Prayers that deliver your desires–every time

We frequently receive prayer requests. Sometimes they’re personal appeals, but they also come via the Internet. Lately, I have seen a resurgence of the “Pray for Our President” emails. Yesterday a Facebook friend even requested prayer to help our soldiers prevail in Iraq’s sweltering 122° heat. These requests made me realize that we’re taught to make several presumptions when we pray:

Baby begs in prayer

  1. God is a Being that lives outside of us—in fact, in outer space;
  2. Like a genie, God grants wishes;
  3. Collective prayer can influence God to do what we want, and
  4. If we don’t pray in earnest, God will not lift a gigantic finger to help His distressed children.

Rarely do we consider the possibility that whatever is happening—no matter how it appears on Earth’s surface—has an underlying divine purpose. It certainly doesn’t occur to us that an immortal soul inside a person designed the experience because it had some evolutionary, purgative or karmic value.

We’ve accepted the idea that we are merely bodies—a reality created by the same folks who told us that we have dominion over an Earth that is the center of the Universe; the sun, moon and stars revolve around it. The only time we acknowledge that we have a soul is when we discuss its fate. It’s as if its life doesn’t begin until ours ends. Read More