November 1, 2008
To: My Loved ones
From: Dad, grandpa etc.
Re: Receiving answers to prayers
Although I have memos written ahead to last to about January 1, 2012, I feel strongly to insert another memo at this time, on a subject that I feel very few understand and that theme is,
“How to receive answers to our prayers.” It has been born in upon my spirit to address this subject NOW. For in the troubled times upon us now, that will not end, but only increase until the Savior appears, we will survive more comfortably and with a greater feeling of joy and assurance if we can hear the voice of the Lord as we pray.
The heavens are open at all times to those few who understand how to pray and I believe that only a few understand. I often wonder if I understand, but I believe I do for my prayers are answered. Sometimes the answer is NO not yet.
Example: as the stake president set me apart for our last mission which was in the state of Iowa, he promised many wonderful things. The date was January 31, 1982 just six weeks short of my 70th birthday. Quote: “The youthful vigor which you now manifest will be renewed, and renewed, and renewed, for the Lord has need of you and he will use you all the days of your life until that sweet death which shall come to you shall actually be at your beck and call and you shall desire to enter the kingdom and it shall be granted you. Until that time you are to be engaged in the work of the ministry.”My auto biography Vol. 1 Page 219
Now, nearly 97 years old, that youthful vigor has greatly diminished, and my sweetheart has been gone over eight long years. How I long to join her and be shed of this aged and feeble body that will no longer respond to my demands. So recently I prayed that, that “sweet peace called death” would come and take me. And the answer was a resounding NO you have not yet finished your work on earth.
So what ever it is, I will remain here until my pre earth assignment is finished.
Number 1: LISTEN, I learned from this: Pray by Revelation. And you won’t ask for things that you shouldn’t have. Remember as a kid plaguing your parents for something that you knew you shouldn’t have, it’s the same thing.
But our biggest problem in our prayers: WE do ALL the talking ~and do NOT Listen.
We are usually in a big rush when we pray. We are late to work or school or are about to miss the big game on TV. We rush thru an abbreviated prayer, murmur amen and jump up and run. And the messenger from the Spirit World sent to answer our prayer is left muttering to him or her self thinking, “They just don’t listen.” Listen ~ Listen ~ Listen and you will get the answer, usually with in seconds. However, there are times when the answer is longer in coming.
Example: I prayed in my haymow asking what I could do to show my appreciation for my many blessings and a voice spoke loudly and instantly, “Sell your farm.” (Autobiography Vol 1 pg. 100) but after selling the farm it took about three years to get the answer to: What do I do next? But the answer came as I was prepared and led gradually into teaching in the church education system at seminary, institutes, and numerous assignments throughout the West and as far East as Omaha, Nebraska.
So LISTEN! Your prayers are being answered but perhaps you haven’t learned to hear the word of the Lord. The answer comes in many ways. Oft times it is just “the still small voice of the Holy Ghost. Just thoughts that come into your mind in response to your prayers and oft times without a formal prayer we will be guided. Example: after years of starvation, literally, in the first three or four years of our married life we were led into what became a very prosperous dairy business and at the height of our new prosperity both Grandma and I independent of each other received a strong impression to sell the dairy. We responded to that prompting and with in weeks the war started with the Japanese bombing Pearl Harbor December 7, 1941. Our government froze the price of milk but not the cost of production and broke most of the dairymen in the United States. We were not affected for we had insisted, guided by the Spirit, that the sale would be for cash in full. The man we sold to was bankrupt within the year. We warned him not to buy. He was already in the business and wanted to expand; saying, “We will soon be at war, people need milk and the government will see to it that we make money.” you see he wasn’t saying his prayers or he wasn’t listening.
“Pray always that ye be not deceived”, said our Savior. In other words after arising in the morning and cleaning up and dressing kneel down for a formal chat with your Heavenly Father and leave time to spend a few seconds after your amen to hear his answer then go about your daily affairs with your spiritual cell phone on so that you can hear him at any time. This is praying always as instructed. You will be guided by feelings, impressions, sudden thoughts, a voice, a heavenly visitor, a TV vivid picture etc according to the urgency of the situation.
Our nation is currently on the brink of a great catastrophe caused by living beyond our financial resources by both government and the people who have spent themselves into bankruptcy. This calamity will be worse than the terrible depression we went thru in the years 1929 ~ 1941. We were married right in the middle of it in 1934. The second winter of our marriage, with our new daughter Carolyn we survived for six months on bread and beans.
Don’t expect government to save us. Corrupt politicians have gotten us into this problem. But they couldn’t have done this, if we the people were not also guilty of living beyond our means.
Twenty five years ago I wrote; “We certainly are not going to receive any solution to our national or personal problems from government, for government only reflects the moral decay of the people. Then if the people of this great United States are to escape the loving chastisement of the Lord, they must cease to ignore him and repent and make God a part of their lives. And how can we get people to repent if we can’t get them to LISTEN. So God must increase world wide calamities until people have no where else to turn. How sad that they must suffer so and that they bring it upon themselves.
Some of the idols that the world is worshiping are: Sheer laziness, apathy, rebelliousness, love of money, cars, motorcycles, campers, boats and the love of pleasure in general will rob many of their eternal happiness. Sports are leading many souls into idol worship and will end in their destruction. Or as King Benjamin said, “Finally I cannot tell your all the things whereby ye may commit sin; for there are divers ways and means, even so many that I cannot number them.”
