For Christians, the most important activity is prayer. To pray is to talk to God. For a prayer to make sense, the person who offers it should truly believe in the existence of the transcendental being to whom he or she prays. In addition, he or she must speak to this existence sincerely. For nonbelievers, prayer is nothing more than an action in which one talks to himself or herself to become mentally comforted. The perspective of Christians praying devotedly and wholeheartedly is strange to them.
It seems a formula that Christians end their prayers with, “in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.” Christians use “in the name of Jesus Christ” because people are separated from God by their sins, while Jesus Christ died for the sins of people so that God would listen to their prayers. “Amen” specifically means “may it be so.” Christians let God, who has complete sovereignty, decide everything and do what he plans.
It is not an exaggeration that to pray and to see how God answers is the main religious ritual of Christianity. According to the Bible, the death of Jesus dismantled the barrier between humans and God, permitting all to reach God directly through prayer. God knows everything and hears all praises, resentments, requests, questions, thanksgivings, etc. God responds to prayers in various ways, including fulfilling a request, refusing a request, keeping silent, answering after a long time, etc. He can do everything, but he does not have to do everything according to what people want. God responds the way he sees best.
A problem is that there are so many people in the world now. If there is a God, perhaps he receives millions of prayers every second and billions of prayers every day. Can God handle that? During the twenty-first century, you may choose to believe that there is no God, or you have to believe in a God who simultaneously receives millions of calls from people on earth and tirelessly arranges six billion lives, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, to carry out his plan.
Despite this inconceivable scenario, it still could be true that there is such a God. In the case of human beings, when a person has a thought, there must be a series of chemical and electrical reactions corresponding to this thought in his or her brain. Because the capacity of the brain is limited, a person can think at most two, three, or maybe ten (for a very smart person) things at the same time. God is not limited by this kind of restriction. The whole universe has been created by him and will never overwhelm him.
For these reasons, if there is a God, we should give him the highest respect, more than we can imagine. We must be extremely humble in the front of the omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent God who hears our prayers.
