3 Nephi 18 and 19 – Prayer

Sometimes my very worst tendencies are brought to the light when I am reading the scriptures.

When you read chapters 18 and 19 in 3 Nephi the words pray and prayer appear a total of 41 times. I know that we are commanded to pray but I love this example that is being set here by Christ. He, himself prays at least 3 times in what appears to be a short amount of time.

I sometimes hesitate to pray more because I wonder if Heavenly Father gets sick of hearing me. I wonder if my prayers are too small or unimportant. I wonder if the things I’m praying for are too ridiculous and sometimes I think that if God wants something to happen it will happen with or without my input.

Here’s what I learned or if it wasn’t new it was solidified a little more for me. this time through these two chapters in the Book of Mormon:

1. God does really want to hear from us if it is one time per day or 40 times per day. That means if I forget something in my morning prayer and it’s 5 minutes later it’s ok to pray again for that thing or that person or that question.
2. The commandment to pray is for more than one purpose and a big part of it is to learn about God. We can’t get to know someone if we only talk to them here and there or once per month. The way to learn about someone is to have contact with them and the way to have Contact with our Father in Heaven is through scripture study and prayer.
3. Heavenly Father wants to bless us. Sometimes that can’t happen unless we ask specifically for that blessing. In the past I have compared it to teaching your children like when we don’t just fulfill everything for them without them asking but this time I also thought that it may also be because of the whole agency thing. We have agency and Heavenly Father is not going to step on that no matter how much he wants to help us before we ask.
4. Heavenly Father wants to bless others through us but sometimes, without our asking who we can help, it doesn’t happen. Again, agency. We need to be willing to help others and we show that willingness through prayer and then by following through if we receive a prompting.

I know there is way more stuff going on in these chapters. We could probably spend months just focusing on these chapters and choosing things to focus on. And I may just do that. Make a note of that for me, ok? I need to finish reading the rest of the book first.

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