When prayer doesn't feel like the balm of Gilead

[Misshalfway]

What does a person do when......

life gets too hard for too long and human capacity is all too insufficient and all the earthly sources cease to make one whole.... and then one goes to the closet to pray and pour out the soul to the one who does know the answers and does have the powers to heal and move mountains yet one doesn't feel the promised ball of gilead... or answers... or gentle comfort?

Why are there seasons when the heaven's seem closed and ones faith hangs in the balance? Is that part of the process? Is that part of the test?

What does a person do then? What is the next faithfilled action? What helps the person preserve their faith when the absense of promised blessings seem to invoke the adversary's "I told you so" laughter?

Perhaps God is limited. Or....maybe unwilling. Perhaps the flesh is too blind and deaf and dumb.

[Gwen]

i don't have an answer for ya. when i've been there i just keep going through the motions. there are things that have to be done no matter what i feel like. one foot in front of the other and somehow the fog starts to lift.

[ryanh]

HEY! Have you been reading my journal???

One thing I have learned to do during those times, which seem to be the status quo for this hardened and unfeeling guy, is to reflect on those past experiences that have shown me so clearly that God does exist, does communicate, and does love.

Perhaps that is why journals of spiritual experiences are so important to keep - to record those events while fresh and felt, to have to treasure later.

Edited October 29, 2009 by ryanh

[ryanh]

P.S.

Then I work to forget me, myself, and I, and all our problems, and focus on serving others. I'm repreatedly amazed at how my thoughts and actions are inspired and directed, and I'm reassured that God lives and cares about us all. It's curious to me that I can feel so directed at times in my efforts to serve others when my pleadings for reassurance for myself appear to be unanswered.

(oh, and then I go to the Dr, try to find out what on earth is ailing me, and pop my prozac )

[rameumptom]

I think the Lord gave us the perfect response via Joseph Smith.

D&C 121:7 My son/daughter, peace be unto thy soul; thine adversity and thine afflictions shall be but a small moment; 8 And then, if thou endure it well, God shall exalt thee on high; thou shalt triumph over all thy foes.

9 Thy friends do stand by thee, and they shall hail thee again with warm hearts and friendly hands.

10 Thou art not yet as Job; thy friends do not contend against thee, neither charge thee with transgression, as they did Job.

11 And they who do charge thee with transgression, their hope shall be blasted, and their prospects shall melt away as the hoar frost melteth before the burning rays of the rising sun;

AND

D&C 122: 5 If thou art called to pass through tribulation; if thou art in perils among false brethren; if thou art in bperils among robbers; if thou art in perils by land or by sea; ...

7. ...know thou, my son/daughter, that all these things shall give thee experience, and shall be for thy good. 8 The Son of Man hath descended below them all. Art thou greater than he?

9 Therefore, hold on thy way, and the priesthood shall remain with thee; for their bounds are set, they cannot pass. Thy days are known, and thy years shall not be numbered less; therefore, fear not what man can do, for God shall be with you forever and ever.

The deliverance isn't always when we ask for it. But it will come. It is at times like these when we must bolster our faith and hope.

Ether 12:4 Wherefore, whoso believeth in God might with surety hope for a better world, yea, even a place at the right hand of God, which hope cometh of faith, maketh an anchor to the souls of men, which would make them sure and steadfast, always abounding in good works, being led to glorify God.

Remember, this last quote was from Moroni, who was alone and abridging the writings of a people who destroyed themselves, just as his people had done. Moroni wandered for 40 years. But he still believed that hope is an anchor to our souls, making us sure and steadfast. When we stop and envision in our minds the promises God has made to us, we are filled with hope to overcome and endure. We see things from an eternal perspective, even as God does, and realize that while our trials are difficult, they are but for a moment. Then, Christ will wipe away our tears and fill us with indescribable joy, yes, even an hundred fold.

Unlike Job, you have friends on your side. Just look at how many people here at LDS.Net appreciate you. And while you struggle quietly in the middle of the night, so do many of us. Many of our prayers are yet to be answered, as we try to patiently await our deliverance as well. But hope is the anchor we need. Jesus will save and exalt us, if we but endure to the best of our ability.

Edited October 29, 2009 by rameumptom

[sixpacktr]

Ram,

You hit the nail square on the head with that answer.

[beefche]

Ram, thank you. I was looking for those very scriptures to post when I read your post.

I think sometimes that God may withdraw what we think of as His presence to test us. With the gift of the Holy Ghost, we have the presence of a member of the Godhead with us at all times. He is there ready to provide comfort. But sometimes we need to feel the depths of sorrow before that comfort will come to us.

I've been to Liberty jail where the prophet cried to the Lord and received those scriptures referred to in D&C 121. I've tried to imagine what life must have been like for him and his companions....separated from his wife, children, parents; cold and sick; deplorable living conditions; surrounded by wolves ready to snap. How much pain and suffering he must have felt. And he had the mantle of prophet and leader of a lot of people relying on him. He, too, felt no balm was in Gilead.

