What is prayer? Why should we pray? What does God do with our prayers? Why is prayer necessary? Is prayer an option? What happens when we don't pray? What are the fruits of prayer? What is truth? What is goodness? What is beauty? Story of Job the righteous. How do we become saints? Praying is relationship.

1. Prayer for
Beginners
By Peter Kreeft

2. Why pray to a hidden God?

3. 1. Only Prayer can
Save the World
– Nothing is more relevant and responsible than
prayer.
– Nothing else can ever cure our sick world except
saints (people who look to do God’s will).
– Saints are not made except through prayer.
– The deepest root of all the world’s diseases is sin.
– Saints are the antibodies that fight sin.
– Nothing but God can make saints.
– We meet God in prayer.
– Prayer it the hospital for souls where we meet
Doctor God.

4. 2. We must pray because
God commands it
– Prayer is not a self-improvement program.
– God addresses us in prayer.
– Prayer is a response to a prior divine invitation.
– More than an invitation – it is a command from God (1 Thess.
5,17)
– God yearns for us to pray more passionately than any earthly
lover yearns for his beloved to turn her eyes of attention to
him.
– We pray to obey, not to “play” God.
– We pray not to change God’s mind, but our own.
– Not to command God, but to let God command us.
– We pray to “let God be God.”
– Prayer is our obedience to God even when it asks God for
things, for God has commanded us to ask (Matthew 7,7).

5. 3. Why does God
command us to pray?
– To satisfy our three main human needs:
– TRUTH – to our mind.
– GOODNESS – to our will.
– BEAUTY – to our heart.
– God put these three needs within us
because they are also the three
attributes of God – HE CREATED US.

6. TRUTH
–Prayer gives truth to our mind
–We place ourselves in the
presence of truth itself
–The divine mind that designed
our minds and our lives and
the whole universe.

7. GOODNESS
– Prayer gives goodness to our will
because it puts us “on line” with God.
– It puts us in love with the God who is
love and goodness.
– That is God’s essence.
– In prayer we become like the God we
pray to and conform to.
– We catch the good infection of
Godliness by contact.

8. BEAUTY
– Prayer gives goodness to our heart
because it plunges us into the
heart of God.
– The heart of God is the eternal
energy of infinite joy.
– That is why it gives us joy and
peace and delight and happiness.

9. 4. We should pray because God’s
honour deserves it, in fact,
demands it
– God is God, the Absolute Reality, Infinite
Perfection.
– More massively real than the universe itself.
– More worthy than all the ideals together
ever conceived by all human minds.
– If God is not this, then God is not God, but
something like Zeus, some finite thing in our
world, or something like a good idea, some
finite thing created by our mind.

10. How Great is Our God
Louie Giglio

11. 5. Prayer makes
sense The three R’s
– We pray because prayer is the most realistic
thing in the world to do.
– It is our acknowledgement of reality.
– Prayer is our right response to reality, our
honesty with reality.
– It is our Right Response to Reality.
– Prayer is the fundamental principle of morality,
sanctity, and sanity.
– We will discover this truth in heaven – for now
we have faith this is true.
– Praying is what we will be doing in heaven
forever – so might as well practice it while we
have time here on earth.

12. 6. We do not have an
infinite amount of time –
so start praying now
– Every day we are one day closer to going Home.
– After we die we will never say: “I spent too
much time praying” or “I wish I had spent more
time snap-chatting.”
– God’s infinite and uncompromising love will not
leave us alone until we pray.
– If we don’t learn to practice his presence with
our whole mind and will in this life, we will
have to learn it in Purgatory, where it will be
much more painful (1 Corinthians 3:11-15).

13. 7. What can happen
if I don’t pray?
– If we refuse to learn it and choose not to talk to
God, that is what Hell is-to refuse to be with God.
– Divine love made Purgatory; to finish the job.
– Divine love did not make hell; sin made hell.
– God’s love by its unchangeable nature must burn
away all our imperfections as a great artist
creates a masterpiece by chiseling away at the
stone.
– It is his very nature to do so, as is the nature of
the sun to shine.
– We are not wise to struggle against his nature.

14. 8. Praying is like
gardening
– The growing of something alive.
– Alive for eternity.
– It is gradual, it is invisible, but it is the difference
between life and death.
– Prayer is plant food.
– The plant is the soul.
– It is going to be transplanted at death into an
immortal, eternal garden.
– Learning to pray is dress rehearsal for eternal life.
– Practice it by doing it, what we will be doing in
heaven for all eternity.

