"And it came to pass at the end of four years that the Lord came again unto the brother of Jared, and stood in a cloud and talked with him. And for the space of three hours did the Lord talk with the brother of Jared, and chastened him because he remembered not to call upon the name of the Lord.
And the brother of Jared repented of the evil which he had done, and did call upon the name of the Lord for his brethren who were with him. And the Lord said unto him: I will forgive thee and thy brethren of their sins; but thou shalt not sin any more, for ye shall remember that my Spirit will not always strive with man; wherefore, if ye will sin until ye are fully ripe ye shall be cut off from the presence of the Lord. And these are my thoughts upon the land which I shall give you for an inheritance; for it shall be a land choice above all other lands."
Ether 2:14-15
Okay, first of all... wow. The Lord coming and talking to you for three hours. what would you say? what would you ask if you were brave enough? What an opportunity... and I'm sure that the Lord and the brother of Jared talked about a lot of things in that time... but one of them was prayer. :)
God knows everything that we need ahead of time... it isn't like we pray to tell him that. So, why do we pray, do you think? I think that we pray because we need to recognize where our blessings come from. God could give us everything we need, all the time... but where is the lesson in that? We are his children, we need to learn obedience and grow spiritually... and that can't happen if he just hands us everything. Even today's scripture of the day... I think that God wanted to teach me a little object lesson... :) I had to get down on my knees and ask for some inspiration, because I had NO idea what to say, and my mind kept fogging up. God loves us, and he will give us what we need... but we have to remember to talk to him about it. so WE can grow, so WE can learn that God is the source of all good.
Also, I think that one reason we pray is because we need to take the time to think about our lives, our needs, and where we are at... God is a great sounding board for things like that. He loves it when we check in, and sometimes we can get tips and reminders while we are talking about those things with him. We need to pray for other people, because it helps us to learn to love. The brother of Jared prayed for himself, and everyone around him... and when he did, the forgiveness of God extended not only to the brother of Jared, but to all the people he was praying for as well. That is Amazing... truly.
Then, finally... these are God's thoughts. Back to Albert Einstein who said that he wanted to know God's thoughts, the rest was just details... :) When we talk to God, we get the big picture... know the ultimate answers. Then, when we run into roadblocks and questions in our lives, because we know the ultimate destination, we can figure out which detour will take us back to the main path... we know the answers to the littler questions because they match the answers to the ultimate questions...
God wants to give us everything... life is just the way we become responsible enough to handle it.
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