Praying muscles

Last night I got home after a weekend trip to Nebraska – about 600 miles one way. I like long drives because it provides an opportunity to talk and ponder.

One of the subjects explored was prayer. The LDS bible dictionary explains that prayer is a form of work. I pondered that often times it is the only thing we can do to change a situation. And just like manual labor, or any other type of work, we can get better at it, as if developing muscles. Then strong muscles would help with any task. At least, that is how my pondering went.

So when I got home from the trip I was tired and ready for sleep. But, finding a quiet moment I knelt and tried to exercise my muscles, and share a few concerns with Heavenly Father that I really don’t have any control over. It wasn’t a long conversation but I felt edified.

Also before going to sleep I wanted to do one more task. If I would have been at work I would have spent all day running a data load. I knew that people would be expecting it today so I wanted to get it started before going to sleep. Just as I was about to start the script I felt an unusual desire to check the date the script was last modified. I did, and after some further checking realized that the script was corrupt – that I had accidentally modified the master script last month when trying to fix another problem. Had I executed the script, I most certainly would have been up all night cleaning the data. But because of that feeling, and because I listened to it, I was able to restore a correct version of the script, start it, and get to bed with little delay. The script finished early this morning with no errors.

Some people might call that coincidental. I take it as a head nod from God. God is very gracious.

“As soon as we learn the true relationship in which we stand toward God (namely, God is our Father, and we are his children), then at once prayer becomes natural and instinctive on our part (Matt. 7: 7-11). Many of the so-called difficulties about prayer arise from forgetting this relationship. Prayer is the act by which the will of the Father and the will of the child are brought into correspondence with each other. 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. Blessings require some work or effort on our part before we can obtain them. Prayer is a form of work, and is an appointed means for obtaining the highest of all blessings.” (http://scriptures.lds.org/en/bd/p/54)