The Prayers That Yield Answers, Actions vs. Intentions, Reverse CBT
The Disciple-Leader Newsletter #61
Discipleship
“If you ask, ‘Why is this happening?’ no light may come, but if you ask, ‘How am I to glorify God now?’ there will always be an answer.”1
J.I. Packer
Here is a list of other questions that will frequently—if not always—yield an answer from God.
What is Your will?
How can I exercise more faith in Christ?
How can I repent more completely?
How would You have me be an instrument in Your hands to accomplish Your purposes?
Why would these questions yield answers from God? What kinds of prayers yield answers? What types of prayers don’t?
The scriptures teach: “Prayer is the act by which the will of the Father and the will of the child are brought into correspondence with each other. 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. Prayer is a form of work and is an appointed means for obtaining the highest of all blessings … We pray in Christ’s name when our mind is the mind of Christ, and our wishes the wishes of Christ—when His words abide in us (John 15:7). We then ask for things it is possible for God to grant. Many prayers remain unanswered because they are not in Christ’s name at all; they in no way represent His mind but spring out of the selfishness of man’s heart.”2
Here is a critical truth to understand: There are some prayers that God can’t answer.3 There are some things we ask for that God can’t grant.
Many Christians falsely believe that God can do anything. That’s actually not true. When Jesus traveled to Nazareth, His hometown, the New Testament records, “And he could there do no mighty work, save that he laid his hands upon a few sick folk, and healed them. And he marvelled because of their unbelief.”4 Their unbelief stymied His power in their lives. He could not bless them. Why couldn’t he? Because blessings are wrought by faith.5 “And neither at any time hath any wrought miracles until after their faith; wherefore they first believed in the Son of God.”6 “For if there be no faith among the children of men God can do no miracle among them; wherefore, he showed not himself until after their faith.”7
Why can’t Jesus grant certain blessings despite one’s unbelief? Because it is impossible for Him to break His word.8 Jesus is bound by His word.9 If He broke His word, He would cease to be God.10
Don’t waste time worrying about why God isn’t answering a prayer that He couldn’t answer—or wouldn’t even receive11—in the first place. Instead, learn what God is eager to bless you with and pray for those things.
Kevin Pearson wrote, “Prayer is not a negotiation process. It is an alignment process. We don’t move God to our point of view. Prayer is less about changing our circumstances and more about changing us. It is about seeking His will and asking for His help to do what we need to do. When we align our will with Heavenly Father’s will, answers and spiritual power will flow more freely. Following this pattern allows us to pray with faith.”12
To summarize, what are some principles of prayers that God will answer?
You must have real intent of heart. Don’t even bother praying if you don’t have that to begin with. God won’t receive it.13
Your prayer will require work.
You pray in Christ’s name. This means your mind is the mind of Christ. Your wishes and desires are the wishes and desires of Christ. Your prayer represents a prayer that Christ Himself would pray. It would be helpful to read Christ’s prayers to get a good understanding of this.14
Your prayer isn’t a negotiation. It’s an alignment. You don’t order God around. You submit to His ways.
Perhaps the best way to better understand how to make your prayers highly answerable is to ask God for help. You can ask Him, “How do You want me to pray? What do You want me to pray for? What do You want me to communicate to You? What do You want to communicate to me?”15
God will answer those prayers, and He will teach you how to pray.16
Leadership
“Happiness is found in doing.”17
Napoleon Hill
In 2020, two psychologists conducted a study trying to answer a basic question: Are humans happier when they focus on their own desires and needs or when they focus on doing something for others?18
Arthur Brooks summarized this study’s method and findings. Here is his summary:
“We generally think about the trade-off between self-care and caring for others as one between feeling good and doing what is morally superior. If you take the afternoon off and go shopping, you’ll enjoy it. If instead you volunteer at a local charity, you’ll miss that fun but be a better person. Obviously, this trade-off has limits; you need to take care of yourself to help others, and helping others can be fun for you. In general, however, this is how we see the ‘me versus others’ choice.
“The researchers questioned whether there really was a trade-off at all. They wondered if, just maybe, focusing on others created more happiness for you than self-care did. To investigate this idea, they divided 263 participants into three groups, each with a different set of instructions.
Moral Deeds Group: Today, we would like you to do at least one moral deed for others. By ‘moral deed for others,’ we mean doing something that will benefit another person or a group of others. This could be donating to charity, picking up trash (to help the community), giving money to a homeless person, helping someone with their work, giving someone a compliment, giving assistance to a family member, or showing kindess to a stranger. Any act that benefits another person—either directly or inderectly—would be considered a moral deed.
