What Matt has posted here is a perfect example of how Father speaks to me too. Though sometimes He finds it necessary to correct me, but always in a gentle way. I think He speaks to each of us in ways by which we can, as ourselves, hear. Some people hear just a word, but that single word or phrase is pregnant with meaning for them. For me, I suppose He feels the need to spell it all out! 
Now I’m going to drift into my personal philosophy. I think I’m right (of course I do – or I’d change my mind, and frequently do change my mind) but maybe I’m not, or maybe my “right” in this nebulous area is just a bit askew. Most likely it is. So . . . grain of salt . . . . Usually, He speaks to me in beautiful language and I think that’s because it’s the way I like to think and write, and after all, He’s speaking to our spirits; our spirits are “transmitting” those often wordless thoughts to our minds; our minds usually transpose the thoughts into words and phrases – or sometimes images – for us to understand. Because of this, imo, we don’t hear in some sort of unified “type” of communication unique to God. We are each of us a fragment of His image, and the way He talks to me is an aspect of Himself uniquely displayed in my being.
This is yet another reason for me to believe in UR. I believe Father has invested some particular segment of His “DNA” into each of us, and that what I have manifested in me, of Him, is unique to me. There may be others similar to me, but there is not one being in the history of the universe specifically identical to me. If I were to be lost forever in hell or annihilated, that facet of God’s image would be lost with me. How . . . well, how impossible! That a single spark of the image of God should be lost? May it never be!
I say all this to encourage you. God will NOT speak to you in just the way He has spoken to Matt, nor in the way He has spoken to Ezekiel or Amos or Zechariah or Daniel or Isaiah or John. He will speak to you in the way He speaks to YOU. Maybe you’ll need to draw a picture in your journal, and maybe you’ll need to write a poem. Or perhaps you just need to jot down a single word with all that word, from His lips to yours, means to you. Maybe you’ll sit in silence feeling (or not feeling, but believing all the same) the awe of His presence. Perhaps you will connect with Him while walking or while folding the clothes or shoveling the snow from your sidewalk. Brother Lawrence felt no need for a specific time of prayer as he never strayed from the presence of God. His book, “Practicing the Presence of God” has been a major source of inspiration for me. Do a search for your favorite format and you can find it free – or a hard copy is very reasonable, if you prefer that.
Not all of us can do what Lawrence did. We (or I, at least) usually need a concentrated, dedicated time to get away and enjoy His presence. Without it, we become dry and despondent and distant. It’s not that you can NEVER miss, but that you need this like you need food. If you don’t spend that time with Father (whether you can do it like Lawrence did or not), you’ll starve, spiritually, and become weak and faint.
As to interceding for others, I have a kind of idea that Father likes us to collaborate with Him. It’s not that if we don’t pray, He won’t act – not exactly – but I think that our prayers can change the WAY He acts. Not because He needs to be persuaded to help, or because He’ll leave the unfortunate soul who is NOT prayed for unhelped – but more, I think, because He has made US – members of the body of Christ – the one new man – the second and last Adam – lords of this world. If we don’t act (in prayer and in other ways) things don’t get done. People suffer. Think about it. In natural life, if you don’t feed your children, they will probably go hungry.
Here in SD, we have a lot of Native Americans, and most of them have grown up in poverty; most with no father and many with no mother, raised by grandmothers and aunts and older siblings. They’ve never been taught to cook or to feed their children breakfast before sending them to school or to regulate what they watch on television or even not to allow them to wander the streets at the age of 5 in the wee hours of the morning. I don’t say this to denigrate them at all. This is the way they were raised, and this is the way they (many of them) raise their own children. Does God step in and fix this? No – not as such. He has designated lords and kings on this earth, and those lords and kings are US. WE are to step in and offer assistance in the most attractive way we possibly can. I believe prayer, interceding for others (and for ourselves too) is like that. If we don’t ask, Father may actually allow the needy to suffer for lack of OUR care. What does this accomplish?
