Presidency Message

I believe in Prayer.

I believe in prayer.  Prayer is certainly the most basic religious ritual of all faiths.  All those who believe in God seek him in some form of prayer.  It is the earliest religious behavior we teach to our children.  And yet the process of prayer cannot be fathomed by the human mind.  None of us understands how it works even though we have had a lifetime of experience with it.

But we do know some things:

The first thing we know is that prayer rests on the principle of faith.

We also know that prayer is an expression agency.

We know that prayer grows out of humility.  We need God.  An if our troubles can take us to God, we can be thankful for them.

We need to make an individual personal choice to pray.  Repeated day after day and year after year, as it states in Alma 37:6, "by small and simple things are great things brought to pass...

Sister Julie Beck has encouraged us as Relief Society sister to pray.  She said, "Think of our combined strength if every sister had sincere prayer every morning and night or, better yet, prayer unceasingly as the Lord has commanded."

Sometimes answers to prayers are quite clear, simple and direct.  But often prayer becomes a long and personal conversation.  We continue to pray and work and find that our problems are gradually resolved.

And so the power of prayer is more than saying at the end of a prayer, "Thy will be done."  It is actually finding that His will has become our will.

Pres. Hinckley has said:  "Things will work out.  If you keep trying and praying and working, things will work out.  They always do."

We can trust that the Lord will work in and thru us.  I can testify that He does know us and listen to our prayers.

Sister Smith