Asking for a Horse

Our home teacher came over tonight, and he shared something that really hit me. He was talking about prayer, and he shared a couple of things that Joseph Smith said about prayer. First he shared this quote: "Virtue is one of the most prominent principles that enables us to have confidence in approaching our Father who is in heaven in order to ask wisdom at his hand." The second thing he shared was, "Be plain and simple and ask for what you want, just like you would go to a neighbor and say, I want to borrow your horse to go to [the] mill."

I had heard both of these quotes before (they were part of a church lesson a few weeks ago), but when I started thinking about the two in conjunction, I thought I saw a connection between the two.

First of all, I thought the horse quote was a bit strange at first. When I pray, I rarely take on a tone that I would use to ask a neighbor to borrow a cup of sugar (I guess this is my equivalent of a horse). However, as I thought more about it, it started making more sense to me.

If I had borrowed my neighbors horse before and broke his leg or something, then I would imagine that I would feel pretty nervous asking to borrow the horse again. In other words, I would only feel comfortable approaching a neighbor for a favor if I knew that I had been the best neighbor I could be.

I think this relates directly to the virtue idea. If we feel that we are living up to our Father's expectations of us, then we can have confidence in approaching Him. I think what I realized is that my prayers can become a lot more powerful when I put more effort into living my life the way that I know I should.

I learned something from the strange horse quote, and I thought I'd share it with you all.