Jonathan grew up with an awesome girl named Amy. This is a story about Amy, as I remember it. I may have some (or maybe most) of the details wrong…. On her mission, Amy felt inspired to put together a musical fireside. When she asked her Mission president for permission, he told her ‘No.’ Naturally, she was a little bit confused because she felt like she had been inspired to do this, and she knew it was something she was supposed to do. And so she prayed about it. And I love this. She basically said ‘Heavenly Father, you inspired me to do this fireside, but my Mission President said ‘No.’ But, I still feel like this is the right thing to do. Can you just nudge him a little? So that he will change his mind? Will you just make him feel bad about our conversation?
The next day her mission president called her. ‘I thought about our conversation and I felt really bad about it…’ And the fireside happened.
I really like this story. It is a good reminder to me of a couple of principles that I tend to forget:
#1- When you are obedient, you have the right to expect blessings.
D&C 130:20-21– There is a law, irrevocably decreed in heaven before the foundations of this world, upon which all blessings are predicated. And when we obtain any blessing from God, it is by obedience to that law upon which it is predicated.
We know the character of God is such that He is governed by certain natural laws. If He ceased to live by these laws, He would cease to be God. There are blessings attached to commandments. When we are obedient, we can claim access to those blessings. If God didn’t bless us according to our obedience, he would be in violation of His own laws and would therefore cease to be God. Amy was doing what she had been inspired to do, and so she had every right to expect the Lord’s intervention in this particular situation.
#2- Sometimes blessings come only after we have exercised our faith and agency to ask for them
“The object of prayer is not to change the will of God, but to secure for ourselves and for others blessings that God is already willing to grant, but that are made conditional on our asking for them. Blessings require some work or effort on our part before we can obtain them.”-LDS Bible Dictionary
God is aware of what we need, He absolutely knows. And it isn’t that he doesn’t want to bless us. But sometimes, those He has blessings that are ready and waiting for us, we just need to ask! We need to exercise our faith and our agency to ask for these blessings. I think
#3- Be specific when you ask for blessings and answers
I tend to offer very general prayers. Prayers in which I ask that we will be ‘safe’ and ‘happy’ and ‘ healthy’. And there is nothing wrong with that necessarily. I do think that being specific is important. Not just because the Lord may bless us in exactly the way that we ask. But, I also think that asking for and receiving very specific things is faith-promoting. You know exactly where those blessings came from. It helps you recognize the hand of the Lord in your life.
Now, All of this has been a very long preface to my own story in which I offered an ‘Amy Prayer’.
Jonathan’s boss recently traveled to the Philippines. (Let’s call him Esteban). He dropped by the office briefly (during the day, and everyone was pandering to him). And within moments of arriving, he made all kinds of snap decisions about how he thought things were running. And he disregarded a lot of the things that Jonathan has been telling him. They were things like “The office is freezing cold” “The chairs are terrible, we should get new ones” “Working the night shift is difficult for our people”. And while the situation was irksome anyway, the thing that bothered me the most is that his attitude just displayed a lack of trust in Jonathan. And that really, really bugged me.
So, I took it to the Lord. And I basically laid out my case: Jonathan has been doing all the right things: attending the temple weekly, reading his scriptures faithfully. Not to mention the fact that we are doing this über-lame separation thing because we are following through on revelation we received. We are doing what we are supposed to. We need a little bit of help. Will you help Esteban just be really cold at work? Will you give him a really bad night sleep, so he can see how difficult it is for his people to work the night shift? Help him to see that Jonathan’s concerns are valid, and that he is not just complaining for no good reason. Help him to see how good Jonathan is at what he does.
Let us make an accounting.
*By the end of the shift the very next day, Esteban was was visibly agitated because he was so cold after working in the office. Score!
*By the time he returned to the States, his sleep schedule was completely messed up. The Philippines team works East Coast hours. And so, he could have just maintained his schedule (since that is where he is from) and he would’ve been fine. He even told Jonathan to take good care of the team because the night shift thing was difficult. Score!
*Jonathan’s chair ripped a hole in his pants. So, Esteban got to see that these chairs really are terrible. Score! (Though, I am sad for his poor pants)
*Esteban had a really hard time communicating and chatting and small-talking with the team. And he was impressed by how well Jonathan was able to do these things.
Basically my prayers were completely answered. Exactly in the way that I asked. Now, I don’t want you to get the wrong impression of Esteban. I really do like him. I really enjoyed meeting him and his wife at the company get-together. They were honestly some of my favorite people that we talked to. I just really dislike it when people trivialize my man in any way. And I know he didn’t mean to do it. Which is why I didn’t pray he would get food poisoning 🙂 I just wanted him to understand. And I feel like in the end, he did. I believe in the power of Amy prayers.