15. 9. Prayer is delightful
– There is nothing sweeter or more delightful
than continual conversation with God.
– Only those who practice it and experience it
can comprehend it.
– No one who has ever experienced it rate it any
less.
– Even though our prayer can be poor, the God
we contact is infinitely rich.
– God has an infinite treasure to bestow on us.
– “What no eye has seen, no ear heard, nor the
heart of man conceived, what God has
prepared for those who love him” (1 Cor.2,9).

16. DELIGHT
– Delight is a subjective reason for
praying, but is a good start.
– Peace, happiness and joy can also help
us start praying.
– We are spiritual infants.
– God understands we are not perfect,
only he is perfect (Mt.5,48).
– God is easy to please, but hard to satisfy
(C. S. Lewis).

17. 10. Prayer is the way
to know God
– “This is eternal life, that we know thee, the one only true
God” (Jn.17,3).
– It is not just to know about God, but to know God you
must meet him, spend time with him, practice his
presence.
– This is to live in reality – for God is really present – instead
of the fantasy worlds we construct with our own minds, in
which God is absent.
– One moment of prayer can bring us closer to God than all
the books we read “about” God.
– “You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the
demons believe—and shudder” (James 2,19).

18. Story of Job
– Job was so hurt, desperate,
confused that he wondered
whether God was really just (Job
9,17-24).
– Job’s three friends spoke
theological truths about God,
but they did not speak to God
(Job 42,7).
– Job spoke to God, he prayed.

19. 11. Prayer is knowing God –
essential prerequisite for all
people in leadership
positions
– We need knowledge of God, not about
God.
– To know God is to love God.
– That is required from people who lead
others (elder siblings, friends, parents,
teachers, government leaders, Popes,
etc.)
– For if they do not have God, then it is
something else which leads them, and
without God, all are led astray.

20. 12. Prayer is the only
way to spiritual progress
– Not to advance in spiritual life is to go
back.
– If we don’t love our beloved more
now than when we met them, then
we are on the way to separation.
– If we are not moving closer to God,
we are moving farther away.
– Every choice in prayer we make
affects our relationship with God.
– Our spiritual universe is Absolute.

21. 13. “…in Christ...”
– If we are “in Christ” we are moving with the most
pressing speed.
– We are “in” the most dynamic man who ever
walked the earth.
– When he says to us: “follow me” (Mt.8,22), he is
inviting us to a high speed chase down the roads
of life.
– On that chase there is no rest except eternal rest
and no security except eternal security.
– He will not leave us alone: “Lo, I am with you
always” (Mt.28,20).
– We must pray in order to grow, and to grow into
the Infinite Love from which there is nothing
greater.

22. 14. …Our Father...
– Even good earthly fathers want
the best for their children.
– Why do we expect out Heavenly
Father to be any less demanding
and leave us alone?
– That is what uncles do, not
fathers.
– Christ did not teach us to pray,
“Our Uncle who art in Heaven.”

23. 15. Finally … Prayer is necessary because
without it we cannot attain the meaning
of life, the end and purpose of existence.
– Becoming saints is the meaning of life.
– It is why we exist.
– It is why God created us.
– It is the reason he banged out the Big Bang.
– It is the reason he waited 18 million years for human life to evolve.
– It is why he provided us with one perfect planet.

24. 16. It is why …
– It is why he breathed his Spirit into the Adam he
formed out of dust.
– It is why he does the same to every baby
conceived.
– It is why he prepared the chosen people, the
Israelites.
– It is why he sent them prophets among them.
– It is why he finally came down from Heaven into
a mother and a into a manger and then a Cross.
– It is why he was forsaken by God so that we
never be forsaken, and rose again, and sent his
Spirit to haunt our hearts …

25. 17. For what?
– All this effort to make saints of us, to
make little Christs, to give his Son
brothers and sisters.
– The whole universe is a saint-making
machine.
– Prayer is the fuel that empowers that
machine.
– Jesus purpose was to save his people
from their sins (Mt.1,21), not from the
punishment of their sins.
– His purpose was not just to make us safe,
but to make us saints.

26. 18. So, how do we
become saints?
–Prayer is the first step.
–The second step is charity –
a life of love, the joy of
giving ourselves away over
and over forever, as the
Trinity does constantly.
–Charity is the practice of the
presence of God in action.

27. 19. So, what do we
do now?
– Stop reading this …
– Pick up a Bible or a Rosary.
– Light a candle or play some
worship music.
– It is time to pray.
– What you have been doing is
leaning “about” prayer, now it is
time to put that knowledge into
practice.

37. What is prayer to you?
EXIT SLIP
–Write down in one sentence
what you learned about
prayer that you did now
know, or write something
that is encouraging you to
pray more.
Include your full name.