Moral Thoughts Group: Today, we would like you to think at least one moral thought for others. By ‘moral thought for others,’ we mean thinking about another person or group o fpeople in a positive way, thinking good thoughts on their behalf, thinking lucky thoughts for them, praying for them, hoping they succeed, or thinking about how much you care for another person or group of people. Any thought that is positive toward another person would be considered a moral thought.
Treat Yourself Group: Today, we would like you to do at least one positive thing for yourself. By ‘positive thing for yourself,’ we mean doing something that will benefit you. This could be buying yourself a gift, getting yourself a massage, taking yourself out to a movie, spending time with a friend who will make you happy, giving yourself a break to relax, or enjoying a delicous meal. Any act that benefits you—either directly or indirectly—would be considered a positive thing.
“The three groups followed their instructions, and recorded their well-being across eleven dimensions each evening for ten days. At the end, the researchers compiled the results. Not shockingly, in some ways all the strategies were beneficial; for example, all three felt more satisfaction. But in most ways, the results weren’t even close. The Moral Deeds Group reported higher scores on a range of well-being measures than the Moral Thoughts Group, and both reporterd higher scores than the Treat Yourself Group. Those caring for others actively felt greater purpose in life and sense of control, while others did not. They were also the only ones who felt less anger and social isolation.
“The end results were clear … focusing less on yourself and your desires will make you happier…
“Focusing on ourselves is the most normal thing in the world. Yet this doesn’t help us get happier. While it isn’t always easy, working against this natural tendency gives us relief from the sitcom on loop in our heads that is our daily me-focused lives. With knowledge and practice, an outward focus on life brings major happiness rewards.”19
There is both happiness and leadership power in an outward-focused person. Leadership doesn’t exist where an inward focus dominates. A perenially inward-postured individual will never be a leader until they learn how to turn outward consistently and naturally. You become a leader to the degree that the appeal of your “better angels”20 to turn outward converts from an irritant to a default position.
It shouldn’t surprise us that Jesus, the perfect Leader,21 is both the most joyous Being to have ever lived22 and the most outward-postured.23 These qualities are directly correlated and you can’t have one without the other. They are a package deal.
Mental Performance
“Our life is what our thoughts make it.”24
Marcus Aurelius
Plain English is a podcast hosted by writer Derek Thompson25. On July 26th, he published an episode with writer Greg Lukianoff26 titled, “Why Are Conservatives Happier Than Progressives?”27
Below I will share pieces of the conversation between Thompson and Lukianoff. While politics does color this conversation, my purpose is not political. I hope that any political points can fade into your mind’s periphery and instead, you can focus on the mental performance aspect of what’s being discussed.
Thompson: One of the most interesting facts about the electorate and American politics in general, I think, is this happiness gap between progressives and conservatives. From several reports there has been a happiness gap between liberals and conservatives28. Maybe I should say progressives and conservatives to distinguish from classical liberals. And it seems like this gap is accelerating.
Lukianoff: It’s been quite consistent that there’s always been somewhat of a gap between progressive and conservative self-reports of happiness, but it’s gotten much more severe in the past 12 years or so.
Thompson: In your opinion, is the best way to describe this gap as a gap in happiness, well-being, contentment, or is it a gap in negative conditions like depression and anxiety?
Lukianoff: I’m perfectly fine calling it a happiness gap, but to say it more colloquially, it’s more of a mood disorder gap … anxiety and depression are the key ones that we’re interested in here. All the evidence points to there being a substantial gap in anxiety and depression between progressives and conservatives, with progressives experiencing substantially more depression and anxiety than conservatives.
Thompson: Can you help us nail down when it is exactly that this happiness gap between progressives and conservatives started to expand? Because it seems to me from the data that it was a relatively steady gap for several years and only in the last few years has there really been this yawning of the gap. How would you characterize the timing of that divergence?
Lukianoff: … You start seeing a divergence accelerating around 2012, but definitely it’s gotten a lot bigger in the past three or four years.
Thompson: You have a theory about what is causing this gap, and the name of your theory is reverse CBT. I think before we talk about reverse CBT, we should probably talk about what CBT is.