“The sad thing is that most of these things are not bad in and of themselves but are for our enjoyment. It is when we put them ahead of and in place of God that they become evil. Or they do not become evil, but we are using good things in an evil way.”
(Autobiography Vol. 1 pg. 222)
Listen! Pray always and you will not be deceived. “If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him. But let him ask in faith, nothing wavering. For he that wavereth is like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed. For let not that man think that he shall receive any thing of the Lord.” James 1:5-7
this promise worked for a fourteen year old boy, Joseph Smith, and it has worked for everyone else who has followed it. It has worked for me! In every phase of life. Our Father is interested in our mortal life and anxious that we have a life here that we can enjoy. He knows our natural gifts and possibilities and will lead us into areas where those gifts will return us more than a comfortable living. More than a “ho hum marriage” more than a family of wayward kids.
Listen ~ Listen ~ Listen! I know! I have had three major and several minor career changes in my long life because I listened and each one was an improvement and I enjoyed them all. And we should enjoy them. “Life is that we might have joy.” and as President Hinckley said, “Life is to be enjoyed not just endured.”
But expect trials, for they cause us to grow. To grow until we are like him. It is said of Abraham (born 2000 BC) and Isaac and Jacob that because they did none other thing than that which they were commanded, that they have entered into their exaltation and sit upon thrones and are not angels but are Gods. (D & C 132) in other words, they listened.
Now let me tell of a time and its awful consequences when I didn’t listen. Read the whole story in my Autobiography Vol. 1 pages 90-91 It is really a very abbreviated account.
I was running as fast as I could run to drive strange cattle out of my yard and garden when a most remarkable thing happened, I had a vision. It was in full color and great detail. At the same time I could see everything around me, the invading cattle, my threatened garden etc. and I was still running.
In the vision, I saw my horses and the equipment they were hooked to, run over our two year old daughter. Her head was crushed and a large (about 5/8 inch square) spike of dirt covered iron penetrated to the center of her head (the doctors diagnosis) she should have died instantly. But she didn’t, in fact she was never even unconscious. During the operation to clean the wound and reshape her head they used only local anaesthesia. The doctor said they must keep her conscious as they probed in the brain to clean it and reshape her skull.
Now I come to the part I want to stress. But first I must mention that after the operation the doctor gave us only a 50 50 chance that she would live and an equal chance that if she lived she would be mentally a vegetable. He told us to pray that she die.
At the conclusion of the operation she was placed in a crib with the rails up of course. Within a few minutes, her head swathed in huge white bandages, she was up running around in the crib and playing as if nothing had happened.
I then had to hurry home. Many hours had passed, the horses were still out in the field hooked to the spike tooth harrow. Our two older kids were home from school with five year old Steve. I don’t remember who took care of him or if anyone did. But eleven year old Carolyn had gathered eight year old Kay and five year old Steve and held a prayer circle.
I comforted them, did the chores, and went to bed for a sleepless night as I pondered the happenings of the day. Hurrying the next morning to do the chores and getting Carolyn and Kay off to school and Steve to the neighbors, the thought came to me to find out what the strange proceedings of the previous day were all about.
Going back to the scene of the accident, and a short distance from it, I entered a beautiful grove of small maple trees and proceeded to their center where a large ponderosa pine tree towered heavenward. I felt confident that the nearest mortal was a mile or more away. There at the foot of the pine, kneeling and eyes shut, head bowed, I said, “Heavenly Father, ....”
Instantly a voice spoke calling me by name, “Richard.”
It was so startling that I leaped to my feet and looked around to see who was there. I WAS ALONE so far as mortals were concerned.
I found out what the prophets mean when they said they fell on their face, for that’s what I did, my knees just turned to water, I couldn’t have stood had I tried. Burying my face in the prickly pine needles and eyes screwed so tight closed they hurt, the voice again called me by name. (Of course Heavenly Father knows your name!) And said, “Richard, Satan wants your daughter dead, I have blessed her with a talent that will bless the lives of many and build and strengthen testimonies.” (Undoubtedly her beautiful singing voice.)
“I warned you and you could have prevented the accident, no thanks to you she will live and fill her earthly mission, but the next time I warn you, obey or be destroyed.”
The words were spoken very plainly, quietly and distinctly. Not once did I have to ask, “would you please repeat that?” and tho I was receiving a severe chastising yet I felt completely loved.
Over sixty years have passed since then and she is a happy and successful wife and mother and grandmother and has used her God given talents well.
(Autobiography Vol 1 pg. 90-91)
Who ever you are whether deciding to go or not to go on a mission or to marry in or out of the temple or start a career if you will LISTEN to your Heavenly Father you will make the choice that will lead you to fame and fortune. Or in the word of William Shakespeare, “There is a tide in the affairs of men, which taken at the crest, leads to fame and fortune, omitted and all the voyage of their lives is bound in shallows and in misery.”
Listen and you will succeed beyond your fondest dreams. I have and so can you.
I will write another memo on this subject if requested. There is so very much that could and has been written.
Pray always lest ye be deceived and keep listening. Heavenly Father is aware of you and your various challenges. He is a loving caring father and wants us to be happy. We can be happy as we keep the communications open with him and our minds ready and open to hear him.
My Love,
Dad. Grandpa Richard M. Pratt
Remember the blog spot for grandpa’s memos is: prattmemos.blogspot.com You may share this spot with any you know. We would love some feed back. There are also pictures on the blog and Rachel will keep it up and your replies will come back to Grandpa fast.
