Posts tagged prayer

At least, that’s how it seems to work for me.

I noticed this (in a gospel sense) when reading the Book of Mormon, specifically in chapter 11 of 1 Nephi. In his vision, Nephi is explicitly asked “Behold, what desirest thou?”  The Spirit shows him the vision that Lehi was given, which is what Nephi asked for.  Then Nephi is asked again, “What desirest thou?”  He asks for “the interpretation thereof,” or an explanation of the vision - and he gets shown a lot more.  He gets a giant piece of revelation that extends from his current moment in time all the way through to the Second Coming of Christ.

But he had to ask for it, first.

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This is based on my personal experience getting back to praying, and actually doing it twice a day and such, from a place where I wasn’t praying at all.

STEP ONE: Say, out loud, “Heavenly Father, right now I don’t feel like praying” or “Heavenly Father, I’m not sure I want to pray” or “Heavenly Father, I feel bad about myself when I try to pray” or “Heavenly Father, I can’t seem to make myself pray” or “Heavenly Father, I don’t think I’m worthy enough to pray” or “Heavenly Father, I’m pretty sure I’m going to know I have to make big changes if I pray, and I don’t want to make big changes right now” or whatever is true for you.

You don’t have to get on your knees or fold your arms or close your eyes, but you should say it out loud, even if it means you have to go find an empty room and lock yourself in it first.  Even if you have to put earplugs in to make it bearable.  Even if you can only manage it in the shower.  It is OK to do this while crying, or scream it out loud while staring angrily into the sky.

This process may take time.  If you have to get up and go away from this activity for a while, go back to step 1 and say whichever thing is most true for you before you go on to wherever it is you left off.  if you can’t manage to get past saying this to any of the later steps, or if you get stuck between steps, just say it every day till you can manage to get past the block.

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I’m going to do some inventorying of myself today, before the conference begins, and then make a list of the things about myself that I most want to change or improve.

I’m going to start by using the “Attributes” list on page 126 of Preach My Gospel (pdf).  It’s a list of different Christlike attributes, along with scriptural references.  I actually got this idea from the new Youth curriculum (which I am of course totally reading right now, what with being almost 32, not having a calling, and having a ton to do to prepare for conference.)

But I’m going to expand beyond that one activity idea - I’ve found some good “personal inventory” stuff in the Addiction Recovery manual (pdf), and I’m going to go through the 13th Article of Faith and some other key scriptures (basically, whatever is missing from the Preach My Gospel list.)  I also have the list of For the Strength of Youth guidelines, and the Primary Gospel Standards, and the YW Values.  If I manage to still have commandments left over by the time I get to the end of all that, I’ll go through them, too.

And at the end of conference, I’m going to go back over my list of things-that-need-improving and use that list (along with my notes from conference) to make up some goals and an action plan.

We’ll see how it goes.  :)