When Prayers Go Unanswered...

Something I really really LOVED from class this week was something Brother Griffin told us about prayer, and our will versus God's will.  He had us look up 'prayer' in the bible dictionary:

When the will of the Father and the will of the child are brought together.

Our will is what we desire, His will is what He desires for us.  Brother Griffin then took two markers, said one was God's will and one was our will.  He brought each marker closer to each other, and said: "So this is how it works, right?" and looked at us expectantly.  Most of the people in the class caught his flaw fairly quickly.  His flaw?  He brought God's will down to ours, and our will up to God's, making them meet somewhere in the middle.
 
A compromise?  That's not how God works.

God's will doesn't change, what must change is our own will, our own heart, so that we can then gain the blessings He already has the capacity to give us.  When we refuse to change, the blessings we receive are less, or compromised, because we did not meet God's will.  His will doesn't change, but the blessings that come from Him lessen according to our willingness, or unwillingness, to change.
 
Brother Griffin told us that sometimes what we need to do is ask for what WE can do to meet Him and gain the blessings, NOT for Him to change His will to what you want.
 
I had an interesting thought with this: When we don't change our own will, when we just ask for God to give us what we want, this is when prayers seem to "go unanswered" - because we refuse to align our will with His, to CHANGE.

Brother Griffin then asked us to "put our will on the alter" and ask "What would thou have me do?"

WOW.  This almost made me cry, I felt the truthfulness of it so strongly.  Thank you, Brother Griffin.  I Love this class, and more importantly, Christ and His restored Gospel.

Here's some more awesomeness from my reading, if you're interested.
Helaman 16:16: "Some things they may have guessed right... but behold, we know that all these great and marvelous works cannot come to pass." This is an evil doctrine: Prophesy is coincidence.  Satan will always try to convince us to remove God from everything in our lives. Let's please not let him. :)

Helaman 3:12: I got really excited when I found out that Lachoneus was a good guy.  It was one of those fist-bump moments.  I Love when I have those while reading scriptures. Go righteousness!

Helaman 4:2-4: "But behold, there were no wild beasts nor game in those lands which had been deserted by the Nephites, and there was no game for the robbers save it were in the wilderness... Therefore, there was no chance for the robbers to plunder and to obtain food, save it were to come up in open battle against the Nephites..."
I took a really cool principle from this: Just like the Nephites did, when you leave a place that can harm you (like a sin or something that is tempting you), leave it completely.  Leave it desolate, then the enemy can harm you with it no longer.

3 Nephi 6: This connects back to the pride cycle, and how quickly it seems to happen, sometimes in the course of one chapter.  In reading this, I was reminded of the phrase "oh, how quickly..." and thought how obvious it seems to us now that these people are jumping into the pride cycle over and over again.  I guess, when you're the characters in the story rather than the ones reading it, it's harder.  So, knowing that it is hard, we should really pay attention to our own lives and strive to not fall into pride and iniquity.  Let us not have anyone say of us "oh, how quickly...", but rather, Go righteousness!