Chieko N. Okazaki wrote:
“One of the most important ways we can be pure before the Lord is to be scrupulously honest in our words and deeds.
The first person we need to be honest with is the Lord. The Lord doesn’t want just pretty prayers. He wants real prayers. Sometimes we think of those eloquent, gracious prayers in sacrament meeting and general conference as the model for our personal prayers. We try to organize our rough thoughts into smooth sentences and it seems hard. We know how to say, “I’m so grateful for our son who is on a mission,” but we might not know how to say, “I’m so scared and so mad about our son who is on drugs.” Heavenly Father wants to hear the scared and mad prayers just as much as he wants to hear the grateful prayers.
Sometimes it’s very hard for us to be honest, especially with negative feelings and ideas. Elder Neal A. Maxwell asked a soul-searching question: “Can we partake of tiny, bitter cups without becoming bitter in the first place.
When Jesus was praying in the Garden of Gethsemane, he was honest about how hard the Atonement was going to be for him when he prayed that the cup might pass from him. He struggled with a “very heavy” burden of feeling, saying, “My soul is exceeding sorrowful unto death,” and he prayed, “Father all things are possible unto thee; take away this cup from me” (Mark 14:33-34, 36). He was honest about how much he didn’t like what was happening; and I think it was because of honesty that we so revere the love and humility revealed by the rest of his prayer: “Nevertheless not what I will, but what thou wilt” (Mark 14:36).
Can we be equally honest in our prayers? Remember, we’re not going to shock our Father in Heaven. There isn’t anything we can say that he hasn’t already heard, nothing we can show him that he hasn’t already seen. We may shock ourselves a little when we start being honest, but I think some very profound revelations come to us in those moments. ~Chieko N. Okazaki, A Year of Powerful Prayer (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2013), 131-32
