What’s important is not just the words you say but the sincerity and devotion you have when you pray. If you sincerely and devoutly ask all the saints to pray for you, then it is likely they wouldn’t refuse your request, as they love praying for their family on Earth!
The more saints praying for you, the better! God will always listen to your prayers and the prayers of your Heavenly Family, but that doesn’t mean your prayers will be answered the way you want. Sometimes, God doesn’t grant our prayers because He wants something better for us, though that can be hard to accept and understand from our human point of view, especially when we really wanted something in particular to go our way. Sincere prayers are always “effective,” but that doesn’t mean God will answer them the way you expected. He knows things that we don’t and wants whatever’s best for us. Remember that He is all-knowing and all-loving.
God is eternally perfect and incapable of change. The words used in Scripture to describe Him changing His mind are just metaphors. The point of prayer is not to change God but to change
us. It reminds us that we are dependent on Him and that we owe Him gratitude for all the gifts He has given us. Prayer draws us closer to Him because the more we talk to someone and spend time with them, the more we get to know them better and grow in love for them. The more we listen to them, the more we can also find out what they want from us. We
need Him and ought to stay focused on Him; that’s why we pray. To add to that note, prayer is not just asking God for things, as that is only one form of prayer. There are also prayers of praise, thanksgiving, and adoration, which also help increase our holiness by bringing us closer to God and assisting us to better discern God’s will for us. We are reminded that He is a good, loving, just, merciful, awesome, and powerful God through these prayers.
Whenever we pray, we realize that God’s will for us is the best for us and must accept whatever it is that He wills for us. So we pray for our intentions, knowing that we must accept that whichever way God answers our prayers is best for us, even if we can’t see how. With that being said, God doesn’t just want us to be passive recipients of His graces. He wants us to actively work with Him to sanctify ourselves and the world, so He may make certain things contingent on our requests. So the outcome of a particular event could be the result of the prayers of many of His faithful children because God wants us to play a role in building up His Kingdom on Earth by working together with Him. Our prayers can be influential in that sense, but they can’t change God’s mind itself.
