How to Pray: Prayer is a mystical process, not an intellectual one by William Bezanson [1]

The way that many have been taught with how to pray is to make petitions to God in the form of “Dear God: Please make Jane better,” as an intercession when Jane is sick. That method is sub-optimal. If God is omniscient, as we are often taught, then surely it already knows that Jane is sick. Why does God need reminding from us, doing nothing until we remind it and beg it to correct the situation? And how do we explain the case when Jane does not recover, but gets sicker, or even dies?

Do we carry on, praying in the same ineffective way as before, gambling on the outcome? Or do we do the intelligent thing and observe the failed experiment, examine the premises of our prayer model, develop a new model, test it, and eventually find a model that works better? Discover how to Pray effectively.

Read more here http://omtimes.com/2013/12/how-to-pray/ [2]