Kaliki (#12) said:

So why bother to ask him for anything, because he will give us what he wills, and no more. This makes me very sad.

I’ve had similar thoughts, kind of along the lines of, if God is going to do what he’s planning anyway, what’s the point? Is prayer just supposed to be something like, “do what you were already going to do?” But I’m very drawn to the possibility that our interactions with God don’t just affect us (though clearly they do), but in some way they affect him as well. As I think Kiskilili recently brought up on a different thread here, there’s an Old Testament tradition of arguing with God, and God genuinely responding–even changing his mind at times. I like that.

Since I seem to be in a mood to tell faith-promoting stories (I know, I know, you all think you’re on the wrong blog ), I’ll share another anecdote. (And I should probably first confess that I’ve been known to make fun of the LDS tendency to compare life experiences to the gospel–e.g., “I was walking down the street and I saw a tree, and I thought, this is just like the plan of salvation.” But as this story will illustrate, I do it too.)

Anyway, one of my roommates in college was taking a math class and she was having a hard time with it. It happened to be material that I was pretty familiar with, and I was happy to explain stuff when she occasionally asked me questions about it. I distinctly remember sitting at the kitchen table one evening and watching her work. She was clearly struggling. And I wanted to offer to help, but I felt weird about doing so; I was afraid of how it might come across, that it would seem condescending. In the context of our relationship, I felt like I needed to let her ask for help if and when she wanted it. And it hit me with real force that God might very well see me in a similar light, that at times he perhaps really couldn’t help if I didn’t first request it. Somehow that gave me a different perspective on the having to ask requirement, which I’d sometimes seen as an arbitrary and even silly hoop to jump through. But that night I had a very strong sense that God wanted to help much more than I was allowing him to, and that my role in the relationship was a relevant one.

Roasted Tomatoes (#4) suggests:

Although I don’t know if I believe it, I’m attracted by the idea that God sometimes acts in ways deliberately designed to remind us how little we know about Him.

I like that, too. I know how easy it is for me to think I’ve come to some sophisticated understanding of a religious principle, only to have my beautiful theory fall short when it comes to accounting for the messy reality of life experience.

Or maybe it was a coincidence. But like you said, Lynette, it’s hard to deny things like this. And it does bring me comfort that if He is listening when I need my contact lens, He is listening when the stakes are much higher. I might not understand what is going on in the greater scheme, but it’s nice to know I’m not forsaken.

http://scriptures.lds.org/en/dc/82/3/#1

That could be another reason we don’t receive answers. Heavenly Father doesn’t want to condemn us by giving us more knowledge than what we are ready/willing to obey.

Related:

Therefore to him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin.

and http://scriptures.lds.org/en/luke/12/47#45

When my prayerful petitions aren’t answered after a reasonable amount of time, I find it often helps to re-examine my question. Sometimes by simply re-wording my question, I have gone from the “heavens being silent” to being “instructed by the spirit.”

Like Beijing, I think this is why the “where did I put my watch” query is so readily answered; it has a fairly easy and straight-forward answer. Er…unless your one-year-old flushed it down the toilet (yep, been there).

However, you might have to do the legwork yourself to unlock the answers to things that you *don’t* know.