"What Can I Do?"

In "Take the Holy Spirit as Your Guide," Elder Larry Y. Wilson of the Seventy told the story of Ensign Frank Blair, the informal chaplain of a troop transport ship stationed in Japan during the Korean war. A terrible storm arose, and the captain asked Ensign Blair to pray for the ship.

"At that point, Ensign Blair could have simply prayed, 'Heavenly Father, please bless our ship and keep us safe,' and then gone to bed. Instead, he prayed to know if there was something he could do to help ensure the safety of the ship."

As an answer to Ensign Blair's prayer, he received a prompting, which he obeyed, which was followed by another prompting, more obedience, and more prayer. After many prayers, promptings, and acts of faith, Ensign Blair was given instructions to relay to the captain, who followed Ensign Blair's (or rather, the Spirit's) counsel. As a result of all that prayer, prompting, and obedience, the lives of the entire crew were saved.

Of course, none of that would have happened if Ensign Blair had simply prayed for protection and gone to bed. Elder Wilson counseled:

"Instead of just listing our problems in prayer and asking the Lord to solve them, we ought to be seeking more proactive ways of receiving the Lord’s help and committing to act according to the Spirit’s guidance."

The Lord often wants us to solve our own problems. After all, that's why we have many of them: so we can gain experience by overcoming them. God's not going to take all our problems away simply because we ask Him to. Rather, He's far more likely to inspire us with the wisdom to know what we ought to do about our problems, especially if that's what we ask of Him. Ensign Blair didn't ask for God to calm the storm or protect the ship, though there's scriptural precedent for both of those miracles. Rather, he asked what he could do about it, and God told him. Perhaps God will be willing to tell us how to deal with our problems as well.

I'm grateful to Ensign Blair for setting a good example for all of us, and I'm thankful to Elder Wilson for sharing that story with all the world. We need to remember that there is a God out there who cares about our problems and who is willing to help us solve them, or at least tell us how to solve them or how to live with them, as the case may be, even if He's not always willing to eliminate the problem directly. We have problems, and God wants us to overcome them, but the best way to do that isn't to ask God to solve our problems for us. Instead, it would be far wiser to ask God what we can do about our problems and then be wise enough to do as He prompts us to do. It worked for Ensign Blair; it might work for us as well.