From his book “Talking With God”, Robert L. Millet shares:
For many years my immediate family was not much involved in the Church. My dad was a very moral and upright man, a person whose goodness and integrity were known far and wide, a fun Father, and one whom I loved and respected deeply. For some reason, however, we simply were not involved for a season in spiritual things. And it was uncle Joseph and Aunt Gladys who nudged, poked, prodded, invited, enticed and led us back into Church activity and into a stronger relationship with God. My uncle baptized both my mother and me, and he became a family hero of sorts.
As the decades rolled by, we stayed in touch, met together for several hours whenever my wife, Shauna, and I visited Louisiana, renewed treasured associations, reminisced, and spoke often of sacred things. Uncle Joseph worked for Standard Oil Company (later Exxon) for forty years, mowed his lawn, serviced his own cars, and remained healthy and robust until shortly before he left us.
Just two weeks before he died, my cousin Linda (his daughter) and I walked into his hospital room. She had been by his side day and night for some time, but I hadn’t seen him in six months. I wasn’t prepared for the scene: wires and tubes in his nose and mouth and an IV in his right arm. I found myself weak in the knees and a little wobbly, My beloved hero was staring death in the face. I gave him a priesthood blessing to the effect that the Almighty would grant peace and comfort to his family.
And so when the phone call did come, I was not surprised, but I was still struck by the harsh reality of the occasion, the seeming finality of it all, and the poignant realization that our sweet brotherhood had been interrupted for a season by this mysterious event we call death. After I hung up the phone, I immediately fell to my knees next to the hotel bed (I was attending a conference in Chicago at the time) and poured out my soul to the one Being who could understand perfectly just how I felt. I prayed. I thanked God for my uncle’s significant contribution to the world, for his trust in and devotion to Deity, for his example of Christlike living. I told my Heavenly Father that I would miss my dear friend greatly and that I looked forward to the time when our family gatherings would be resumed in a day when we no longer saw through a glass darkly and no longer knew only in part (1 Corinthians 13:12). We enter this life as helpless infants, and likewise we leave it helplessly in the face of death. I ached inside. I longed to turn back the pages of time. I wanted more than anything to be by his side at that moment of his passing. I was helpless, naked in my lack of control over the situation, and so I did the only thing I knew how to do—I prayed.
I believe in God. I rejoice in the privilege it is to talk of Christ, to converse reverently on his name and nature, to speak boldly of his mission and ministry, to declare with conviction his immortality and infinity. In short, there are few things I delight more in than is speaking of the Most High. There is however, one thing I do enjoy more, and that is speaking to him. We call that communication prayer. Regular and consistent and sincere and dedicated prayer is a sacred activity, one that transforms us into persons of purpose and power, wholly surrendered to the mind and will of God and holy in our separation from the distractions of this world, President Thomas S. Monsoon taught: Men and women of integrity, character, and purpose have ever recognized a power higher than themselves and through prayer to be guided by such power. Such has ever been. Such will ever be.”
Surely more miracles would be wrought if more of us took the time and exerted the energy to petition our God in behalf of a darkened world that is traveling headlong toward spiritual dissolution. As theologian John Scott suggested, “I sometimes wonder if the comparatively slow progress towards world peace, world equity and world evangelization is not due, more than anything else, to the prayerlessness of the people of God”2
We pray because we read that some of the greatest men and women in history turned heavenward when they needed clarity and conviction. We pray because the Lord and his prophets and apostles counsel, in the strongest terms, to request wisdom from God (James 1:5-6), to ask, to seek, to knock (Matthew 7:7), to persist and importune (Luke 11:5-8). We pray because we so often find ourselves up against a wall, uncertain and unsure where or to whom we should turn, confident that no human being has answers to our personal struggles. It is not unimportant that the English word prayer comes from the Latin root precarious. We pray out of desperation; we don’t know where else to turn. 3 We pray because a blessing has come into our lives, a heavenly gift that we know did not come from friends, neighbors or acquaintances; we feel driven to offer gratitude to an omniscient, omnipotent, and omniloving Father. We pray, not to change God’s mind but rather to learn the will of God and then to align our will with His.
We pray because our mothers and fathers, grandmothers and grandfathers, taught us as little ones to close our day with “Now I lay me down to sleep.” The words may have been simple, the deeper purposes for the action not wholly grasped at the time, but the pattern established, a pattern of prayer that would serve us well into adulthood. We pray because somewhere along the road of Christian discipleship we learned by precept and example to rely wholly, to rely alone, upon the merits, mercy, and grace of the Lord Jesus Christ (2 Nephi 31:19; Moroni 6:4). We pray because we want to acknowledge God, because we desire to praise his Holy Son, and because we long to feel comforted and empowered by his Holy Spirit. In short, we pray because we have been commanded to do so, because we need to, because we want to. For the unconverted, a prayer may seem a burden, or at best a duty. But for the seasoned Saint, one who has begun to grow up in the Lord and mature in the gifts of the Spirit (1 Corinthians 12-14; Galatians 5:22-25), prayer is a blessed opportunity consummate privilege, a remarkable honor for a finite, fallen to be allowed and even commanded to communicate with an infinite, pure, glorified Being. ~~~Robert L. Millet, Talking with God (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2010), p. 2-5
