The Power of Prayer
Good morning, everyone. I’m really
grateful for the opportunity to get to talk to you all today, and I especially
appreciate the friends and family who came. My name is Chelsie Faulk. I was
born and raised in Morgan Hill but have gone to BYU for the last two years. I
have been called to serve as a missionary in the Bolivia Santa Cruz mission,
and I’ll report to the Peru Missionary Training Center in just a few weeks on
June 5. I’m extremely excited and grateful for the opportunity to serve a
mission, and for the opportunity to speak to today about prayer. As I was
thinking a little bit about what I wanted to talk about with regards to prayer,
I started thinking about all the different ways that prayer has impacted my
life. Especially in the last few years, I feel like I’ve had experiences that
have taught me a lot about prayer, about how powerful it can be and about how
it helps us stay close to our Father in Heaven. Many different experiences and
lessons came to mind, but I decided that I wanted to focus today on four
lessons that are particularly close to my heart and that have made a
particularly big difference in my life.
Lesson 1
The first of those lessons is that
prayer really makes a difference. That might sound fairly obvious, but f or
many years I wondered, if God’s will determines what happens, why do we even
bother praying to ask for blessings? I struggled to believe that my asking for
blessings for myself or others made a difference since I knew I couldn’t change
God’s will. However, I have since come to learn that our prayers really do have
the power to make a difference and help us to secure blessings from our Heavenly
Father. The Bible Dictionary explains that, “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.” When I learned this, it was such a new concept for me. God
has blessings He is willing to give us, but prayer really does make a
difference because we have to ask for those blessings for ourselves and others
before they will be given! This means that, according to the Bible Dictionary,
our prayers really do have power behind them.
A few years ago, I still struggled
to completely believe that my prayers could make a difference like that, but I
decided to give it a try. I had a friend who was going to EFY for the first
time. I was a bit worried about this friend and wanted this person’s experience
to be a good one. I wanted them to make friends and be able to feel the Spirit
and have their testimony strengthened. Because I wanted this really badly for
my friend, I prayed every day for the weeks leading up to my friend’s week at
EFY, and all during the week that they were at EFY, that it would be a good,
testimony-building experience. When I talked to my friend after EFY, I learned
that it was a wonderful experience and had made a big difference. As I talked
to my friend, the Spirit testified to me that m y prayers had had a role in
making that happen, and I have never doubted that that was the case. I know
that in that case, having EFY be a positive experience was a blessing God was
already willing to grant, and He granted it in part because of my prayers.
Examples of the real power that
prayer has also abound in the scriptures. One of my favorites is in the Book of
Mormon, in the book of Mosiah. Alma the Younger had been disobedient to the
teachings of his father and was going about trying to destroy the church of God
with his friends. As is easy to imagine, his father (also named Alma) was quite
worried about him and wanted desperately for him to return to the church. As
many of us know, an angel eventually appeared to Alma and his friends telling
them to repent, and all of them did so soon later. But how did Alma receive the
blessing of having an angel appear to him? In Mosiah 27:14, the angel explains,
“Behold, the Lord hath heard the prayers of his people, and also the prayers of
his servant, Alma, who is thy father; for he has prayed with much faith
concerning thee that thou mightiest be brought to the knowledge of the truth;
therefore, for this purpose have I come to convince thee of the power and
authority of God, that the prayers of his servants might be answered according
to their faith.” As I understand this scripture, it means that God sent an
angel to Alma the Younger as a response to the prayers of his father and
others. Prayer, in this instance, secured a blessing for Alma the younger that
may not have been given otherwise.
Of course, it is important to
remember that prayer does not change God’s will. Sometimes, certain blessings
won’t come to us when we want them or quite in the way we expect, because God
does know what’s best. However, our prayers really do have the power to secure
blessings for ourselves and others that we may not receive otherwise.
Lesson 2
The second lesson I want to talk
about is that if we’re going to ask, we must also be prepared to obey. Praying,
especially when we pray asking for guidance and direction from the Lord, also
requires action – and if the Lord knows that we aren’t prepared to act, then it
can be harder to get His guidance. J. Devn Cornish explained it this way in his
talk, “The Privilege of Prayer:” “We must not imagine that any kind of prayer,
no matter how sincere, will be very effective if all we do is to say the
prayer. We must not only say our prayers; we must also live them. The Lord is
much more pleased with the person who prays and then goes to work than with the
person who only prays. Much like medicine, prayer works only when we use it as
directed.”
Unfortunately,
this is a lesson that it seems I have to keep learning the hard way – by being
a little bit resistant to the answers I get to my prayers, and one of those
times was when I was in the process of deciding to go on a mission. When the
oft-discussed announcement was first made that women could now go on a mission
at 19 years old, that struck me hard. I was actually at General Conference for
that session with my roommates. All of us were 19 at the time, and when the
announcement was made, five of the six of us burst into tears. For some of my
roommates, those tears were tears of excitement. For me, I must confess that
they were tears of terror. Not since I was young and dreamed about serving a
mission to Japan (because it rhymed with Peter Pan) had I even thought about a
mission seriously. I LOVE to plan out my life, and a mission just hadn’t been a
part of my plan, so I didn’t want my plan disrupted now. However, I knew that I
needed to pray about the announcement and seek for Heavenly Father’s guidance
in making my decision about whether or not I should go on a mission. And I did
pray, but at first, I didn’t really want to hear an answer. My prayers, I have
to admit, went something like this: “Heavenly Father, I don’t want to go on a
mission, so please don’t make me.” Then, I wouldn’t really listen for an answer
because I was afraid of what the answer might be. After doing that for a while,
I still felt uneasy about the way I had been going about deciding about a
mission. It took a while, but I eventually humbled myself enough to decide that
I would be obedient to the Lord’s answer about whether or not I should go on a
mission, no matter what the answer was. I prayed more humbly and with more
intent, and it was only when I did that, that I started to feel that the Lord
really did need me on a mission. I started to feel peace about the idea where
before I had felt uncertainty, and I felt the Holy Ghost testify to me that a
mission was what the Lord had in mind for me.
