What kind of results do you seek when turning to God for help?

Do you seek spiritual gain or material indulgence?

Mary Baker Eddy asked this probing question. “Do we pray to make ourselves better or to benefit those who hear us, to enlighten the infinite or to be heard of men?”

It sounds like she gives a list of options from which we can choose when offering a prayer. But she does not. She is questioning motives and forcing her readers to probe their conscience and discern their true intent when turning to God for help.

To understand her meaning, I dissect her passage this way.

“Do we pray to make ourselves better?” Sounds like a good motive to me. It’s not God that needs to improve, but us and our understanding of how to live righteously.

“Do we pray to benefit those who hear us?” If done unselfishly and not for show, this could be good.

“Do we pray to enlighten the infinite?” Not needed. God already knows everything.

“Do we pray to be heard of men?” Could be self-serving motive, mostly about pride, self-righteousness and self-justification.

Eddy goes on to write, “Are we benefited by praying? Yes, the desire which goes forth hungering after righteousness is blessed of our Father, and it does not return unto us void.”

Prayer that is “hungering after righteousness,” is a key statement here. When we truly hunger to understand God better and to think and life more rightly, we’re offering a prayer that will be answered.

If our motives are selfish, for example, “Make my physical body better, or I need more money, or give me this and give me that…” then we are not hungering after righteousness. We are seeking material indulgence. We are making material demands to satisfy temporal wants.

God does meet human and physical needs, but the divine power does it spiritually, through giving us the right spiritual view of things that corrects the material lies we’re entertaining that lead to suffering in the first place.

Prayer that seeks the enlightened spiritual view gets answered.