But, sometimes, we just have to keep keeping on. Doing those things we know to be right, not because we feel it is right at the moment, but because we remember that we felt they were right. We remember what it is like to be happy and providing comfort for others. Now is our time to be receivers while being givers--we should never neglect others during our Gethsemane. Christ remembered us during his suffering--He drank that bitterness from that cup. How can we let Him down during our dark moments?

It will pass. It may not feel like it will, but you must trust Heavenly Father and His will.

[Seminarysnoozer]

That refiners fire requires a lot of heat.

[Seminarysnoozer]

You bringing this up makes me think you are advanced in your learning. Kind of like when your dad is teaching you how to ride a bike, he lets go, then you panic until you realize he let go a long time ago and you are okay to go more and more on your own.

[Danite]

Wow, Some more very hard doctrine. I do think it's part of our test, we must be tried in all things. It very hard not to ask Heavenly Father to save us from the mission we are called to serve. President Monson wrote once " To live greatlly, we must develop the capacity to face trouble with courage,disappointment with cheerfulness, and triumph with humility. You ask , How might me achieve these goals? I answer ,By getting a true perspective of who we really are! We are sons and daughters of a living God in whose image we have been created. Think of the that truth: "Created in the image of God". We cannot sincerly hold this conviction without experiencing a profound new sense of strengh to live the commandments of God, the power to resist the temptations of Satan ( Pathways to Perfection, Desert Book Co, 1973 , page 81.)

[talisyn]

What does a person do when......

life gets too hard for too long and human capacity is all too insufficient and all the earthly sources cease to make one whole.... and then one goes to the closet to pray and pour out the soul to the one who does know the answers and does have the powers to heal and move mountains yet one doesn't feel the promised ball of gilead... or answers... or gentle comfort?

Why are there seasons when the heaven's seem closed and ones faith hangs in the balance? Is that part of the process? Is that part of the test?

What does a person do then? What is the next faithfilled action? What helps the person preserve their faith when the absense of promised blessings seem to invoke the adversary's "I told you so" laughter?

Perhaps God is limited. Or....maybe unwilling. Perhaps the flesh is too blind and deaf and dumb.

Chocolate.

[rameumptom]

Chocolate.

Not the cheap, milk chocolate stuff. We're talking the good stuff. The kind that melts in your mouth and has that rich dark chocolate taste that surrounds your tongue and fills your taste buds. I had some last night, btw.

[candyprpl]

After feasting on chocolate, go to someone who has the best hugs:bighug:

This is a tough one -- I've also been plagued with such questions:confused:

In 2 Nephi 2:2 Lehi stated that the trials we endure can turn to our benifit (see also D&C 98:3). Elder Dallin H. Oaks explained how a sense of gratitude enables us to see our hardships in the context of our purpose here on earth: "When we give thanks in all things, we see hardships and adversities in the context of the purpose of life. We are sent here to be tested. There must be opposition in all things. We are meant to learn and grow through that opposition, through meeting our challenges, and through teaching others to do the same."

Elder Richard G. Scott explained that God provides us with challenges that are designed to help us grow spiritually: "Just when all seems to be going right, challenges often come in multiple doses applied simultaneously. When those trials are not consequences of your disobedience, they are evidence that the Lord feels you are prepared to grow more (see Proverbs 3:11-12). To get you from where you are to where He wants you to be requires a lot of stretching, and that generally entails discomfort and pain."

I do sometimes wonder how much stretching I can endure. It's so hard to keep an eternal perspective in times like this.

1 Nephi 20:10 "furnace of affliction" Elder Dallin H. Oaks observed that affliction can likewise refine and purify each of us: "Most of us experience some measure of what the scriptures call 'the furnace of affliction' (Isaiah 48:10). Through the justice and mercy of a loving Father in Heaven, the refinement and sanctification possible through such experiences can help us achieve what God desires us to become.

Elder Robert D. Hales described the personal sanctification he experienced following three major surgeries.

"In the past two years, I have waited upon the Lord for mortal lessons to be taught me through periods of physical pain, mental anguish, and pondering. I learned that constant, intense pain is a great consecrating purifier that humbles us and draws us closer to God's Spirit. If we listen and obey, we will be guided by His Spirit and do His will in our daily endeavors.

"There were times when I have asked a few direct questions in my prayers, such as, 'What lessons dost Thou want me to learn from these experiences?'

"As I studied the scriptures during this critical period of my life, the veil was thin and answers were given to me as they were recorded in lives of others who had gone through even more severe trials.

