I think it is OK to pray for material things because sometimes that is what we need.

God know what we need before we even ask.

...if your god already knows what you are praying for, then what is the purpose of prayer at all?

I think it must be to ease our own minds. But, in that case, the words we use matter very, very much. Words can inflame, as well as calm, the mind.

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Grassaf, Eolas

it says that God already knows what we need, which is not quite the same as what we are praying for.

but it is still a good question and one that I have also asked. as I understand thing its about relationship with God.

...some of the briefest and most heartfelt prayers I know are pagan, and some of the prayers that come closest to babbling I have ever heard, have been voiced by Christians.

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Grassaf, Eolas

they really go OTT sometimes

Gandhi's approach to prayer is that he believed that prayer was less for God than it is for us. IOW, he viewed the value of prayer was not to try and tell God something but more as an opportunity to contemplate what our most appropriate actions may be. In that case, "saying" a prayer is far less important than meditating on what's being considered.

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"The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving after rational knowledge."-- Einstein

It is a strange God who does not know what His people need.

I only require praying briefly when my 7 year old daughter was dying of lymphoma. It didn't work. I didn't believe that prayer would work. But in the worst days of her suffering, I prayed out of desperation...and it didn't work. I have never bothered praying again. Not at anger to an imaginary being but simply I know it doesn't work.

Amergin


....

Thanks my friend for sharing that ...

Out of desperation I've also prayed on occasion... I would suggest most people do.

Whatever happens are part of the hard lessons of this life.

The answers are not always clear to us.

- Art

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"it benefits us to be thoughtful, not of the glory of our minds, but rather, above all else, of the glory of God."
- Johannes Kepler

You are assuming all gods are omniscient. I do not make that assumption at all.

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Grassaf, Eolas