Dear Heavenly Father thank you for my many blessings… Lets try this again. Dear Heavenly
Father thank you for the home you have provided me, for the loving family that
I am able to speak with daily. We all
can find many blessings in our lives, but by thanking Heavenly Father with this
broad term we can get ourselves into a prayer rut.
Sadly, I have
recently learned this. Satan has crept in and convinced me that the little
things aren’t important. It is ok to skip scripture study for the day or to
skip prayer. I hated this feeling and I
wanted to find out what I could do to change it. So I prayed to Heavenly Father
to help me. I kept getting this feeling
that I needed to make my prayers more meaningful. I felt that I was doing what was asked of me.
I said morning and evening prayer every single day, but at the end of my prayer
I didn’t feel much.
What I have come to
realize is we can get stuck in a rut. We can say our prayers out loud, but not
really say them with meaning. Every day I prayer for my young women, but I
never feel like I received guidance on how to help them. Once I broke down my
prayers line by line I realized if I needed help with a young woman then I
needed to pray for her by name or I pray for the youth to receive something
specific. For example I pray that the young women will be able to feel the
spirit today while at school and remain strong against temptation.
We all have been
guilty at some point of saying prayers over and over again. When we pray at
meal times we often say, “Please bless this food that it will strengthen and
nourish our bodies.” How can we make this more meaningful. While we surely
appreciate the meal that was prepared, did we really feel the Spirit during
that prayer? While I do not have all the answers as I am still working on this
myself. I wanted to share the thought that prayer is so incredibly important.
It is how we speak to our Heavenly Father. We can’t speak to our spouse using
the same terms and sentences daily while expecting to keep that relationship
going. Our Heavenly Father is not much different. While He will always hear our
prayers we need to feel the spirit when we say them. We need to ask and pray
for specific things. If we want to keep our relationship open with Heavenly
Father we need to be able to talk to Him freely and share the details of what
we need. I have a strong testimony of prayer. I know that He hears us and wants
to help us. I say these things in the name of Jesus Christ.
