praying RIGHT ..left.. centre..

And when ye pray, ye shall not be as the hypocrites: for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have received their reward. But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thine inner chamber, and having shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret, and thy Father which seeth in secret shall recompense thee. And in praying use not vain repetitions, as the Gentiles do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking. Be not therefore like unto them: for your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask him.
Matthews 6:5 - 8

Friday's prayer evening was unexpectedly fruitful for me.. It gave me a new perspective about God. We would ask at times maybe even complaining:
(oh.. i have prayed why did things not work out? )
( wah i go fellowship but get poor results.. should be tt XXXX person who never attend lo)
( God i trust you so much how can you let this happen )
etc etc

THE POINT IS: we always tend to pray and have a wrong concept about how our prayers will work out. IS GOD WORKING , HELLO?

we "pray" to want God to have things OUR WAY & when things don't go OUR WAY, we blame God for it.

Just to note, a lot of us christians have always been through difficult times when our faith in GOD is shaken (bad results, unexpected failures in relationships etc ). Perhaps one of the greatest hurt felt is tt we feel at times GOD "shortchanged" us. (yes, shortchanged). We might ask God maybe even be angry when things do not work out the way WE WANT it to be.

I like the way the analogy by the pastor:

Think of a father and child at a toy shop with the little dude DEMANDING tt he has that toy no matter what.

Do u think the father does not know what is best for the child? But, out of love he might buy the toy. We are like the little kids complaining what we cant get but God allows things to happen maybe opposite the way we want for a reason. (and maybe we don't know what's that)

To end it off, I like to put up a question many of my non-believer friends might ask:
" If GOD knew what we were alr going to pray? why do we still need to pray then?"
(for your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask him Matthews 6:8)

answers by the pastor which i find logical:

God knows what we NEED and also what we WANT. But there's a distinction between the two. We might know for sure what we WANT but would any one of us dare to say that we definitely 100% know for sure what we NEED?

And simply because of this, sometimes we might have a list of things to pray FOR WHAT WE WANT ( maybe it should be renamed "wishlist" for some of us ) but just like the father with the kid in the toy store, our Heavenly Father knows what we NEED more, and maybe even when we needed something most but we did not consciously know & pray for it, our Father in Heaven provided His grace for us.

So, all in all, he knows but why we need to pray is because : to deepen the relationship really with God, so that we may enjoy our christian lives and we truly can distinguish what we WANT but not necessary that we NEED & what we truly NEED.

now, I just know one thing, that is I NEED God in my life.