Lukianoff: All my interest in this comes primarily from some realizations I had dealing with my own suicidal depression in 2007 and recovering from it in 2008 … As I was recovering, I started doing Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is … the best studied intervention for anxiety and depression ever invented other than, you know, pharmeceuticals. (CBT) seems deceptively simple, but essentially the realization was that anxious and depressed people have more negative exaggerated chatter in their head. There are names for these different types of negative exaggerated chatter. They’re called cognitive distortions. Some of them are exactly what they sound like. Catastrophizing, for example. So when something relatively minor that’s bad happens to you, your brain immediately screams at you, you know, like ‘This is because the world is fundamentally broken.’ And it’s like, okay, I should talk that down a little bit. Or you think you have a bad date and you just kind of assume, ‘I’m going to die alone. This person obviously hates me.’ That’s actually called mind reading. I’m going to die alone, that’s called fortune telling. The overall tone of this is catastrophizing. Some cognitive distortions include over generalization, binary thinking, which is everything is either zero or one. Everything’s either fantastic or a disaster. Blaming, discounting positives, (which is) the idea that essentially you create a narrative around there is no upside. Everything is negative. And what’s amazing about (CBT) is that it’s not a question of understanding it intellectually. You have to actually do the work and get in the habit of talking back to your exaggerated catastrophizing thoughts. And by talking back to them, what I mean is the actual exercise of (going) through this process of writing it down, labeling it in terms of what kind of cognitive distortion it is, and then trying to reframe it. Now with the power of positive thinking, but with the power of rational thinking. Being like, ‘Am I really going to die alone? Is this really a sign that the world is broken? Or is it something more mundane? As in I didn’t think that date went very well and now I’m kind of sad about it.’ This was transfomative for me. I used to get pretty severe depression almost every year. I barely get them at all anymore.
While I was studying CBT, I was working on campuses and I was seeing situations in which it seemed like the adults in the room—the residence hall directors or some of the administrators who interact with the students the most—seem to be modeling behaviors that included catastrophizing. Definitely a ton of overgeneralizing, a lot of binary thinking. There wasn’t a cognitive distortion I’m familiar with that I didn’t see modeled for younger people….
But right around 2014, I started noticing a lot more students showing up on campus demanding censorship, but using medicalized justifications. Essentially this speaker coming to campus is a catastrophe and it will be mentally harmful to people if they come and people will not be able to recover from it … Unfortunately things got much, much worse after that.
Thompson: Let’s talk about reverse CBT. You’ve mentioned a couple key psychology terms, catastrophizing, overgeneralizing. I’m just going to provide some quick definitions to those before we talk about reverse CBT and why you think this is a phiulosphy that has taken root on the left specifically. Catastrophizing is basically this idea that something happens to you and you spin out the worst possible version of that story. You get a C in Economics, you tell yourself this means you’re going to fail out of college, you won’t be able to find a job, you’ll be a failure, living on the street. It’s this story that spins out of the single fact of the C in Economics … (This is) spinning a story of maximal negativity … that becomes all consuming. So what is reverse CBT?
Lukianoff: Reverse CBT is that process of implicitly, or sometimes even explicitly, telling people that they should catastrophize, that they should over-generalize, that they should engage in emotional reasoning.
The rest of the conversation is fascinating and worth a listen. Again, the purpose of sharing this has nothing to do with politics. Lukianoff’s theory, based on data, is that progressives, particularly young progressives, tend to be more susceptible to reverse CBT-induced sadness, but they don’t have a monopoly on it. It doesn’t mean conservatives aren’t susceptible as well. Humans everywhere engage in harmful reverse CBT practices regardless of political ideology.
Think about your life. Think about the exaggerated negative chatter in your mind. Where does it exist for you? Yes, there is real power in positive thinking.29 But forget positive thinking for a second. Are you even thinking rationally? Do you engage in, or allow yourself to be influenced by people who persuade you to engage in reverse CBT?
Below are some of the most common cognitive distortions. Which ones are you most susceptible to? Don’t be enticed by the lure and “easiness of the way”30 of reverse CBT. Do the work to label and call out your cognitive distortions, and then argue against them and provide evidence for why they’re not rational.
Black-and-white (or all-or-nothing) thinking: I never have anything interesting to say.
Jumping to conclusions (or mind-reading): The doctor is going to tell me I have cancer.
Personalization: Our team lost because of me.
Should-ing and must-ing (using language that is self-critical that puts a lot of pressure on you): I should be losing weight.
Mental filter (focusing on the negative, such as the one aspect of a health change which you didn't do well): I am terrible at getting enough sleep.
Overgeneralization: I'll never find a partner.
Magnification and minimization (magnifying the negative, minimizing the positive): It was just one healthy meal.
Fortune-telling: My cholesterol is going to be sky-high.
Comparison (comparing just one part of your performance or situation to another's, which you don't really know, so that it makes you appear in a negative light): All of my coworkers are happier than me.
Catastrophizing (combination of fortune-telling and all-or-nothing thinking; blowing things out of proportion): This spot on my skin is probably skin cancer; I'll be dead soon.
Labeling: I'm just not a healthy person.
Disqualifying the positive: I answered that well, but it was a lucky guess.31
Your life is what your thoughts make of it. High performance, and a great life in general, can’t exist where truth doesn’t abide. Truth doesn’t abide in a mind full of cognitive distortions. If you’re burdened by these, free yourself and do the work necessary to train your mind in both positive and rational thinking.
Post on X. @DrJIPacker. J.I. Packer was an English-Canadian Theologian.
