Constructive & Effective Prayer – Krishna Venta, 1948

When we pray thus: “O God, help me with my material problems. O God, forgive me, a sinner,” is this effective prayer?
Don’t become offended if you have been taught that way. Think! Think! Why should you ask God to forgive you, a sinner?
God told you that you were born in sin, yet He doesn’t condemn you. Condemning something means destroying it.
If you condemn an old, dilapidated house, what do you do? Tear it down. If you condemn a person, what do you do?
Tear him down. If God condemned you, He would tear you down. But God never condemned you. An example of this
is when He spoke through His Son: “And I condemn thee not. Go thy way and sin no more.” He knows you are born
with mistakes. When the first mistake was made, the Great Intelligence could have said, “Rather than permit this to
exist, I shall destroy that which I have created.” But He didn’t destroy it, which proved that He didn’t condemn it. God
never condemns you for anything you do. He merely tells you this in the inner consciousness: “I condemn thee not;
go thy way and sin no more.” He does not condemn you; therefore, you don’t have to ask God for forgiveness. We
are all subject to mistakes and errors, but no one else is going to eliminate these mistakes for us. That is our problem
to overcome. Don’t ask God to do something for you that you are capable of doing for yourself. Don’t go to God with
worldly conditions. You and your parents and their parents are responsible for the world chaos of today. Because of
looking at material laws instead of the laws of God, they have committed all wrongs under the sun. Naturally, they are
destroying themselves. A depression comes and people are without food. Man caused that to be, not God. Then why
get down on your knees and say, “God, help me to find a job?” God said, “All things around you I give unto your care.”
You have everything here to work with. This is what happens when you pray and say, “God, help me to find a job.”

Because you have blind faith, you immediately begin to put into action the little thoughts that come into your mind. You
go out and find yourself a job, saying, “God answered my prayer.” There are other people who are not praying to God,
yet they are making millions. How is it that you obtained your desire, and they did also? Figure it out. It takes reasoning
and thinking. When you came into this material world, you came in with a brain, and it was to be used for thinking.
Within it is every sense necessary to perform any act in this material world. If God had meant for you to call on Him
for material things, He would have left you without brainpower with which to think, so He could have used you as a
robot. But He gave you all these things because He wanted you to think for yourself. In the beginning, when man
committed wrongs, God said, “Now that man has broken from Me and does not cleave to the Positive Laws, rather
than destroy that which I have created and love, I shall give him free will again to master the laws and again come
unto Me. While he is progressing, he will do so as an individual, because I will not condemn him. He will have to
master his lessons through trial and error, or by reaching to Me for the Law that I will give him.” Don’t pray to God
to heal one of your loved ones who is sick. Why? Because God has given you all manner of herbs and forms of life
to protect yourself. Why call on God to save your loved one? Rather, call on Him for wisdom. Don’t call on God to
give you a job or to take care of your daily wants. Think now. Does nature do that? Let us study the bird kingdom.
Within the nest is a mother bird and a little baby bird. She brings it food until it is strong enough to try flying. The
bird cries and cries and cries. Finally, it realizes no food is being brought, so it tries its wings but falls to the ground
immediately. It is on its own, and the mother bird doesn’t come to its assistance.

One of the most beautiful stories is of the lion in the jungle. The lion has her little roly-poly cub, a mass of fur playing
around, just about big enough to start out on its own. The lion tries to push the cub away with her nose. It comes
crying back. She gives it another nudge; it comes back crying. She walks away, but it follows. She gives it a powerful
shove with her body. The cub cries and comes back again. I have seen lions take a cub and knock it as far as fifteen
feet away, the cub rolling over and over. It goes away, crying and whimpering to itself, realizing it can no longer depend
on its mother. The mother remains downwind from the cub and spends many days watching its activities. If the cub
gets into trouble with another animal and does not put up a fight, cowering in its tracks, she remains stationary. But
if the cub fights and she sees that it is not able to protect itself, she is right there to defend it—just like any mother.
The same holds true in the human race, if you stop to think. When you are a mother or a father, do you constantly
cater to the whims and whimpers of a child? What do you say? “Do something for yourself.” Every day this law
holds true in all the kingdoms of the earth. Can’t you see that it holds true also between God and you? It is a
natural law. In the laws of nature is the answer to the Infinite. Take time and study them well. Your duty is to do
for yourself, not to call on God to do everything for you. No child ever born, whose mother did everything for it,
was worth much. Do you think that when a child goes to school, the teacher is going to do the lessons for him?
If so, the child will go through school without gaining an education at all. Now I will ask another question: Do you
know what your body is composed of? Your body is composed of cells, and those cells are nothing but a composition
of atoms. Are you answering their cry?

In fact, you do not even know they exist, because you are not consciously helping them. Do you expect God
to help you, then? These are laws of prayer. What is effective prayer? How should you pray? Should you pray
selfishly? Should you pray only for a loved one? Someone has asked whether the Lord’s Prayer is perfect. The
Lord’s Prayer is very imperfect. When we call to God for daily bread, we are asking for the bread of life—the
knowledge, understanding, and wisdom of God. God never condemned us for our mistakes; therefore, He does
not have to forgive us. If you had understanding when someone else made mistakes, you would not condemn
them. You do not have to ask forgiveness for something you do not condemn. God never led any mortal into
temptation. So why say, “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil?” The best prayer we have is
the Twenty-Third Psalm. That is, beyond a doubt, the best and most perfect prayer ever written.