One can believe intellectually in the efficacy of prayer and never do any praying.

Living in the middle of beautiy like this, we've no call to have puny ideas about God. Why do you suppose His world is so fancy-fine, so full of wonderment if He doesn't want everything to be good and perfect and right and healthy? But we can spoil His good work. When we mess things up, then we shouldn't blame Him and try to make ourselves feel better by contending that it's what He wanted.

God insists that we ask, not because He needs to know our situation, but because we need the spiritual discipline of asking.

The only time I ever find my dealings with God less than clear-cut is when I'm not being honest with Him. The fuzziness is always on my side, not His.

Satan cannot create anything new, cannot create anything at all. He must steal what God has created. Thus he twists love and God's wonderful gift of sex into lust and sadism and myriad perversions. He disfigures the heart's deep desire to worship God and persuades us to bow before lesser gods of lust or money or power.

Why should a child's future be shaped by where they are born?

God's way of dealing with us is to throw us into situations over our depth, then supply us with the necessary ability to swim.