will.

Prayer (from the Latin precari "to ask earnestly, beg, entreat")^[1] is an invocation or act that seeks to activate a rapport with an object of worship through deliberate communication. (Wikipedia)

How do we pray?

Address God, recognize blessings from Him, ask Him to intervene in different areas of ours or others lives,

Vocally, silently, individually, in groups or congregations, throughout the day, by hymn, reverently, respectfully

Communication with God, speak and listen, thoughtful, not repetitive, picture who we are speaking with,

What are the benefits of prayer?

Communicating with the God of the universe, opportunity to discover the will of God for matters of my life, opportunity to show gratitude, opportunity to develop my relationship with my Father in Heaven

Each of us has problems that we cannot solve and weaknesses that we cannot conquer without reaching out through prayer to a higher source of strength. -James E. Faust

Findings:

Once, as I sat by my father’s bedside through the night, he talked about his childhood. He spoke of the love of his parents in difficult times and of the love of his Heavenly Father and the Savior. I knew he was dying of cancer, so it did not surprise me that at times he mixed up his feelings for his Heavenly Father with the love and kindness of his earthly father. My father had often said that when he prayed, he thought he could see in his mind the smile of Heavenly Father.

His parents had taught him by example to pray as if he spoke to God and that God would answer him in love. He needed that example to the end. When the pain became intense, we found him in the morning on his knees by the bed. He had been too weak to get back into bed. He told us he had been praying to ask his Heavenly Father why he had to suffer so much when he had always tried to be good. He said a kindly answer came: “God needs brave sons.”

And so he soldiered on to the end, trusting that God loved him, listened to him, and would lift him up. He was blessed to have known early and to never forget that a loving God is as close as a prayer. -Henry B. Eyring

Meaningful prayer requires both holy communication and consecrated work. -David A. Bednar

Action:

-Remember that God is my Father in Heaven. Converse with Him like a father. Develop my relationship with Him. Give Him opportunities to communicate back. Listen. Show the importance of this relationship by putting more time and effort into praying.