Tell Him Anyway

There are several blog posts worth of insights from Elder Richard G. Scott's talk, Make the Exercise of Faith Your First Priority. The first one I want to blog about is about prayer.

Choose to converse with your Father in Heaven often. Make time every day to share your thoughts and feelings with Him. Tell Him everything that concerns you. He is interested in the most important as well as the most mundane facets of your life. Share with Him your full range of feelings and experiences.

It sometimes seems foolish to tell God things in prayer. Surely He already knows what challenges we face, how we feel, and what blessings we need and want. There's nothing we can say that God, being omniscient, doesn't know. Yet, God wants us to tell Him anyway. Why?

Maybe He just wants to talk with us, to have a conversation with us. We are, after all, His children. Even if you already know everything that's going on in your child's life, it can be rewarding to talk with them about it and bond with them over it.

Also, talking to God about things can help us put things into perspective. If we wouldn't bother God with some minor problem we're having, maybe we shouldn't let it bother us, either. On the other hand, it our problems do bother us, we can talk to God about them, and talking about them can bring us some peace. We may even be inspired in finding a solution to our problems when we bring them to God.

It astonishes me that the God of the whole universe wants to hear about my daily life. He wants to hear about my troubles and desires, as trivial as they may be. I'm even more astonished that the God of the whole universe wants to talk to me. I'm nobody. I'm beneath His attention. Or am I? Perhaps the reason God wants me to talk with Him, the reason He's willing to take time to listen to my feelings and troubles, is because He wants to convince me of how important I am to Him. He wants to spend time talking with us because He loves us. Even if the things you have to say seem trivial, He wants to hear it because if it matters to you, it matters to Him, if only because you matter to Him.

So, if you feel reluctant to talk to God because you don't think you have anything grand to tell Him, pray anyway. Even if all you can say is a brief anecdote about something that happened that day, which you know He already saw, tell Him anyway. If you think your problems are too small to be worthy of God's attention, tell Him anyway. If you think you're too small to be worthy of God's attention, talk to Him anyway. He wants to hear from you. He wants so badly to hear from you that He's willing to listen to anything you want to say to Him. I know from my own life that even when you're angry with Him, shouting at Him, He's glad to hear from you. Even if you have nothing but unkind things to say to Him, tell Him anyway. Praying has brought more peace to my soul than my angry words deserved.

I hope you never feel like you don't have anything worthy of telling to God. The purpose of prayer is not to inform God of anything He didn't already know. We couldn't do that if we tried. The purpose, or at least part of it, is to bond with God, to connect with Him, to communicate with Him so we can build and strengthen a relationship with Him. Lately, I haven't be praying regularly because I didn't feel like I had anything important enough to tell Him. Tonight, I'm going to pray to Him anyway. I may not have anything to say other than what He already knows, but now I know that He wants me to talk with Him anyway. So I will.