ALEEN SULLIVANI-LAND-A-L-L-L-A-L-L-A-L-O-Oh.

Oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-da-la! Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh.

Hello, friends.

Greg Kokel here for stand-a-reason, and I'm glad you join me today.

We get a chance to talk about all kinds of things on this show.

People call in,

which is great. People that is call in live when I'm on. And other times people call in for our,

what do we call, open mic calls. We just have lots of things that come in. Sometimes I think is something I want to

opine about, but you never quite know what you're going to cover, and that's what makes

this kind of show, at least interesting to me. And if it's interesting to me, hopefully

it's interesting to you as well. I want to talk very briefly here about two things that are a standard part of the

Christian life that are hard for Christians, and that is prayer and reading scripture. Prayer and

reading scripture. I've been a Christian for over 51 years and have developed a fairly consistent pattern of being fed by scripture and communing or conversing with God in prayer.

But I will just say quite frankly, it's not been easy. Actually, reading scripture is easier than prayer. Prayer is hard

for me because I don't understand the calculus of prayer. And what I mean by that is I don't

understand what makes prayer work. Now, in a very

general sense, I do. Here, I'm an individual conversing, making appeals to another individual,

that being God. Lewis makes the point that when we make a request,

we are not doing something mechanical, like putting a coin in a vending machine, and we pull the

lever, and then we get the candy bar or something. We are engaging a person, making a request of a person, and that person

might say yes or might say no. And so there is no mechanism that's involved, really,

but there are maybe in some sense mechanics that could be involved. And we read about things that Jesus says, and he says, ask, and it will be given.

...