Through this and other experiences, I have come to learn, as Elder
Cornish explained, that prayer really does only work when we are obedient to
the direction we receive.
Lesson 3
The third lesson I would like to
speak about today is that the help we ask Heavenly Father for in our prayers
may not come quickly or in the way we expect, but it will come. Oftentimes,
Heavenly Father requires us to contemplate a problem, wrestle with a decision,
or struggle with a trial, on our own for a time before He steps in. I’m sure we
can all remember times when we prayed for something and it seemed like the help
didn’t come as soon as we wanted it to. Other times, that help seems to come in
little steps that unfold gradually as we go. I really like the way Elder
Richard G. Scott explained it in his talk, “Using the Supernal Gift of Prayer.”
He said, “Often when we pray for help with a significant matter, Heavenly
Father will give us gentle promptings that require us to think, exercise faith,
work, at times struggle, then act. It is a step-by-step process that enables us
to discern inspired answers. I have discovered that what sometimes seems an
impenetrable barrier to communication is a giant step to be taken in trust.
Seldom will you receive a complete response all at once. It will come a piece
at a time, in packets, so that you will grow in capacity. As each piece is
followed in faith, you will be led to other portions until you have the whole
answer. That pattern requires you to exercise faith in our Father’s capacity to
respond. While sometimes it’s very hard, it results in significant personal
growth.”
I can testify to you that when we
don’t get the assistance we ask for as soon as we want it, it really can lead
to personal growth and strengthened faith, as long as we continue to rely on
the Lord to get us through the difficult time. It may have seemed like the
story of my deciding to go on a mission ended with my last point, when I
received an answer from the Lord that that was what I needed to be doing. Well,
that’s not quite the end of the story. After I got that answer and felt that it
was right, I obeyed. I started my papers and started changing my plans so that
they would fit in time to serve a mission. But I struggled a lot to have much
enthusiasm for the idea. I knew that I needed to go, but I have to admit that I
didn’t really want to, and that was something I struggled with. I started
praying that my desire to go on a mission would grow, and in the meantime I did
what I could to have a positive attitude about it. For a while though, that
didn’t seem to help much, and it was frustrating that despite my best efforts,
it seemed like my prayers weren’t being answered. Well, I decided to trust in
the Lord, cling to faith, and keep praying. I prayed for months on end, and
eventually, my excitement for a mission really did start to grow. It came
gradually, but come it did, and I can tell you that in the last month and a half or so, I have started to get so
excited to go on a mission. I can’t wait to get out there and serve the Lord in
the way He has asked me to, and now in my prayers every day, I tell Heavenly
Father how grateful I am that He has given me this opportunity to be a
missionary. I’m also grateful, frustrating as it was at the time, that it was
hard at first for me to be excited. It forced me to learn to trust in the
Lord’s plan for me and to be obedient to His will, even when it wasn’t
originally my own. I learned a lot from the experience, and I learned
especially that the help we ask for will always come in the Lord’s time as we
rely on Him.
Lesson 4
The last lesson I want to talk about
is that frequent, sincere prayer strengthens our testimonies and brings us
closer to our Heavenly Father. The scriptures teach us that when we pray, we
are truly speaking to Heavenly Father, and He is listening. He loves us deeply
and is vitally interested in what we have to say to Him. He wants to hear our prayers. Because of
this the scriptures advise us to pray always. In Alma 37:37, it reads, “Counsel
with the Lord in all thy doings, and he will direct thee for good; yea, when
thou liest down at night lie down unto the Lord, that he may watch over you in
your sleep; and when thou risest in the morning let thy heart be full of thanks
unto God; and if ye do these things, ye shall be lifted up at the last day.”
This scripture teaches that we are to pray to Heavenly Father at least every
morning and night. For much of my life I had a hard time remembering to pray
every morning. Since going to college, I started to finally establish that
habit, and I can tell you that it really does make a difference. I feel closer
to God all day long, especially when I remember to pray in the morning multiple
days in a row. If I start falling out of the habit and forget to say my morning
prayers, I can feel that something really is missing. Praying frequently has
helped me to more frequently feel the love of my Heavenly Father and has helped
me to keep Him in my thoughts throughout the day. It has also strengthened my
testimony so that I am more certain than ever that He really is there, that I
really am His child, and that I really do matter to Him. I really love the way
that President Monson put it when he said, “Prayer is the provider of spiritual
strength; it is the passport to peace. Prayer is the means by which we approach
our Father in Heaven, who loves us. Speak to Him in prayer and then listen for
the answer. Miracles are wrought through prayer.” I know that if we are
searching for a way to grow closer to Heavenly Father, to come to trust Him more,
or even just want to come to find out if He is really there, praying to Him often
will help us to do just that.
I know that this really is the
gospel of Jesus Christ on the earth today. I know that He is real, that He
atoned for my sins and the sins of all of you, and that because of Him, we can
return to live with our Heavenly Father again. I know that we are truly
children of our Heavenly Father and He loves us with a perfect love. As we pray
to our Heavenly Father and study the scriptures, we can all come closer to Him
and feel of His love. I’m so excited to serve the people of Bolivia and bring
them this gospel that has brought me so much peace and happiness in my life.
I
say these things in the name of Jesus Christ,
Amen.
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