I prayed to the Lord and it appears my prayer has been answered. Now what?

[DGS49]

John, a righteous man, once began a custom of finishing his prayers with a request that he win the millionaire lottery. He promised to do a lot of good things with the money, but needed to win in order to do them.

Day after day, week after week, year after year, he repeated his prayer-request and the associated promises.

One day, after decades of repeating this simple prayer, a deep voice came out from the firmament, saying, "John, give me a break!"

Instantly recognizing the voice of G_d, John retorted, "What I'm asking is an insignificant task for a Being so omnipotent. Why have you refused to heed my request for all these years?"

The Voice responded, "Give me a break John; couldn't you at least buy a ticket?"

 

[EvilCat Breath]

A very good friend of mine was a staunch atheist. All her life she suffered from severe debilitating headaches. She daily prayed to God to alleviate her suffering. All of her prayers went unanswered. Doctors could find no reason for these blinding headaches. The result was she didn't believe in God at all.

"What happened? I have known you for five years and you've never had a headache at all. In all that time".

"I started getting them less and less. I haven't had one in 15 years. But God had nothing to do with it. They stopped on their own."

 

[LuckyDuck]

As studies have shown that prayer is interestingly, just as effective, percentage-wise as chance, you had the same likely outcome if you didn't pray and only let chance dictate the outcome.