Many do not pray because it seems to them that they did not receive any gift from God when they prayed before, or because they consider praying unnecessary; they say that God knows everything without our asking, and forget that it is said: "Ask, and it shall be given unto you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you." Our requests (prayers) are necessary expressly to strengthen our faith, through which alone can we be saved. "By grace are we saved through faith." "O woman, great is thy faith." For this reason the Lord made the woman pray earnestly, in order to awaken her faith and to strengthen it. Such men do not see that they have no faith--the Christian's most precious inheritance, which is as necessary as life itself--that they "make Him a liar" by their unbelief, and that they are the children of the Devil, unworthy of any of God's mercies; that they are going to destruction. It is also necessary that our hearts should burn during prayer with a desire for spiritual blessings, with love to God, and that we should vividly represent to ourselves His extreme mercy to mankind, and His readiness to hear all our prayers with fatherly love. "If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father, which is in heaven, give good things to them that ask him?"
- Saint John of Kronstadt
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