Prayer

Latter-day Saints believe firmly in the power and importance of personal and family prayer. We believe that God is our Father in Heaven and that He loves each of us, deeply. We are His children and He wants us to be close to Him. We can speak to Him and He can speak to us through prayer.

Prayers can be spoken or silent. They can be done on our knees in our bedrooms or standing at a pulpit in church. They can be a few seconds or a few hours. They can be individual or offered up in behalf of an entire family or congregation. They should be personal and heartfelt. They should not be memorized or recited prayers. Instead, we should ponder and think carefully about what we should say beforehand. We then offer up prayers that are the result of careful thought and reflection of the desires of our hearts.

We pray to our Heavenly Father in the name of His Son, Jesus Christ. We begin a prayer by addressing our Father in Heaven. We then thank Him for the many blessings we have. We acknowledge our faults and weaknesses and ask for forgiveness through the atonement of Jesus. We then ask for blessings. These blessings can be big or small. We have been promised that if we ask for blessings, with faith in Jesus Christ, they will be given to us if they are according to the will of God. We then close the prayer in the name of the Jesus Christ.

We are commanded to pray always. This means that we should have a prayer in our hearts at all times. We should kneel in prayer in the mornings and in the evenings to express gratitude for the many blessings we have received. We should also gather our families together in the morning, at meal times, and in the evenings for prayer. This bonds a family together in unity and helps children to know that God loves them and watches over them.

Prayer is essential to our relationship with God. The Bible Dictionary included in the LDS publications of the King James Version of the Holy Bible states, "As soon as we learn the true relationship in which we stand toward God (namely, God is our Father, and we are His children), then at once prayer becomes natural and instinctive on our part. Many of the so-called difficulties about prayer arise from forgetting this relationship. Prayer is the act by which the will of the Father and the will of the child are brought into correspondence with each other. the object of prayer is not to change the will of God, but to secure for ourselves and for others, blessings that God is already willing to grant, but that are made conditional on our asking for them. Blessings require some work or effort on our part before we can obtain them. Prayer is a form of work, and is an appointed means for obtaining the highest of all blessings."

For an excellent webpage on prayer and its meaning in our lives, click here.