Does God want our prayers?

(4/10/22)

I recently (within the plandemic years) read THE KYBALION. (It’s a book about Hermanic Principles and the seven principles of the Universe. I’m not going to give a book report here but it’s a great read if you want to expand your mind and your knowledge of the universe. The summary, and the basis of my blog here, is this. “The ALL is MIND; The Universe is Mental.” The ALL is the creator of the universe and the universe is in the ALL’s MIND. I don’t know if I believe that we are in the “mind” of a creator, but we could be and I won’t dismiss the theory as hogwash. Nothing in The Kybalion contradicted my Catholicism. In fact, it actually backed it up, if you go back to the original Catholicism before it got corrupted by mankind and became a political institution of control. I called the creator of the universe GOD for 44 years of my life, so I’ll call it God still in this blog, but GOD is the ALL that the Kybalion refers to when it discusses the creator of ALL that is outside of all.

Since reading The Kybalion, I still pray at night before bed, but it’s different now. For the first several nights my prayers were a conversation with God asking him (in a gender-neutral way) if he wanted or needed my prayers. If we were all his creation, living in his creation, with a plan of His in mind, does He need us to ask for stuff and/or thank him for stuff? If we are here with a purpose that he has put in place for us, is there a need to thank him for the people and things in our life? He put them there because we need them for our destiny, not out of kindness. Does asking God for things help or matter? When we study for a test and then ask, before bed, to help us remain calm and do well on the test, does he help, or is it just pre-destiny that we passed the test the next day? The same for a job interview. Does praying for the job help or does God give us the jobs we are supposed to have, because it’s part of our purpose and His plan? Does God need to hear our prayers of thankfulness or prayers for help if he already knows where we are going in this world? I don’t think the answers to these questions are easy and there may not be exact right answers.

All I can write about is my personal life experience. All of my life I’ve prayed to God. It’s been about 50/50 of thanks to requests. Most of my request prayers have been unanswered prayers, and I thank God for them. During my whole life I have also always felt a “guide” in my decisions, whether I prayed or not. As a Catholic I believe that the guide I felt pushing me in certain directions is the Holy Spirit. As a non-Catholic you could call it universal energy, fate, destiny, your future self or something similar. It all comes down to the same thing. I was meant to be where I am right now doing what I’m doing and something from the universe guided me here. Would I have gotten here without prayer? There was a time not too long ago when I would have said no. That the prayers got me here and without them I’d be somewhere else doing something else with someone else. The last two years have been a whole new experience though.

For most of my adult life I’ve wondered about who will get to Heaven and who won’t. I know that many Catholics won’t, based on what I see and many non-Catholics will get there, based on what I see. (That was one of my first dissentions from the Catholic Church and another blog.) Do people that pray and thank God all the time for everything they have get into Heaven over people that never pray? During my life I’ve met many people who claim to be followers of a religion that are total scumbags and will probably not get into Heaven, although I’m not the final judge. Also, during my life I’ve met many people that don’t follow any religion, believe that Jesus walked the earth and preached good things, but don’t go to church or consider themselves Christian and will probably get into Heaven. These people don’t ever pray but are good people doing good things verse the people who pray constantly but are bad people doing bad things. Obviously, prayer alone doesn’t get you into Heaven.

During these past two years as I’ve contemplated prayer even more, I’ve thought about all the times I’ve prayed to God. As I said, most of my prayer requests throughout my life were denied. The reason they were denied was because what I was asking for wasn’t what was right for me to get me to where I am now. So, prayer didn’t matter, and God didn’t need to hear it. On the rare occasion that my prayers were answered, they were things I was going to get anyway so God didn’t need to hear it then either. I mainly think that prayer should just be a conversation with God with no requests.

I’ve also been thinking about the purpose of prayer. Is it for us? Is it for God? Is it for us both? I know good people who go through their lives without prayer being a part of it. They may pray on occasion but overall, it’s not something they do or even think about. As much as it bothers me to say this, since I was raised Catholic and still feel that my foundation is Catholic, I don’t think prayer matters to God. I don’t think God needs to hear our prayer requests since He will only grant us what we need to get where we need to be anyway. The purpose of prayer is to make us, as humans, feel comfortable talking about our lives to our Heavenly father just like when a child talks to his earthly father about his day before bed.