Getting Answers to Prayers

Life in today’s world can be at times so complicated and the challenges so overwhelming as to be beyond our individual capacity to resolve them. We all need help from the Lord. Yet there are many individuals who don’t know how to receive that help. They feel their urgent pleas for help have often gone unattended. How can that be when He Himself has said, “Ask, and ye shall receive; knock, and it shall be opened unto you”? (D&C 4:7.)

Such difficulty results either from not following His spiritual law for providing help or from not recognizing help when it comes. Well did James observe, “Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss.” (James 4:3.) It is evident that He intends that we do our part. But what, specifically, are we to do? No one would expect to receive a result from physical law without obeying it. Spiritual law is the same. As much as we want help, we must expect to follow the spiritual law that controls that help. Spiritual law is not mysterious. It is something that we can understand.

The Savior declared, “I, the Lord, am bound when ye do what I say; but when ye do not what I say, ye have no promise.” (D&C 82:10) and John taught, “whatsoever we ask, we receive of him, because we keep his commandments, and do those things that are pleasing in his sight.” (1 Jn. 3:22) Nephi counseled, “Do ye not remember the things which the Lord hath said?—If ye will not harden your hearts, and ask me in faith, believing that ye shall receive, with diligence in keeping my commandments, surely these things shall be made known unto you.” (1 Ne. 15:11; italics added.)

The Lord has the power to bless us at any time. Yet we see that to count on His help, we must consistently obey His commandments. “If ye are purified and cleansed from all sin, ye shall ask whatsoever you will in the name of Jesus and it shall be done. But know this, it shall be given you what you shall ask.” (D&C 50:29–30)

These teachings of Jesus Christ emphasize that it matters very much what we ask for and how we ask for it. I testify that when we seek His will and do it, we will obtain the greatest blessings in life.