Deep need or personal crises motivate some of the most earnest prayers we will ever offer. Sin, fear, anxiety, an unsupportable burden – these drive us, rather than beckon us, to prayer. When we are pressed by great affliction or threatened in our personal life, when tribulation is upon us, we turn to God. All who are acquainted with prayer and who have lived long enough to experience life’s complexities and vicissitudes understand this kind of reaching for the Lord. We know what it is to cry out to God in sorrowing penitence or deep necessity, or perhaps in great gratitude. The spontaneity of these outcryings – these “groaning” of the soul – is normal and natural and issues from a relationship with our Heavenly Father that is intuitively felt, whether or not nurtured or ever acknowledged to self in comfortable seasons. Such occasions are usually not premeditated or prethought or prepared; they issue from our depths, from anguish or despair or shame or of that which in every human is more than human, something that identifies us with a power and spirit far loftier and lovelier than our own, with a caring Father with whom we have part as his beloved children.
But such special times of anxiety or fear or exultation of spirit, sincere and important as they are, are like occasional calls home when our more thoughtful and regular attendance would be welcome, and is expected.
Marion D. Hanks, “Preparation for Prayer,” Prayer. Deseret Book Company, Salt Lake City, UT. 1978. P.22
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