For as long as I can remember growing up in the church I've hear people say that you should never pray for two things: patience and humility. They say this because most often when people pray for these things they don't like the experiences they have to go through to develop those traits. For example, my friend Allen prayed for humility while on his mission and in one week on five separate occasions he had a bird poop on his head. haha Pretty humorous but also a pretty good illustration.
The problem is that I have always struggled with having patience and humility...I mean really, let's just face facts.
That being said I've always wondered how to develop those two qualities that I know I've so grossly lacked. This last week though, it kind of occurred to me that maybe a lot of prayer is really knowing how to talk to the Lord. Knowing what to ask for and how to ask for it, and also knowing how to discern an answer.
For example, this last year I have been confronted with some people that are very different than myself. We have very different interests and opinions. I've known that this would be a problem because of my natural impatience for people I view to be ignorant or close-minded. I began praying for patience, and I really didn't feel like I got any results from it. But, at some point along the way I stopped praying for patience and started praying that the Lord would really help me love people, love them the way he loves them, think they have the best intentions instead of the worst, and see in them the valuable qualities that he sees in them. That I think more than anything has helped me more than anything to develop patience and humility.