PV LEARNED CLASS OF 2014
The Divine Call to “Pray Always”
Part 1: The Pondering Heart (Minutes 0–7)
Introduction and the Human Condition
Good afternoon, brothers and sisters. It is a privilege to stand before you today. If you were to look closely at the chapters leading up to our topic today—2 Nephi 31 and 32—you would find an aging prophet, Nephi, who knows his time on earth is short. He has seen the future of his people, he has seen our day, and he is trying to leave us with his absolute, distilled testimony of how to survive spiritually.
But notice how he begins chapter 32. In verse 8, he says:
“And now, my beloved brethren, I perceive that ye ponder still in your hearts; and it grieveth me that I must speak concerning this thing.”
Nephi is grieving. Why? Because after everything he has taught about faith, repentance, baptism, and the Holy Ghost, he looks at the people—and by extension, he looks at us—and sees that we are still hesitating. We are “pondering” in our hearts, paralyzed by a fundamental question: “What do we do now? How do we actually live this gospel day after day?”
The Universal Struggle of “What Next?”
We all know this feeling. We attend a wonderful youth conference, a powerful High Council speaker leaves us inspired, or we come home from a deeply spiritual temple session. We feel the fire of the gospel. But then Monday morning arrives. The alarm goes off. The kids are crying, the emails are piling up, the bills are due, or a medical diagnosis shakes our world.
Suddenly, the distance between the “Doctrine of Christ” and our daily reality feels vast. Nephi sees this gap, and it grieves him because the solution is so close, yet so easily missed. The solution is the simple, foundational, and revolutionary practice of prayer.
Part 2: The Two Voices (Minutes 7–15)
The Diagnostic of the Soul
Nephi breaks our spiritual reality down into an incredibly simple diagnostic test in verse 8:
“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.”
Think about this deeply. There are many voices competing for our attention in the modern world—social media notifications, news cycles, the opinions of friends and coworkers. But behind all that noise, there are ultimately only two primary spiritual influences.
- One influence whispers: “Turn toward your Father. Talk to Him.”
- The other influence whispers: “Not right now. You’re too busy. You’re too tired. Or worse… you’re not worthy.”
The Doctor’s Office Analogy
Let’s talk about that specific whisper: “You are not worthy to pray.”
Have you ever made a mistake, felt the sting of regret, and then thought, “I can’t pray tonight. I’ll wait a few days until I clean myself up, and then I’ll talk to Heavenly Father”?
This is the ultimate deception of the adversary. Elder J. Devn Cornish taught a profound truth about this dynamic. He said: “It is as tragic to think we are too sinful to pray as it is for a very sick person to believe he is too sick to go to the doctor!”
Think of a person who steps on a rusty nail. Their foot is bleeding, infected, and throbbing with pain. If someone says, “Let’s get you to the emergency room,” imagine if that injured person replied, “Oh, no, look at how dirty my foot is. I can’t go to the hospital looking like this. Let me wait a week until it heals on its own, and then I will go see the doctor.”
We see how absurd that is. The hospital is not a showroom for healthy people; it is a repair shop for the sick. In the exact same way, prayer is not a reward for perfection. Prayer is the precise mechanism by which we obtain the strength to heal, repent, and change. The Holy Spirit will always teach you to pray, no matter how deep the pit is that you find yourself in. If a voice tells you to stay silent, you know instantly who is speaking.
Part 3: The Commandment to “Pray Always” (Minutes 15–25)
What Does “Always” Mean?
Moving into verse 9, Nephi shifts from a warning to a direct command:
“But behold, I say unto you that ye must pray always, and not faint…”
This phrase “pray always” can feel overwhelming. If we take it literally in a superficial way, we might think, “How can I pray always? I have to drive a car. I have to perform surgery. I have to take a math test. I can’t walk around with my eyes closed, my head bowed, and my knees bent 24 hours a day.”
God, who is the author of order and sanity, does not expect us to abandon our daily duties. So, what does it mean to pray always?
A Lesson from the Ancient Tabernacle
In the Old Testament, the priests in the ancient tabernacle were commanded to keep a fire burning on the altar continuously. It was called the “perpetual fire.” The priests were not constantly throwing wood onto it every single second of the day, but they designed the altar so that the embers never went out. Even when they were sleeping or performing other tasks, the core warmth and the potential for a blazing fire remained alive.
To pray always means to keep the embers of our relationship with Heavenly Father burning continuously in our hearts. It means that our mind is never completely disconnected from Him.
Elder Bednar’s Counseling Framework
Elder David A. Bednar offered a beautiful, practical framework for how this works in real life. He explained that our morning prayers, our mid-day actions, and our evening prayers are not isolated events. They are connected, like links in a chain.
- The Morning Prayer: We don’t just say “thank you” and list our wishes. We look ahead at the day. We tell Heavenly Father, “I have a difficult meeting at 2:00 PM with a coworker who frustrates me. Please bless me with patience.” or “I am feeling lonely today; please help me notice someone I can serve.”
