What makes the Spirit glad is a people of calm joy and humble wisdom with contrite hearts and compassion for all, gathered because of a spring of gratitude that wells up within them, a community of servants ready to get to work on the beautiful tomorrow Christ calls the kingdom of heaven, ready to offer the sacrifice of praise to the Father who forgives them before they knew they even needed forgiveness.

A sense of belonging, acceptance, being loved is something that every human being needs. God put us in families to be loved and to learn to love. I grew up in a family and culture in which love was not physically or verbally expressed. Emotions were kept under control. Worship in our churches was reverently restrained. God was majestic, like the Southern Alps seen through my bedroom window, glorious in their frigid, winter coating of snow, but far away.

In his novel Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel Garcia Marquez portrays a marriage that disintegrates over a bar of soap. It was the wife's job to keep the house in order, including the towels, toilet paper, and soap in the bathroom. One day she forgot to replace the soap, an oversight her husband mentioned in an exaggerated way ("I've been bathing for almost a week without any soap!") She resented his sarcasm, and her pride was hurt.

Some prayer requests are wrong, they are inappropriate. Prayers can be totally self-serving, purely materialistic, and an excuse for taking personal responsibility. We can pray for what will make life easier for us, for a divine short-cut, to avoid effort or pain. We can pray that other people will motives to make sure that our prayer requests are appropriate and not self-serving. Hybels suggests asking whether, if God granted the request whether it:
Would bring God glory?