In which I marvel over prayer

Have you ever thought about how incredible the concept of prayer is?

At any time and in any place, anyone in the whole world can stop what they are doing and talk to God, the boss of the universe. And God, who is likely rather busy running the universe, will stop what He is doing and listen.


And have you ever thought about how incredible the concept of personal revelation is?

Whenever God stops to listen, He considers a response, and He considers when would be an optimal time to deliver that response, and He checks His schedule and sees that everything is lined up for that response to work out, and He clicks *send*. Sometimes He does this even when we haven't asked anything, just because He knows we'll need it anyway.


I don't want to speak too lightly about this, but we talked today in Relief Society about what a blessing prayer is and what a blessing personal revelation is. And it just put this image in my head, of God and I communicating just like my family and friends and I communicate. 

I felt strongly during my freshman year at BYU that I was learning how God speaks to me personally. I'm not always the best listener, but I've realized which venues He often uses when He needs me, Alyssa, to pay attention. It was a blessing to feel His direction and see His hand in my life more constantly than ever before. 

This year I feel like it's going more the other way around, and I'm learning how, really, I need to talk to God. I have had times when I've known He certainly saw the whole thing or heard exactly what they said or understood exactly what I felt, and yet I could honestly do nothing more than simply explain my thoughts and feelings anyway, relay my confusion/anxiety, and wait for an answer. And most often, that answer has been comfort before direction, solace before progress. It's been a huge blessing to feel His love more deeply and intimately than ever before. 

I think we often have the sad tendency to think of prayer as a habit or a ritual or something to check off the list before we leave the house in the morning or eat our lunch or go to sleep at night. But prayer is everything! It is our link to God, and it is His gift for us.

A couple weeks ago I had an amazing experience in my math class at BYU wherein my professor offered to say the opening prayer, asked if anyone would like him to pray for them specifically, and then spent 10 minutes praying. He spoke so frankly and openly, and I could just tell in the first few seconds that God is this professor's best friend and they talk all the time. He told God about how the sunny weather was so nice because we had had such an awful winter, and he discussed that our calculus proofs can sometimes be hard to understand so we'll possibly need some help with that, and he thanked God for the Atonement and explained exactly which aspect of it he was most grateful for in that moment. And then he prayed for the students who had asked for prayers, and he did so on such an individual basis that you would have thought he had taken each one to lunch the day before just to find out what they most needed. And after our 10-minute prayer, class went wonderfully. 

That is the single most influential experience I have had at BYU thus far. And though it's true that I have never felt more love from professor to student than on that day, it is also true I have never felt the love of God more strongly relayed through another person than I did right then. God asks us to love Him and then to love others, and this professor showed by example how to do both in one fell swoop. I learned quickly that prayer is the key to our following the most important commandments. 

Prayer is everything. 


I know that God hears and answers our every prayer. As our spiritual father, He cares more than enough to stop and listen to our pleadings at every moment, and He will send perfect responses if we will watch for and learn from them. Prayer is the start of personal revelation and we simply cannot live this life without it. It is the simplest yet greatest blessing we have been given. Prayer really is everything.