The time is right for me to continue in this series concerning Prayer.Posey told me to commune with the ministring spirits, so I have let them guide me.This is copied from the Urantia Book.
If anyone wants to see how this started, here are the links http://www.unsolvedmysteries.com/usm509027.html?t=Religious
http://www.unsolvedmysteries.com/usm509044.html?t=Religious
http://www.unsolvedmysteries.com/usm509163.html?t=Religious
http://www.unsolvedmysteries.com/usm509265.html?t=Religious
http://www.unsolvedmysteries.com/usm512596.html?t=Religious
There is a truly spontanous aspect to prayer, for primitive man found himself praying long before he had any clear concept of God.
Early man was wont to pray in two diverse situations: When in dire need,he experienced the impulse to reach out for help: and when jubilant, he indulged the impulsive expression of joy.
Prayer is not an evolution of magic; they arose indepentently.Magic was an attempt to adjust Diety to conditions; prayer is the effort to adjust the personality to the will of the Diety.True prayer is both moral and religous.Magic is neither.
Prayer may become an established custom;many pray because others do.Still others pray because they fear something direful may happen if they do not offer their regular supplications.
To some individuals prayer is the calm expression of gratitude; to others, a group expression of praise, social devotions; sometimes to imitation of another's religon, while in true praying it is the sincere and trusting communication of the spiritual nature of the creature with the anywhere prescence of the spirit of the Creator.
Prayer may be a spontanous expression of God-consciousness or a meaningless recitation of theologic formulas.It is ecastic praise of a God knowing soul or the slavish obeisance of a fear ridden mortal.It is sometimes a pathetic expression of spiritual craving and sometimes the blatant shouting of pious phrases.Prayer may be a joyous praise or a humble plea for forgivness.
Prayer may be the childke plea for the Impossible or the mature entreaty for moral growth and spiritual power.A petition may be for your daily bread or may embody a wholehearted yearning to find God and to do his will.It may be a wholly selfish request or a true magnifcent gesture toward the realization of unselfish brotherhood.
Prayer may be a angry cry for vengeance or merciful intercession for one's enemies.It may be the expression of hope of a changing God or the powerful technique of changing one's true self.It may be the cringing plea of a lost sinner before a supposedly stern Judge or the joyful expression of a liberated son of the merciful heavenly Father.
Modern man is perplexed by the thought of talking things over with God in a purely personal way.Many have abandoned regular praying; they only pray when under unusal pressure--in emergencies.Man should be unafraid to talk to God, but only a spiritual child would undertake to persuade, or pressure to change God.
But real praying does attain reality.Even whe the air currents are ascending, no bird can soar except for outstretched wings.Prayer elevates man because it is a technique of progressing by the utilization of the ascending spiritual currents of the universe.
Geniune Prayer adds to spiritual growth,modifies attitudes and yields that satisfaction which comes from commumion with divinity.It is a spontanous outburst of God-consciousness.
God answers man's prayer by giving him an increased revelation of truth, an enhanced appreciation of beauty, ad a augmented concept of goodness.Prayer is a subjective gesture, but it contacts with mighty objective realities on the spiritual levels of human experience; it is a meaningful reach by the human for superhuman values.It is the most potent spiritual-growth stimulus.
Words are irrelevant to prayer; they are merely a intellectual channel in which the river of spiritual supplication may chance to flow.The word value of a prayer is purly autosuggestive in private devotions and sociosuggestive in group devotions.God answers the soul's attitude, not the words.
Prayer is not a technique of escape from conflict.Pray only for values, not things; for growth, Not for Gratification.
Bruiex's note} Take the time to read this.You will be forever changed.I know I am.
