All things that you ask, believing, you will receive. Jesus said:
For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened. (Matthew 7:8)
And yet, so many people ask for so many things and do not receive them. So many find themselves without their desires fulfilled because they either do not know the way, or they do not follow it.
Why don’t you receive what you ask for? Because you ask in lust , or without regard to what actions are required to obtain what you seek.
Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts. (James 4:3)
God will give anyone anything they desire, but he is not so liberal in his definition of desire as we are. When we think of what we “desire”, we include in desire any whim or wish or fancy. But God’s definition of desire is whether you are willing to do whatever it takes to find and obtain what you seek.
Asking doesn’t mean wishing. Wishes are desires disconnected from reason or action. Desires do not dictate actions. Rather, desires are meant to stimulate you to invest the effort to discover and follow the actions dictated by reason. If you try to dictate actions through desire, you are almost always guaranteed to fail in obtaining what you seek. The actual path will remain unknown to you except through reason and experience, and it will almost always be far different than you imagined.
Asking doesn’t mean simply praying. It doesn’t mean simply verbalizing your desire for something.
God will never do for you what you are unwilling to do for yourself. The principal purpose of prayer is not to tell God what you need. He already knows what you need (see Matthew 6:8). The key reason for prayer is for you to find out what more you can do to bring about what you seek:
36 Yea, and cry unto God for all thy support; yea, let all thy doings be unto the Lord, and whithersoever thou goest let it be in the Lord; yea, let all thy thoughts be directed unto the Lord; yea, let the affections of thy heart be placed upon the Lord forever.
37 Counsel with the Lord in all thy doings, and he will direct thee for good; yea, when thou liest down at night lie down unto the Lord, that he may watch over you in your sleep; and when thou risest in the morning let thy heart be full of thanks unto God; and if ye do these things, ye shall be lifted up at the last day. (Alma 37)
If you believe that all he asks you to do is pray, you will never encounter the vast majority of good things that he desires you to have, because almost nothing he offers can be obtained just by verbally asking for it.
Asking means putting in the effort and obedience necessary to discover the path that leads to what you desire, then exercising the necessary effort and obedience to obtain what you desire.
The first part of acting is asking “what can I do?” What you can do includes developing characteristics, acquiring skills, making sacrifices, increasing effort, completing work, asking people questions, reading books, conducting research, and so on.
Effort alone isn’t enough. You must ask, seek, and knock to find, recognize, and act according to the path God provides to receive what you desire.
Don’t make the mistake of conflating work with progress. Effort that doesn’t lead to your goal won’t help you. You have to walk in the right direction.
You need to do the best you can to figure out how one obtains what you seek, using all the resources you have. The scriptures are a wonderful resource for this, as is the internet.
Only when you have exhausted the ample means at your disposal should you expect God to reveal the information you seek through revelation. Remember, he will not do for you what you are unwilling to do for yourself.
You can exert immense effort to obtain an outcome without ever obtaining it. No amount of effort will ever result in obtaining what you seek if the effort is applied on a path that does not lead to it.
1 From whence come wars and fightings among you? come they not hence, even of your lusts that war in your members?
2 Ye lust, and have not: ye kill, and desire to have, and cannot obtain: ye fight and war, yet ye have not, because ye ask not. (James 4)
God’s promise to give us according to what we desire is null and void if we do not honestly seek and follow the path he provides to obtain it, no matter how far outside our expectations it may lie:
9 ...I give unto you directions how you may act before me, that it may turn to you for your salvation.
10 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)
Faith is the key to laying hold of the outcomes new to you, but experienced by others. God is no respecter of persons. In other words, all people are subject to the same divine laws of cause and effect. Can you find anyone else who has obtained what you seek? If so, ask them how they did it. If you don’t know anyone personally, do you know of anyone else that may have publicized enough about their lives for you to answer the question through reading or listening to their account? If you find out how someone else obtained what it is you seek, and do the same things they did, you will obtain the same result.