In fact, there are some prayers that God doesn’t even receive. How could God answer a prayer He doesn’t receive? “And likewise also is it counted evil unto a man, if he shall pray and not with real intent of heart; yea, and it profiteth him nothing, for God receiveth none such.” Moroni 7:9
And Zeezrom said again: Shall he save his people in their sins? And Amulek answered and said unto him: I say unto you he shall not, for it is impossible for him to deny his word. Alma 11:34
I, the Lord, am bound when ye do what I say; but when ye do not what I say, ye have no promise. D&C 82:10
But there is a law given, and a punishment affixed, and a repentance granted; which repentance, mercy claimeth; otherwise, justice claimeth the creature and executeth the law, and the law inflicteth the punishment; if not so, the works of justice would be destroyed, and God would cease to be God. Alma 42:22
Refer to footnote 3.
The Power of Personal Prayer. BYU-Hawaii Devotional by Kevin Pearson.
Refer to footnote 3.
List of Christ’s Recorded Prayers:
Matthew 11:25-26; Luke 10:21; John 11:41-42; John 12:27-28; John 17:1-26; Matthew 26:36-46; Luke 22:39-46; Luke 23:34; Matthew 27:46; Mark 15:34; Luke 23:46
List of Christ’s Referenced Prayers:
Luke 3:21–22; Mark 1:35; Luke 5:16; Luke 6:12-13; Matthew 14:19; Mark 6:41; Luke 9:16; John 6:11; Matthew 14:23; Mark 6:46; Mark 7:34; Matthew 15:36; Mark 8:6; Luke 9:18; Luke 9:28-29; Matthew 19:13–14; Mark 10:13–16; Matthew 26:26–28; Mark 14:22-23; Luke 22:17-19; Luke 22:31–32; Hebrews 5:7–8; Matthew 26:53; Luke 24:30–31; Luke 24:50–51
Christ’s Prayers in the Book of Mormon
3 Nephi 13:9-13; 3 Nephi 17:13-18; 3 Nephi 19:19-23; 3 Nephi 19:27-36
God loves metacommunication. “Communication about communication is known as metacommunication.”
Article by Hope Gillette on PsychCentral.com
And it came to pass that when Jesus had thus prayed unto the Father, he came unto his disciples, and behold, they did still continue, without ceasing, to pray unto him; and they did not multiply many words, for it was given unto them what they should pray, and they were filled with desire. 3 Nephi 19:24
Thought for the Day. October 21, 2017. The Napoleon Hill Foundation.
Waytz, A., & Hofmann, W. (2020). Nudging the better angels of our nature: A field experiment on morality and well-being. Emotion, 20(5), 904–909
Build The Life You Want: The Art and Science of Getting Happier. Book by Arthur Brooks & Oprah Winfrey. Pages 73-76.
Phrase from Abraham Lincoln’s First Inaugural Address as President of the United States of America.
Jesus The Perfect Leader. Article by Spencer W. Kimball.
The phrase “alive in Christ” describes individuals whose aliveness is enhanced by their righteousness. We are the most joyful when we are the most alive. And Jesus, because He was the most empathic, most loving, most forgiving, and the most appreciative individual to ever live on this planet, has a perfect fullness of joy. No wonder He instructs us, “What manner of men [and women] ought ye to be? Verily I say unto you, even as I am” (3 Nephi 27:27). He wants us to have great joy.
Brim With Joy. BYU Speech by Neal A. Maxwell.
Two other great sources on Jesus’s joy:
1) Article No One Was Happier Than Jesus
2) Article Exploring The Happiness of Jesus
Character is demonstrated by looking, turning, and reaching outward when the instinctive response … in each of us is to turn inward and to be selfish and self-absorbed.”
The Savior of the World is the source, the standard, and the ultimate criterion of moral character and the perfect example of charity and consistency, said Elder Bednar.
The New Testament, he continued, is replete with “strikingly displayed” examples of the Savior’s character. “The character of Christ, the consistent capacity to turn outward and minister to others in the midst of affliction, is the very foundation of the infinite and eternal atoning sacrifice,” he said.
“Throughout His mortal ministry, and especially during the events leading up to and including the atoning sacrifice, the Savior of the World turned outward — when the natural man or woman in most of us would have focused inward.”
Elder Bednar addresses ‘the character of Christ’ during 2019 Mission Leadership Seminar. The Church News.
Meditations. Book by Marcus Aurelius.
Co-Author of Coddling of The American Mind with Psychologist Jon Haidt.
The politics of depression: Diverging trends in internalizing symptoms among US adolescents by political beliefs. Catherine Gimbrone, Lisa M. Bates, Seth J. Prins, Katherine M. Keyes.
How to Understand the Well-Being Gap Between Liberals and Conservatives. Musa al-Gharbi.