On a subway platform in one of our Eastern states there was a large printed sign that said "God Answers Prayer." Some experienced person had scrawled across the bottom underneath the printed letters these words: "Sometimes the answer is NO!" This is what we have to deal with in any discussion of prayer.

Someone says, "I felt the need of God. I prayed for something to happen, and it didn’t. Prayer failed." No, Sir. I suggest that you did not want God - you wanted God to do something, and that’s different.

You have missed the purpose of prayer: to be in harmony with God, to have a sense of God’s presence; to feel the assurance that God is in, around and greater than any circumstance; that, come what may, we belong to him and underneath are the everlasting arms. Prayer is not a trading post…