- The Mid-Day Performance: When 2:00 PM rolls around, we don’t necessarily stop and kneel in the middle of the office. But our heart links back to the morning prayer. We take a breath, remember our commitment to God, and silently ask for the patience we discussed that morning. Our actions become a living extension of our prayer.
- The Evening Prayer: When we kneel at night, our prayer is a report. We look back at the 2:00 PM meeting. We say, “Father, thank you. I felt a surge of patience I didn’t think I had.” Or, “Father, I messed up at 2:00 PM. I lost my temper. Please forgive me, and help me try again tomorrow.”
When you live this way, prayer is no longer a checklist item you do to get God off your back. It becomes a continuous, running conversation with a Loving Father who is walking beside you through the grocery store aisles, the boardroom, and the school hallways.
Part 4: Consecrating the Performance (Minutes 25–35)
Defining Consecration
Let’s look at the core promise of verse 9:
“…ye shall pray unto the Father in the name of Christ, that he will consecrate thy performance unto thee, that thy performance may be for the welfare of thy soul.”
The word consecrate is a beautiful, sacred word. In Latin, it literally means to make holy or to dedicate to a sacred purpose.
Think about what Nephi is saying here. He is not saying that God will only bless your church service, your ministering assignments, or your scripture study. He uses the word performance. In scripture, “performance” refers to our labors, our daily work, our efforts, and our everyday actions.
Nephi is promising that if we pray first, God can take ordinary, mundane, earthly tasks and consecrate them—transforming them into something that saves and expands our souls.
The Loom of Life
Imagine a weaver working at a loom. By themselves, the individual threads might look cheap, plain, or rough. But when the master weaver takes those threads and interlaces them with silk and gold, the entire fabric becomes a masterpiece.
Our daily chores—washing dishes, changing diapers, studying for an exam, working a shift at a retail store—can feel like cheap, meaningless threads. We might think, “How is typing data into a spreadsheet helping my spiritual progression?”
Nephi gives us the secret. When you pray over that spreadsheet—when you say, “Father, help me do this work honestly, help me be a light to whoever interacts with me today”—God takes that thread. He weaves His Spirit into it. Suddenly, an ordinary job becomes a schoolroom for Christlike character. The performance is consecrated for the welfare of your soul.
Part 5: “And Not Faint” (Minutes 35–42)
The Reality of Weariness
Nephi includes a vital warning in verse 9: we must pray always, “and not faint.”
Why did he include that? Because Nephi knew that mortal life is exhausting. The Hebrew root word often associated with “fainting” in a spiritual sense implies growing weary, losing heart, or becoming unstrung.
There are seasons of life where we feel completely unstrung.
- A parent who has stayed up three nights in a row with a sick child feels too faint to offer a poetic prayer.
- A person battling chronic physical pain or deep depression might find it difficult to find the words to speak to a silent heaven.
- Someone experiencing a crisis of faith might feel like their prayers are hitting a brass ceiling.
Christ in Gethsemane
When you feel too faint to pray, remember the Savior of the world in the Garden of Gethsemane. Luke 22:44 records that being in an agony, Christ “prayed more earnestly.”
When the weight of the universe pressed down on Him, when His body was fainting under a burden we cannot comprehend, He did not stop talking to His Father. His prayer became deeper, simpler, and more focused.
If you are in a season where you feel like you are fainting, your prayers do not need to be long, eloquent, or complicated. God does not grade our prayers on their vocabulary. In those moments, a prayer can be three words: “Father, help me.” Or even simpler: “I am here.” The victory is not in the perfection of the prayer; the victory is in refusing to let the evil spirit convince you to close your mouth.
Part 6: Conclusion and Testimony (Minutes 42–45)
The Invitation
Brothers and sisters, Nephi’s message to us across thousands of years is an invitation to continuous companionship. We do not have to walk through this confusing, challenging, and beautiful world alone.
This week, I invite you to test Nephi’s promise.
- Before you start your car to drive to work, bow your head for ten seconds.
- Before you open a difficult text message or email, pause and breathe a silent prayer.
- Before you step into your home after a long day, ask for the grace to be kind to your family.
See if Heavenly Father does not begin to take those ordinary performances and make them holy. See if the anxiety in your heart doesn’t begin to give way to a quiet confidence.
Final Testimony
I bear my witness that God is not a distant cosmic force. He is our Father. He knows the hairs of your head, He knows the specific fears you pondered in your heart this morning, and He is waiting at the other end of a prayer.
I know that Jesus is the Christ, that His name carries real, transformative power, and that through Him, our daily, clumsy efforts can be consecrated for the eternal welfare of our souls. I leave this with you in the sacred name of Jesus Christ, amen.
If you want, I can help you customize this talk by integrating a personal story you’d like to share, adjusting the overall tone, or formatting specific sections into handout notes for an audience. Let me know how you’d like to proceed!
… another great great ending to a conversation with Gemini