Well, for the needy, it’s possible this may accomplish the need to be willing to receive offered assistance. It may develop patience. It may teach the lesson that it is necessary to help others because if we don’t, the others may not be helped. It may demonstrate the need to make oneself part of the community of believers because if we aren’t related to other brothers and sisters, there may be no one to pray for us – and that we also need to pray for others because that’s our part. For the relatively less needy (in that particular area) it will teach, by our observation of the suffering caused by our unwillingness to help (in prayer or otherwise), the NECESSITY of our, as children of the House of God, ACTING to fulfill our Father’s will on this earth. Part of that action includes prayer for the needy – whether sick or lost or in material poverty, or in whatever way a person may be in need. Of course we would not (not those of us on this board) negate our responsibility to help the needy in material ways. It is possible that if we don’t help, Father will prevail on others to help, but ultimately if some human being does not help and the needy don’t find a way to help themselves, in most cases they will starve physically. Why does Father allow this? Perhaps to teach us to help. He is not pleased that a needy person should starve physically, but He allows this because the damage is not permanent. We all go through suffering and ultimately I believe Father sees to it that we all reap a benefit far exceeding the cost to us or to Him. Likewise with prayer. Father has given us some degree of authority on this earth and He means for us to use it. When we pray, He acts – not always in ways that we physically perceive, but He nevertheless does act. We have to believe that, because often we CAN’T see His actions. I don’t know why this is, but I do know that He intends that we should pray for one another and that it does make a difference when we pray.
I know the idea of Father allowing another to suffer because of our inaction is unpalatable to many. But I see this pattern in the natural world and I don’t know why it would not be expected to follow in the spiritual world. If we don’t pray, it’s possible that a brother or sister may not receive a healing that Father was willing to give. He wants us to work together for one another’s benefit. If He didn’t take our actions and inactions seriously enough to allow them to bring about genuine consequences for ourselves and for others, then you’re right. There would be no reason, other than personal benefit of having prayed, for us to pray. But I will say this for the sufferer. It always feels better when it stops hurting. A week ago I caught my fingers in the crack in the garage door when I was closing it. May I say that I was (emotionally) most SEVERELY traumatized! I yelled (we live way out in the forest, or perhaps I wouldn’t have) like a bear deprived of her cubs. I didn’t do any lasting damage though, and now it doesn’t hurt. The fact that it DID hurt matters not at all. It doesn’t hurt now and at this point I don’t care that it did hurt.
Ivan Karamazov was wrong. When the pain is over, it’s over, and it is always good and right to forgive. He is proceeding on the surmisal that permanent damage has been done to the child who was torn by mad dogs, but what if permanent damage has NOT been done? What if Father receives that child to Himself and heals it completely and even adds to its joy exponentially because of the pain it suffered? The evil person who committed the crime of throwing the child to the dogs receives ten-fold for his sins against the child and against all who love the child and against God (and yes, against himself as well). All are healed and restored to one another as loving brothers and sisters. WE cannot do this. Father CAN. The man who murdered the child is benefited in his repentance and his growth and the gracious forgiveness given him. WE are benefited by our repentance (for failing to intercede for our fellow humans) and by our chastisement which leads to repentance and by the forgiveness of those we have wronged by not praying for them. The child is benefited by his healing and his own act of forgiveness, as is the mother and the others who love the child – for their own acts of forgiveness & etc. The person for whom we should have prayed is benefited by his act of forgiveness toward us and by his new knowledge of the importance of collaboration with the community, etc. We all learn a lesson we may not have been able to learn in any other way and we grow that much more into the image of Christ.
So yes, I do think it matters whether we pray. The lessons we learn FROM praying are much more tolerable for everyone than the lessons we learn by not praying. We have to learn the lessons one way or another, but it is better to learn them by doing our duty to one another than by not doing it. Father will see it all turns out for good to all concerned, but He would prefer we learn by obeying rather than by disobeying.
My take on it, for all who are kind (and patient) enough to have read until the end. 
If nothing else, it’s helped me to sort things out in my own mind and heart.
Love, Cindy
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I like her idea, anyway, that prayer is listening.
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