I have lived long enough and had such a variety of experiences that I hardly think I can be called na\u00c3\u00afve on the subject of prayer. The struggle of my adult life has been to come to know and love and trust God. The God of my childhood was a god of vengeance, a being I somehow always knew was there but who was also terrifying. There have been issues\u00e2\u20ac\u201dimportant issues– I have prayed about for years, sometimes being reduced to tears and flailing about. However my present view is simple and for some of you it may even appear simplistic. <\/p>\n
I would say now that my prayers have been answered throughout my life even when I didn’t always recognize it at the time or when some issues took years (or even decades) to resolve. I have been healed, if not always cured. There is still an issue of great concern to my soul that may never be resolved as I would wish, because other people\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s agency must also be honored. (But I do keep praying about it.)<\/p>\n
I believe there is a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153formula\u00e2\u20ac\u009d to prayer\u00e2\u20ac\u201dquite simple really\u00e2\u20ac\u201dbut often not easy. Here it is\u00e2\u20ac\u201d We must pray\u00e2\u20ac\u201d<\/p>\n
In the name of Christ <\/p>\n
In faith believing <\/p>\n
If it is \u00e2\u20ac\u0153right\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (It is quite possible that we don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t see the big picture. We must come to a place where heart and soul we are willing to say, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Thy will be done.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d) <\/p>\n
Consistent with the agency of others. (Both Laman and Lemuel and Alma the Younger saw an angel in response to the prayers of other righteous people, but the long term results were quite different.) <\/p>\n
We often receive not because we ask not. (We may think our concerns are too trivial\u00e2\u20ac\u201dor too big.)<\/p>\n
So, I would like to bear witness to a very recent event. Tomorrow night our fourth children\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s exhibit, I Am a Child of God<\/em>, opens at the Museum. Openings are always fun and sparkly, but this one carries an added piece of my heart. <\/p>\n We did our first children\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s exhibit 13 years ago in the face of a lot of opposition\u00e2\u20ac\u201d”We have never done a children\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s exhibit, we don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know how to do a children\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s exhibit, and besides no one will come. ” Or so we were told. Craig R. and I have always been the core team producing these and it really was true we had never done such a thing before and didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know what we were doing. We prayed almost every day over the project, not just perfunctory prayers, but the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Oh, Help!\u00e2\u20ac\u009d kind. And over and over we felt our own ideas and even strength and ability extended. We knew we were living a miracle. Although far from perfect this first exhibit succeeded far beyond our wildest dreams. We have freely acknowledged heaven\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s help in every children\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s exhibit we have done to date.<\/p>\n This exhibit opening tomorrow night has had its own challenges, mostly from a bureaucratic process that is being revamped and sometimes changed, even as we have tried to work through the process. Sometimes it has been like trying to run in a dream or with great weights attached. <\/p>\n Two weeks ago, despite our very best efforts we knew we were in trouble and we couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t see a way out. We closed the door and said a prayer of thanks for past and miraculous help received, but also pleaded for help in the here and now. We specifically asked for \u00e2\u20ac\u0153angelic\u00e2\u20ac\u009d help, such as we knew we had received in the past, to somehow extend our efforts. We had no preconceptions of how this might happen, only a prayer of faith that it would.<\/p>\n A short time later I walked out into the gallery to see five young women (three staff\u00e2\u20ac\u201dbut not on our team\u00e2\u20ac\u201dand two interns) beavering away on the most labor intensive part of the job remaining. They had descended like angels. We had not asked them to come, they had just decided among themselves to come and see if they could help. In fact given the new bureaucratic setup we did not think we could have asked to have them help. I literally saw angels. I also saw seagulls. They beavered away on one part and then came immediately back for another. Thanks to our angels we are in very good shape for tomorrow night. <\/p>\n We have been working very long days, but once again heaven has been in the process with us.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I have lived long enough and had such a variety of experiences that I hardly think I can be called na\u00c3\u00afve on the subject of prayer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":96,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3608","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-corn"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3608","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/96"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3608"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3608\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3608"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3608"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3608"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}