Twice the Lord through Isaiah called the temple a “house of prayer”: I will “make them joyful in my house of prayer . . . for mine house shall be called an house of prayer for all people” (Isa. 56:7, emphasis added); so, too, the mortal Jesus Christ said, “It is written, My house shall be called the house of prayer” (Matt. 21:13). Why is the temple called a house of prayer, when prayer can be uttered anywhere and at any time? Because the temple is the ultimate, sacred, set-apart space where the Lord’s Atonement is manifest, conspicuous, and fully evident. Another reason the temple is the house of prayer is that after the worshipper appropriately and worshipfully offers the gestures of approach, then she/he is spiritually prepared to pray. In short, the temple is a quintessential place of prayer.
The Psalmist captured the significance of the temple as a place of prayer: “One thing have I desired of the Lord . . . that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to enquire in his temple” (Ps. 27:4). On one occasion David prayed for deliverance from his enemies and then stated that the Lord heard David’s prayers from His temple: “In my distress I called upon the Lord, and cried to my God: and he did hear my voice out of his temple, and my cry did enter into his ears” (2 Sam. 22:7).
Joseph Smith’s dedicatory prayer of the Kirtland Temple presented the concept that the temple is a crucial place to pray: “Establish a house, even a house of prayer . . . That your incomings may be in the name of the Lord, that your outgoings may be in the name of the Lord, that all your salutations may be in the name of the Lord, with uplifted hands unto the Most High” (D&C 109:8–9). In the same dedicatory prayer, the Prophet expressed these powerful words about prayer in the temple setting: “O Lord God Almighty, hear us in these our petitions, and answer us from heaven. . . . O hear, O hear, O hear us, O Lord! And answer these petitions” (D&C 109:77–78).
Many of the Lord’s ancient people, when they were not able to pray within the temple, would pray toward the temple (see “Prayer, Directional [Praying toward the Temple]”).