We cannot simply pray and then wait for God to do the rest.

When I listened to public prayers in evangelical churches, I heard people telling God what to do, combined with thinly veiled hints on how others should behave. When

My publisher conducted a website poll, and of the 678 respondents only 23 felt satisfied with the time they were spending in prayer. That

We do not pray to tell God what he does not know, nor to remind him of things he has forgotten. He already cares for the things we pray about... He has simply been waiting for us to care about them with him.

We pray because we can't help it.

Anderson draws from the experience of Judas a key principle about prayer: "Prayer is not a means of removing the unknown and unpredictable elements in life, but rather a way of including the unknown and unpredictable in the outworking of the grace of God in our lives.

The Bible schools us to pray with blistering honesty.

I'm simply amazed at how God worked in response to my prayers. I see a softening in my niece's husband, an agnostic. I see transformation in the members of my small group, and spiritual awakenings in my neighbors. I see growth in my own marriage.

I can view prayer as a way of asking a timeless God to intervene more directly in our time-bound life on earth. (Indeed, I do so all the time, praying for the sick, for the victims of tragedy, for the safety of the persecuted church.)

Prayer is a subversive act performed in a world that constantly calls faith into question.

Apart from the requirement that we be authentic before God, there is no prescribed way to pray. Each of us presents a unique mix of personality, outlook, training, gifts, and weaknesses, as well as a unique history with church and with God. As Roberta Bondi says, "If you are praying, you are already 'doing it right.

When I pray, coincidences happen," said Archbishop William Temple; "when I don't, they don't.