" 'My son, peace be unto thy soul; thine adversity and thine afflictions shall be but a small moment;

" 'And then, if thou endure it well, God shall exalt thee on high' (D&C 121:7-8)

"Dark moments of depression were quickly dispelled by the light of the gospel as the Spirit brought peace and comfort with assurances that all would be well.

"On few occasions I told the Lord that I had surely learned the lessons to be taught and that it wouldn't be necessary for me to endure any more suffering. Such entreaties seemed to be of no avail, for it was made clear to me that this purifying process of testing was be endured in the Lord's time and in the Lord's own way."

There are things said in my Patriarchal Blessing that give me comfort.

One night I was up late (dealing with my afflictions) and I turned on BYU and listened to a talk by S. Michael Wilcox, "When Prayers Seem Unanswered" What a talk! It helped me see things I hadn't seen before. The next day I tried to find this talk so I could print it out and keep on hand. I found out that he had written a book with the same title. It's a very small book and filled with such wisdom. The following is what is written on the flap:

We have all had times when we feel that the heavens have closed and our supplications have gone unheard. In this inspirational book, author S. Michael Wilcox explains that the Lord often waits until the moment when we have nearly exhausted our resources and our strength to send an answer to our prayers. ...God is not quick to jump in and save us, allowing us to learn from our mistakes and struggles.

Take care and God bless.

[ryanh]

Reflecting further on specifically what I have done when facing my dark periods lately, I recall a couple other things that helped.

Listen to good music. My favorite is Soft Sunday Sounds on FM100.3 They stream them over the web too, so it's not just for Sunday, or just for Utah. The LDS genre spiritual music can really help sooth some of the pain. Just hold on, hold on, the light will come.

I also search myself and try to identify what it is that *I* might be doing to prevent myself from hearing the Spirit, or preventing the balm of Gilead from being applied. A great talk was given by Elder Maxwell in 1976 - Not Withstanding My Weakness regarding this.

Now may I speak, not to the slackers in the Kingdom, but to those who carry their own load and more; not to those lulled into false security, but to those buffeted by false insecurity, who, though laboring devotedly in the Kingdom, have recurring feelings of falling forever short.

. . .

Some of us who would not chastise a neighbor for his frailties have a field day with our own. Some of us stand before no more harsh a judge than ourselves, a judge who stubbornly refuses to admit much happy evidence and who cares nothing for due process. Fortunately, the Lord loves us more than we love ourselves.

. . .

What can we do to manage these vexing feelings of inadequacy? Here are but a few suggestions:

1. We can distinguish more clearly between divine discontent and the devil’s dissonance, between dissatisfaction with self and disdain for self. We need the first and must shun the second, remembering that when conscience calls to us from the next ridge, it is not solely to scold but also to beckon.

2. We can contemplate how far we have already come in the climb along the pathway to perfection; it is usually much farther than we acknowledge. True, we are “unprofitable servants,” but partly because when “we have done that which was our duty to do” (Luke 17:10), with every ounce of such obedience comes a bushel of blessings.

3. We can accept help as well as gladly give it. Happily, General Naaman received honest but helpful feedback, not from fellow generals, but from his orderlies. (See 2 Kgs. 5:1–14.) In the economy of heaven, God does not send thunder if a still, small voice is enough, or a prophet if a priest can do the job.

4. We can allow for the agency of others (including our children) before we assess our adequacy. Often our deliberate best is less effectual because of someone else’s worst.

5. We can write down, and act upon, more of those accumulating resolutions for self-improvement that we so often leave, unrecovered, at the edge of sleep.

6. We can admit that if we were to die today, we would be genuinely and deeply missed. Perhaps parliaments would not praise us, but no human circle is so small that it does not touch another, and another.

7. We can put our hand to the plow, looking neither back nor around, comparatively. Our gifts and opportunities differ; some are more visible and impactful. The historian Moroni felt inadequate as a writer beside the mighty Mahonri Moriancumer, who wrote overpoweringly. We all have at least one gift and an open invitation to seek “earnestly the best gifts.” (D&C 46:8.)

8. We can make quiet but more honest inventories of our strengths, since, in this connection, most of us are dishonest bookkeepers and need confirming “outside auditors.” He who was thrust down in the first estate delights to have us put ourselves down. Self-contempt is of Satan; there is none of it in heaven. We should, of course, learn from our mistakes, but without forever studying the instant replays as if these were the game of life itself.

9. We can add to each other’s storehouse of self-esteem by giving deserved, specific commendation more often, remembering, too, that those who are breathless from going the second mile need deserved praise just as the fallen need to be lifted up.

10. We can also keep moving. Only the Lord can compare crosses, but all crosses are easier to carry when we keep moving. Men finally climbed Mount Everest, not by standing at its base in consuming awe, but by shouldering their packs and by placing one foot in front of another. Feet are made to move forward—not backward!

