When we pray to God for something, we may fear, “What if my prayer is not answered? Won’t my faith in God weaken? If God doesn’t answer my prayer, does he really care?” 

God certainly cares – and he always addresses our need. To understand how, we need to first appreciate what our most important need is. 

When we face problems, we often feel that getting some specific thing will solve those problems. However, even if we get that need, if our mind is not calm and clear, we may well mess things up by our thoughtlessness. Indeed, calmness and clarity are one of our fundamental needs. 

How can we feel calm and clear? By raising our consciousness to the spiritual level, where we sense the indestructibility of our souls and the infallibility of our Lord. 

Of course, we have practical necessities. And we can and should strive to get those necessary things. But as the world is a place of limited resources and unlimited desires, some resources may sometimes fall short for some of us. 

If we see prayer as a means to get things done from God, then, if we don’t get those things, we may sometimes feel that prayer is useless. But if we see prayer as a means of connecting with him, then the very act of praying will establish that connection. And through that connection with him, a sublime calm and clarity will stream into our consciousness. The Bhagavad-gita (10.10) assures that if we connect devotionally with Krishna, he will give us the intelligence for making wise decisions. 

When we thus appreciate that our fundamental need is fixing our consciousness on Krishna, not fixing whatever is wrong in the outer world, then we will experience that prayer always works. 

 

Think it over:

  • Why may our need not be fulfilled sometimes?
  • Based on Gita wisdom, how can we re-envision prayer?
  • Has prayer itself ever offered you relief even in the presence of problems? If not, try next time to pray for connecting, not solving.  

 

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10.10 To those who are constantly devoted to serving Me with love, I give the understanding by which they can come to Me.


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