These things cannot be rushed. The Lord determines the timing of the unfolding events in mankind’s history. When it becomes “acceptable” to Him to move things along, He moves them. Wishing, fretting, clamoring and hoping will not change the course of the events. He alone will decide the timing. However, it is also clear, since in this pattern He “hears” His people, that He expects His people to be petitioning Him on these things. Without crying out to God for relief from the weary progress of latter-day history, the Saints would be unprepared for the deliverance He intends to provide.
Like so many things, He intends for us to conform to a pattern before deliverance. Through this we learn gratitude. More importantly, we learn patience. Patience is one of the Lord’s chief virtues. He expects us to develop a similar virtue by the experiences He gives us in mortality. When we can gain no further benefit from being required to wait, then the “acceptable” time to “hear” us arrives, and God responds. He determines that moment.
In all fairness, we do affect it by our lack of patience and desire to develop beyond our limitations. He would probably hear any one of us sooner, if we had the patience to warrant it. It makes one shudder to contemplate what would have happened if Christ had not possessed the patience to endure the sufferings of the Atonement.
Yet, Christ learned this patience long before He submitted to the sufferings of Gethsemane, Roman flogging and death on Golgotha. Essential delay worked to perfect the Lord, and cannot be removed from us in our lives, either. Again: “The Son of Man hath descended below them all. Art thou greater than he?” (D&C 122: 8.)