11. We can know that when we have truly given what we have, it is like paying a full tithe; it is, in that respect, all that was asked. The widow who cast in her two mites was neither self-conscious nor searching for mortal approval.

12. We can allow for the reality that God is more concerned with growth than with geography. Thus, those who marched in Zion’s Camp were not exploring the Missouri countryside but their own possibilities.

13. We can learn that at the center of our agency is our freedom to form a healthy attitude toward whatever circumstances we are placed in! Those, for instance, who stretch themselves in service—though laced with limiting diseases—are often the healthiest among us! The Spirit can drive the flesh beyond where the body first agrees to go!

14. Finally, we can accept this stunning, irrevocable truth: Our Lord can lift us from deep despair and cradle us midst any care. We cannot tell Him anything about aloneness or nearness!

[Misshalfway]

It was late the other night when I posted. And I was struggling profoundly. It was another night when intellectual reasoning wouldn't satisfy and when I needed the reality of the gospel we talk about all day needed to become a reality for me.

Thank you all for listening and posting your heartfelt thoughts. They really have helped.

I have been pondering....actually more than that. Working so hard to work on the problems that so easily beset me and at the same time trying not to miss the lessons I am being taught thru the struggles. It's bigger than I am. I don't have the ability. I have learned that so accutely. Yet, Father in Heaven seems to be allowing me to handle these on my own. I feel like He is there supervising and telling me to trust myself and my instincts. Yet, I feel like I go round in circles knowing that I don't have the right answers to figure it all out so it is back to good working order. I want Him to stop the pain....to tell my he loves me and that it will all be ok. I want Him to fix it all and make it all right again. That doesn't seem to be His will. I suppose I am a little angry about that especially when all of my efforts are obviously failing and clear proof that flesh shouldn't be trusted.

At times it seems to me that believing is a quagmire. I am told to put all my trust in an all powerful being that will, if I read and pray and go to church, will take away the pain and answer all the questions and make me whole again. And so I do in childlike faith and determination. And when that doesn't happen.....when the answers and the healing doesn't come....making the right decision in my mind about what that means seems to be the hardest test of all.

Does it mean there isn't a God? Does it mean that God really isn't as powerful and progressed as I thought - that he is like earthly limited parents who loves his children so much but can't stop pain from happening or can't intervene because he just has to let go and let them choose and live the way they will? Is having painful experience more important than being healed from it? Is healing only used for advertizing and converting purposes to convince people that he is the savior? What about the quiet alone moments where there isn't an audience and there is only me and him?

At one point in my thinking, I was ready to walk away from all this believing because in some ways I think it has been holding me hostage. OR maybe I just want to quit because its too hard and too painful and it has all been happening too long. Maybe waiting for God to bless or fix things is a diversion away from my own power and capacity to fix my life and make things better. Maybe what I thought was faith and not relying on the arm of the flesh really just another trap of victimhood where I wait for God to do what God is waiting for me to do.

In all of this struggling and the temptations and doubts that come with it, I find myself with three options. To leave religion and join the ranks of atheism. To say To heck with all this bumbling around in the dark looking for something that isn't there. OR I can stay the course enduring to the end and convincing myself that suffering is part of enduring to the end and if I can only last the distance, then my reward of peace will meet me on the other side. Others have done it. I can sit down with Job and have lots to talk about. This is the kind of thought where you bang your head against a rock because people say to keep doing it and you'll be blessed and even though my brain is rattled, I keep going because I believe! OR I can free myself from both traps in my thinking. Perhaps the answer is that God won't save or bless or answer or heal in all things. Perhaps part of raising a child from God's point of view is teaching them to be independent and self reliant. Perhaps there is some balance between trusting God implicitly and trusting myself too. And perhaps I have yet to give myself permission to understand fully the relationship between what is my part and what is his.

I can't choose option 1. I keep trying and it doesn't work. I can't choose option 2 as that almost killed me in and of itself. I must choose option 3 and learn the wisdom of what that relationship and configuration really means and how one can suffer for so long and still believe that there is a Savior that heals. It seems to be filled with amazing and confusing contradictions and paradoxes but one that bids me on as if there is some joy on the other side of all this figuring.

Bless all of you for taking a minute sharing your wisdom. Sometimes the loneliness is too much and even my own inner strength can't bid me on better than just feeling that maybe you have a friend out there somewhere.

Edited November 1, 2009 by Misshalfway

[rameumptom]

Miss 1/2,

I know where you are coming from. I have some rather big struggles going on right now (been going for about 4 years now) that I wish would end. However, I know it isn't time for them to resolve themselves, and so I am learning to deal and await patiently for the salvation of the Lord.

What brings me hope is the promise that when the Savior comes again, he will wipe away the tears and replace the pain with a fullness of joy. Moroni taught that hope is an anchor to the souls of men, making them steadfast and sure. This is often what keeps me going during the toughest times, my hope.