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SearchJesus' answers to their many questions may be summarized as follows:
1. Prayer is an expression of the finite mind in an effort to approach the Infinite. The making of a
prayer must, therefore, be limited by the knowledge, wisdom, and attributes of the finite;
likewise must the answer be conditioned by the vision, aims, ideals, and prerogatives of the
Infinite. There never can be observed an unbroken continuity of material phenomena between the
making of a prayer and the reception of the full spiritual answer thereto.
2. When a prayer is apparently unanswered, the delay often betokens a better answer, although
one which is for some good reason greatly delayed. When Jesus said that Lazarus's sickness was
really not to the death, he had already been dead eleven hours. No sincere prayer is denied an
answer except when the superior viewpoint of the spiritual world has devised a better answer, an
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answer which meets the petition of the spirit of man as contrasted with the prayer of the mere
mind of man.
3. The prayers of time, when indited by the spirit and expressed in faith, are often so vast and allencompassing that they can be answered only in eternity; the finite petition is sometimes so
fraught with the grasp of the Infinite that the answer must long be postponed to await the
creation of adequate capacity for receptivity; the prayer of faith may be so all-embracing that the
answer can be received only on Paradise.
4. The answers to the prayer of the mortal mind are often of such a nature that they can be
received and recognized only after that same praying mind has attained the immortal state. The
prayer of the material being can many times be answered only when such an individual has
progressed to the spirit level.
5. The prayer of a God-knowing person may be so distorted by ignorance and so deformed by
superstition that the answer thereto would be highly undesirable. Then must the intervening spirit
beings so translate such a prayer that, when the answer arrives, the petitioner wholly fails to
recognize it as the answer to his prayer.
6. All true prayers are addressed to spiritual beings, and all such petitions must be answered in
spiritual terms, and all such answers must consist in spiritual realities. Spirit beings cannot
bestow material answers to the spirit petitions of even material beings. Material beings can pray
effectively only when they "pray in the spirit."
7. No prayer can hope for an answer unless it is born of the spirit and nurtured by faith. Your
sincere faith implies that you have in advance virtually granted your prayer hearers the full right
to answer your petitions in accordance with that supreme wisdom and that divine love which
your faith depicts as always actuating those beings to whom you pray.
8. The child is always within his rights when he presumes to petition the parent; and the parent is
always within his parental obligations to the immature child when his superior wisdom dictates
that the answer to the child's prayer be delayed, modified, segregated, transcended, or postponed
to another stage of spiritual ascension.
9. Do not hesitate to pray the prayers of spirit longing; doubt not that you shall receive the
answer to your petitions. These answers will be on deposit, awaiting your achievement of those
future spiritual levels of actual cosmic attainment, on this world or on others, whereon it will
become possible for you to recognize and appropriate the long-waiting answers to your earlier
but ill-timed petitions.
10. All genuine spirit-born petitions are certain of an answer. Ask and you shall receive. But you
should remember that you believe you are progressive creatures of time and space; therefore
must you constantly reckon with the time-space factor in the experience of your personal
reception of the full answers to your manifold prayers and petitions.