I sometimes feel that I am required to make a special effort to pray for something and I find lighting a candle helps make it special.
Some people have taken Jesus' words about faith and moving mountains to the point that if we are not granted what we ask then we didn't have enough faith. I rebel against such thoughts and seek some better understanding. St Paul helps I think when he says: I may have enough faith to remove mountains, but if I have not love I am nothing. But let's stand back a little:
In science, although not all scientists realise it, explanations and theories are models of Physical Reality, not reality itself. I spent my working life writing computer models of the temperatures in Nuclear Power Stations. For some purposes very simple one equation models were adequate to understand and predict results. For others very complicated and highly correlated models were required to make Safety Cases. No one ever imagined that we were completely describing the flow of heat in the way that Mother Nature found so easy to accomplish without complex equations. Why then should we suppose that we can fully understand and describe Spiritual Reality. All we can actually do is put together models of it. Since conducting properly controlled experiments seems to be rather taboo, and against faith (whatever would St Paul say I wonder?) that process is difficult, probably impossible. It is further compounded if we start from a simplistic model of The Bible as The Word of God. I remember a rather worried Sunday School teacher adding a caveat to our Lord's words If you ask for anything in my name .......... That doesn't mean you can pray for a new bicycle. However remembering that Jesus found it necessary to speak in parables, which are not unlike models, maybe we need to try and construct some model to describe prayer and perhaps begin to understand it. And here I am confining myself to Supplication. (i.e. asking for things)
We know what it says in the Bible, but I have often wondered how starving people in the Third World understand: give us this day our daily bread. I sometimes know I have to pray for someone even though there have been plenty of more important things in the news to demand God's attention. How can I possibly construct a sensible model from those thoughts? It is clear that God does not work by our logic or for that matter by our love. Born in a stable and killed on a Cross, Jesus is God's way of Love and His Logic. Jesus did not answer Pilate's famous question What is truth (Physical and Spiritual Reality). He couldn't, the only model for it in this life was His own life and paradoxically His death.
Ask and you will receive, accepted naively without understanding Jesus, is of no use as a model. With some understanding of Jesus and especially His prayer in Gethsemane, (beautifully paraphrased by Lloyd Weber in Jesus Christ Superstar as take me now before I change my mind.) it serves as a simple model of prayer and points to a better one which seems to have three important facets.
Prayer begins not with us but with God, to be good and effective at prayer, which I am not but which others are, we have to tune our selves to God's will. Then we shall pray what He wants us to pray and, by that obedience, enable Him to respond. I do not know how it enables Him to respond, or why it should be necessary. He knows what is required, why doesn't He get on with it, we might say. Well He does of course, but our contribution, however feeble, is valuable as we are valuable, why else would He come and die for us.
We are not puppets with strings for God to pull. He must therefore respond in a different way. One way is to hold back those forces of darkness which do seek to pull our strings. (Notice just how much of a model or parable this is, invoking puppets and strings).
We live in a world of Chance as well as Good and Evil. (Click Romans 8 from verse 18). Within that Chance (or random) situation there are probabilities which God knows well enough to be able to predict the future ( No, chaos theory does not invalidate that). When we are joined with Him in prayer, those probabilities can be altered, rather like putting a weight on one side of a wheel rolling down a hill. Very occasionally those probabilities are altered drastically and we have what we see as a miracle. Interestingly in those situations there is very often a requirement to do something. For example wash in the Jordan or go to a special place. Much more often, probabilities are changed only gently and then, only by looking back, can we see the hand of God.
Finally when our prayer is successful it is easy to say: it may have turned out OK without prayer. True, it might. But I am certain of some occasions when God wanted me and others to pray and we did and I am glad to have obeyed, whatever the outcome, and I praise His Holy name. Amen