Ask.

Essential Takeaway: Pray with confidence

It always surprises me that the Lord gives me exactly what I need! A couple of weeks ago, as I did my personal scripture study, I really dove into the concept of praying with confidence. I love this idea and have been adding this concept to my morning meditation. I started to meditate/pray for things as if they have happened before they actually do.

Last week I had surgery.  Fifteen minutes before I was to go back to the OR, I heard the nurse say “Dr P’s first patient has not been approved by her insurance!” (that was me!) For the next few minutes, I could hear nurses scrambling to call insurance and to contact my surgeon. He came into my room and said “We are just working on something and will be ready to go soon!”  A few more minutes pass, and I got a couple of other hospital staff letting me know we were really close to being ready to go back. When I first heard the panicked announcement from the first nurse, I immediately started to put into practice the praying with confidence meditation I had recently discovered.  Breath in…. Dear Heavenly Father…. Breath out….. Thank you for allowing this surgery to proceed…..Breath in…. Thank you, Father for allowing my insurance to cover this procedure…. Breath out…. Thank you Father for continuing to bless me for paying tithing. Breath in… Thank you for your constant blessings and goodness. Breath out… thank you for helping me feel peace in this moment. I knew, as I lay there with the IV and ready to roll, that this surgery WAS going to happen and my insurance WOULD cover it.

Not long after I started this process, the nurse came in and said we were ready to go! The surgery went very well and the recovery is going well, although I am continuing to learn patience in long suffering. I know that Heavenly Father is aware of us and He really does give us what we need. Does this mean prayer is a wish list and if we wish hard enough we get whatever we want? No.

While praying with confidence, I like to remember this quote by Elder Hales in April 2019 conference; “sometimes our prayers are answered quickly with the outcome we hope for. Sometimes our prayers are not answered in the way we hope for, yet with time we learn that God had greater blessings prepared for us than we initially anticipated. And sometimes our righteous petitions to God will not be granted in this life. As Elder Neal A. Maxwell said, “Faith also includes trust in God’s timing.”