a praying heart

Our Lord, in His own life, has given His followers an example to imitate. He began His public career by baptism and prayer (Luke 3:21), and a forty days’ fast. After a day of strenuous work, He prayed in order to find rest (Luke 5:16). He prayed at the beginning of the day in order to have strength for the work before Him (Mark 1:35). He prayed when He was about to take any decisive step in His ministry. Before He selected the Twelve, He continued a whole night in prayer, in order to have the wisdom necessary for that important duty (Luke 6:12). He prayed in order to have power over evil spirits (Mark 9:29). He prayed to have strength to bear up in the supreme hour of trial, as in Gethsemane, and, finally, in the hou of death, on the cross. He taught His disciples to pray always, “and not to faint” (Luke 18:1). A Christian life without prayer would net be real, active life. It might be unconscious existence, as if in a swoon, and end in spiritual death.

The Prophet Joseph knew the power of prayer. It was while praying that he received the glorious vision of the Father and the Son. The Church was founded and built up and every stone cemented to the rest of the structure, with prayer. Many remarkable instances of prayer are recorded in the biography of the Prophet. On the 11th of January, 1834, he and some of his co-laborers united in prayer, asking the Lord that their lives might be spared and that angels would be given charge concerning them and their families, threat they might prevail over their enemies, and especially one who had threatened to take the life of the Prophet; that the Lord would provide the Presiding Bishop at Kirtland with means to discharge every obligationl that he would protect the printing press, and that He would deliver Zion and gather His scattered people; and “finally, that God, in the name of Jesus, would gather His elect speedily, and unveil His face that His Saints might behold His glory, and dwell with Him” (Hist. of the Church, Vol. II., pp. 2, 3). He prayed to the Lord “that three thousand subscribers would be added to the [Evening and Morning Star] in the time of three years” (Ibid. p. 24). He prayed for “strength and wisdom and understanding to lead the people of the Lord, and to gather and establish the Saints upon the land of their inheritances, and organize them according to the will of heaven, that they may be no more cast down for ever” (Ibid. p. 51). He prayed when in trials and difficulties, privately and publicly, every day of his life, and his last word in mortality was a prayer committing himself into the hands of his Father in heaven – “O Lord, my God!”

There can be no spiritual progress, no growth of the Church, no victory over evil, without prayer. If faithful work is the steam that keeps the engines in motion, prayer is the sacred fire without which there is no steam.

“A praying heart is the one thing that the devil cannot easily counterfeit. It is easy enough to imitate praying lips, so that hypocrites and Pharisees feign devoutness. But only God can open in the heart’s depths those springs of supplication that often find no channel in language, but flow out in groanings which cannot be uttered” (ARTHUR PIERSON).


Doctrine and Covenants Commentary by Hyrum M. Smith and Janne M. Sjodahl. Deseret Book. 1965. p.277, 278