Hands and Prayer
Latter-day Saints Channel

How to Pray to God

03/04/15 | 3 min read

We are all children of our Heavenly Father, who loves us. He wants us to keep in constant contact with Him, and we can do that through prayer.

Why We Pray

We pray for many reasons, but most importantly, we pray to express our love to God and feel His love for us. We share the details of our lives with friends and family, and God wants us do the same with Him. We can go to Him to discuss any thought, feeling, or experience. As we talk to Him about those things, we become closer to him and more like Him

We also pray to thank God for the many blessings He has given us, to ask for the things we need, and to receive forgiveness for our sins. When we ask for it, He can give us strength and energy to complete our daily tasks and endure our hardest trials. The difficult times are when we need the power of prayer the most. Elder D. Todd Christofferson learned for himself that sometimes “you have nowhere to turn but to God.”

Power In Prayer

There is more power in prayer than we can comprehend. Prayer can provide us with strength, comfort, and peace.

We also receive answers through the Holy Ghost. Saying a humble, trusting prayer is how we get direction in our lives. The answers may not come in the time or manner we expect, but we can be certain that they will come. “Whatsoever ye ask the Father in my name it shall be given unto you, that is expedient for you” (D&C 88:64).

Through prayer, we can secure the blessings God is ready to give us when we ask Him faithfully. We can pray for others to be blessed as well. As we pray, our ability to hear and obey the Holy Ghost increases.

How To Pray

In Matthew 6:1-13, Jesus teaches His disciples the best way to pray, and He then offers the Lord’s Prayer as an example.

Jesus taught not pray only to be seen by others. Instead, find a quiet, secret place to pray openly without disruption. He also taught not to use vain repetitions, but to be sincere and think about what we say during each prayer.

We begin our prayers by addressing our Father in Heaven. We then tell Him about our days, what’s on our minds, what we are thankful for, and what we need from Him. When we ask God for things, we should do it with humble hearts. It is better to seek to know what God wants for us than it is to focus on what we want.

While there should be order and reverence to how we pray, our prayers are conversations with Heavenly Father, so we can talk openly with Him. There is no time limit on prayers. We close our prayers with this phrase: “In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.”

Some may think the only way to pray is on our knees, eyes closed, heads bowed, and arms folded. This manner of prayer shows our respect to God, but it is not the only way to pray. We can also be standing or sitting when we pray. We can pray out loud or have a silent prayer in our hearts. Elder Russell M. Nelson has told us that, “Physical position is less important than is spiritual submission to God.”

Prayer is a powerful thing. It’s how we show God our love for Him, and how we express our love to God and feel His love for us. It’s how we receive peace and comfort in our lives, as well as answers to the big and small questions we have. We must sincerely pray to our Heavenly Father, and we must pray often.


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