It would be impossible for anyone to estimate the influence of prayer on the lives of men. History records many forms of prayer; but it has not recorded, and never can record, the comfort, peace, and inspiration that the individual has gained through his prayers—audible, silent, or unexpressed. One requisite for prayer is faith. In the Bible we read (Hebr. 11:6), "Without faith it is impossible to please him [God]: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him."
We should begin our prayer by putting our faith, our desires, in the keeping of our heavenly Father and honestly examining our motives. If we pray hoping thereby to win human approbation as a reward for our words, this kind of reward is the only one we could possibly win. Even though we pray in secret and fervently desire to hear God, our prayer is still the prayer of the hypocrite if, while trying to listen to God's voice, we are secretly yearning to hear the praise of men.
If our desire is for material place and power, this desire must be uncovered and cast out. Such a desire is the evidence of a mistaken concept of the source of goodness. To find this source, we must lay aside the false belief that good is a personal quality and acknowledge the presence of the one and only good, which is God. If we have not grown to the understanding that God is All and the giver of all good, we must not try to deceive ourselves. We can increase our understanding of good by habitually refusing, when we pray, to entertain mortal mind's argument that there is good apart from God. Materialism must be stilled if we are to commune with Spirit.
