From Gene R. Cook, and his book Humility in Prayer:
In the D&C, the Lord directly connected humility to answered prayers when he said,
“Be thou humble; and the Lord thy God shall lead thee by the hand, and give thee answer to thy prayers”. (D&C 112:10.)
When we’re humble, we feel our dependency on the Lord. Because of this feeling of dependency, we reach out to him for help and guidance in many areas—and have open hearts and minds to receive it.
We hear much in the world about being self-sufficient and self-confident. We hear much about learning to do things on our own—after all, didn’t the Lord bless us with good minds and the ability to think things through and reason them out on our own?.
Yet that attitude takes us away from the spirit of humility and a reliance on the Lord. Certainly the Lord would have us do all that is in our power to do, but if we take that attitude of self-reliance to an extreme, we will begin to think we can live our lives without his help.
Nephi addressed this very issue: “Are there some things I ought not to pray about? Or should I pray about everything?” If that’s true, why don’t we do so? Why do we go on day after day depending on our own strength? . . . Then he makes this significant statement:Some people argue that we shouldn’t trouble the Lord about little things. In a way, that’s a spirit of pride, a spirit of wanting to do things on one’s own, rather than a desire to discover and do the Lord’s will.
“For if ye would hearken unto the Spirit which teacheth a man to pray, ye would know that ye must pray; for the evil spirit teacheth not a man to pray, but teacheth him that he must not pray. (2 Nephi 32:8).
The Lord wants us to grow and become strong and be able to do much good, but through it all he wants us to be dependent on the Spirit of the Lord for direction. ~~Gene R. Cook, Humility and Prayer (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book) p, 111-112
