Are All Prayers Equal?

Are all prayers equal or effective? It was once said that there will always be prayer in schools as long as there are tests. Another saying is that "there are no atheists in foxholes." Prayer may not be an important part of a person's life, but when bullets start flying, they suddenly learn how to pray. 

One dictionary defines prayer as "a solemn request for help or success to God or an object of worship; an earnest hope, or wish." Based upon this definition, prayer can be a request, earnest hope, or wish. The object of one's prayers can be any god or object of worship (including themselves). People can pray to anything, for any reason, and in any way they choose. They can have a memorized prayer, a long prayer, or a short prayer.

If the options for how to pray or who to pray to are endless, are they equally effective? 

In Luke 18:9-14, Jesus tells a story of two men who went up to the Temple to pray. The men could not be more different. One was a respected Pharisee (religious teacher) and the other a despised tax collector. They had different prayers with different results. 

In these verses, we discover the content of one’s prayers reveals a lot about the character of one’s heart. We can learn a lot about a person and their God by how they pray. How we pray, indicates what we really think about ourselves and God. In this message, we discover that not all prayers are equal.