At Gilboa and in the Decapolis

144:4.1For days af­ter the dis­course on prayer the apos­tles con­tin­ued to ask the Mas­ter ques­tions re­gard­ing this all-im­por­tant and wor­ship­ful prac­tice. Je­sus’ in­struc­tion to the apos­tles dur­ing these days, re­gard­ing prayer and wor­ship, may be sum­ma­rized and re­stated in mod­ern phrase­ol­ogy as fol­lows:

144:4.2The earnest and long­ing rep­e­ti­tion of any pe­ti­tion, when such a prayer is the sin­cere ex­pres­sion of a child of God and is ut­tered in faith, no mat­ter how ill-ad­vised or im­pos­si­ble of di­rect an­swer, never fails to ex­pand the soul’s ca­pac­ity for spir­i­tual re­cep­tiv­ity.

144:4.3In all pray­ing, re­mem­ber that son­ship is a gift. No child has aught to do with earn­ing the sta­tus of son or daugh­ter. The earth child comes into be­ing by the will of its par­ents. Even so, the child of God comes into grace and the new life of the spirit by the will of the Fa­ther in heaven. There­fore must the king­dom of heaven—di­vine son­ship—be re­ceived as by a lit­tle child. You earn righ­teous­ness—pro­gres­sive char­ac­ter de­vel­op­ment—but you re­ceive son­ship by grace and through faith.

144:4.4Prayer led Je­sus up to the super­com­mu­nion of his soul with the Su­preme Rulers of the uni­verse of uni­verses. Prayer will lead the mor­tals of earth up to the com­mu­nion of true wor­ship. The soul’s spir­i­tual ca­pac­ity for re­cep­tiv­ity de­ter­mines the quan­tity of heav­enly bless­ings which can be per­son­ally ap­pro­pri­ated and con­sciously re­al­ized as an an­swer to prayer.

144:4.5Prayer and its as­so­ci­ated wor­ship is a tech­nique of de­tach­ment from the daily rou­tine of life, from the monotonous grind of ma­te­rial ex­is­tence. It is an av­enue of ap­proach to spir­i­tu­al­ized self-re­al­iza­tion and in­di­vid­u­al­ity of in­tel­lec­tual and re­li­gious at­tain­ment.

144:4.6Prayer is an an­ti­dote for harm­ful in­tro­spec­tion. At least, prayer as the Mas­ter taught it is such a benef­i­cent min­istry to the soul. Je­sus con­sis­tently em­ployed the ben­e­fi­cial in­flu­ence of pray­ing for one’s fel­lows. The Mas­ter usu­ally prayed in the plu­ral, not in the sin­gu­lar. Only in the great crises of his earth life did Je­sus ever pray for him­self.

144:4.7Prayer is the breath of the spirit life in the midst of the ma­te­rial civ­i­liza­tion of the races of man­kind. Wor­ship is sal­va­tion for the plea­sure-seek­ing gen­er­a­tions of mor­tals.

144:4.8As prayer may be likened to recharg­ing the spir­i­tual bat­ter­ies of the soul, so wor­ship may be com­pared to the act of tun­ing in the soul to catch the uni­verse broad­casts of the in­fi­nite spirit of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther.

144:4.9Prayer is the sin­cere and long­ing look of the child to its spirit Fa­ther; it is a psy­cho­logic pro­cess of ex­chang­ing the hu­man will for the di­vine will. Prayer is a part of the di­vine plan for mak­ing over that which is into that which ought to be.

144:4.10One of the rea­sons why Pe­ter, James, and John, who so of­ten ac­com­pa­nied Je­sus on his long night vig­ils, never heard Je­sus pray, was be­cause their Mas­ter so rarely ut­tered his prayers as spo­ken words. Prac­ti­cally all of Je­sus’ pray­ing was done in the spirit and in the heart—silently.

144:4.11Of all the apos­tles, Pe­ter and James came the near­est to com­pre­hend­ing the Mas­ter’s teach­ing about prayer and wor­ship.