Aaron Curtis's List: Pray Always

When I used to travel throughout the stakes and missions of the Church in earlier years, I often met people who were in trouble or who had great need. My first question to them was, “What about your prayers? How often do you pray? How deeply involved are you when you pray?” I have found that sin generally comes when communication lines are down. For this reason the Lord said to the Prophet Joseph Smith, “What I say unto one I say unto all, pray always lest that wicked one have power in you.” (D&C 93:49.)

Here is no casual prayer, no trite and worn phrases. Minutes turned to hours, and when the sun had set, relief still had not come; for repentance is not a single act, nor forgiveness an unearned gift. So precious to him was this communication with God that his determined soul pressed on without ceasing: “Yea, and when the night came, I did still raise my voice high that it reached the heavens.”

You promise to “always remember Him.” And He warns you to “pray always.” You may have wondered, as have I, why He used the word always, given the nature of mortality as it weighs upon us. You know from experience how hard it is to think of anything consciously all the time. Even in service to God, you will not be consciously praying always. So why does the Master exhort us to “pray always”?

  

I am not wise enough to know all of His purposes in giving us a covenant to always remember Him and in warning us to pray always lest we be overcome. But I know one. It is because He knows perfectly the powerful forces that influence us and also what it means to be human.

The Master not only foresees perfectly the growing power of the opposing forces but also knows what it is like to be mortal. He knows what it is like to have the cares of life press upon us. He knows that we are to eat bread by the sweat of our brows and of the cares, concerns, and even sorrows that come from the command to bring children to the earth. And He knows that both the trials we face and our human powers to deal with them ebb and flow.

  

He knows the mistake we can so easily make: to underestimate the forces working for us and to rely too much on our human powers. And so He offers us the covenant to “always remember Him” and the warning to “pray always” so that we will place our reliance on Him, our only safety. It is not hard to know what to do. The very difficulty of remembering always and praying always is a needed spur to try harder. The danger lies in delay or drift.