A:

You asked: Why is god so lousy? Pray everyday, follow him everyday, and I get nothing? Useless god.

Thanks for your note to us here at TruthBook, a website dedicated to the teachings of The Urantia Book. I don’t know whether you are a reader of the book, or if you just happened on our site, but I am glad that you wrote with this important question. I get your drift…you sound pretty angry at God … and you are not alone in feeling that it’s God’s fault when we don’t get what we want from him.

Unfortunately, you have not given me much in the way of details on your situation, but I am just guessing that you have been praying for specific things and have not been satisfied; either that, or maybe you view the world with its problems and tragedies and you feel that God is to blame. Either way, you are seeing God as coming up short. You even refuse to capitalize his name…

If you truly do pray everyday and follow him everyday as you say you do, I can assure you that God hears you, and he knows what you want and need. So often we humans, living in this material world, pray to God to meet our material needs; we need more money…a better job, a better car, a better house…we want people to change to suit us, we want more control over our lives; many times what we really want is more happiness and peace and assurance in life.

Maybe you already realize this, but material things don’t bring any real and lasting happiness. Why? Because everything material changes. It’s feast and famine, war and peace. The stock market goes up and then it comes down. Our fortunes rise, but they could fall any time. How can we feel secure in such a world? If material desires are the goal, we are doomed to constant disappointment and frustration – and praying to God for those things alone doesn’t work very well. God is a Spirit being, and he answers prayers in spiritual ways. Once we get right with spiritual reality, our material world follows suit and we end up having just what we NEED…just not always what we thought we WANTed.

The Urantia Book is a treasure-trove of new and thrilling ideas about prayer…practical ideas that will help you to possibly reframe your approach to God and to prayer; for example, in PART IV, The Life And Teachings of Jesus, we learn the “rules” of prayer – what makes prayer effective:

144:3.17 Jesus taught that effective prayer must be:

1. Unselfish —not alone for oneself.

2. Believing—according to faith.

3. Sincere—honest of heart.

4. Intelligent—according to light.

5. Trustful—in submission to the Father’s all-wise will.

When Jesus spent whole nights on the mountain in prayer, it was mainly for his disciples, particularly for the twelve. The Master prayed very little for himself, although he engaged in much worship of the nature of understanding communion with his Paradise Father.

See also: Jesus’ Discourses on Prayer

And there are seven conditions that The Urantia Book authors call “laws of prevailing petitions” that you might also have a look at before we go on.

To paraphrase some of these truths, I think it is safe to say that real prayer is most effective when it is faithful (full of faith), when it involves the welfare of others, and when it is a plea for spiritual growth and experience. We are counseled to “pray only for values, not things; for growth, not for gratification.”

What kinds of values can we pray for? As an example, we can pray to receive the grace it takes to develop some of the values contained in the fruits of the spirit:

“…loving service, unselfish devotion, courageous loyalty, sincere fairness, enlightened honesty, undying hope, confiding trust, merciful ministry, unfailing goodness, forgiving tolerance, and enduring peace.

When once we begin to grow spiritually through these kinds of prayers, we find ourselves more closely aligned with the will of God, which is always and ever, GOOD. If you truly desire to follow God, praying to him – really just TALKING to him, as a child would talk to a trusted parent – will help you immeasurably in finding out what he really wants from you, and for you. And eventually, you will begin to see and experience his loving answers to those real needs.

Do you have that kind of relationship with God? He lives right there within you – right now – and he longs to fulfill your highest and most enduring desire. He longs for your true happiness; not a fleeting kind of happiness that we experience when we get something material that we need, but an enduring, soul-felt kind of happiness that will remain and abide, even when life seems hard. Once we start praying like that – even though the outward situations may remain – that prayer changes US, from the inside out. And that’s where true happiness is born…in the inner life

Thanks again for writing; I have provided several underlined links to pages in The Urantia Book that will help you delve more into prayer, and into God. I hope this reply is helpful to you. Best Wishes!