From B. H. Roberts
It has been said, “I do not pray because my prayers have not been answered.” Answered, we mean, do we, not heard? Ah, but they have been heard and recorded. We have been taught that one day we will have a bright recollection of all that has been in our lives here, but what of all that has been before that? The historian B. H. Roberts thought long and hard on the record, and he pursued this subject so often and so deeply, trying to account for the radical differences he perceived among those who have received the gospel in this dispensation. Seeing that some almost seemed to be born with it and had responses to the gospel and its powers far beyond anything they could have learned in the short spaced of mortality, he concluded that they did bring it with them. Thus his summary was “Faith is trust in what the spirit learned eons ago.” We do come here bringing, though they are locked under amnesia, the residual powers, the distillation of a long experience. And to those of us who see the hand of the Lord everywhere and to those who see it nowhere the same promise is made: The day shall come that we shall know that we have seen Him and that He is the light that is in us, without which we could not abound. (see Doctrine & Covenants 88:50). There is locked in all of us as there was in Enos—and I understand Enos to say he was surprised that it was there—more faith than we presently know. We are heard, but the response of God may not be what we would here and now wish. Yet haven’t we lived long enough to say to the Lord, “Disregard Previous Memo.” to thank Him that he answered, and to ask that He erase some of the requests that we now realize were foolish or hasty, or even perverse? ~~Truman G. Madsen, A Year of Powerful Prayer (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2013), p.233-4
