What is the counterpart of the power of love?

The power of prayer is the counterpart of the power of love. 

Prayer asks—

Love grants. 

If you pray for that which you need, the measure of the love, which you are entitled to at the hands of Him you pray to is evidenced by the response you get to your prayer—be the response favourable or otherwise. 

The law is very simple in its application and in proportion—

As you merit a reward, so will that reward be meted out to you. 

You see this law in operation in every phase of life both in the spiritual and material worlds. 

With spirit-lives, its application occurs daily. 

They see from this that prayer is not so much an act of wil,l as it is a result of faith or a consciousness of being cared for by someone who loves you. 

You feel you are in somebody's charge, and you look to that someone for help, and in proportion as you feel that you deserve it, so you feel that you will get it. 

And when you are satisfied that your deserts merit a certain reward, that reward is certain to follow however improbable it may appear. 

Put it to the test—

Pray for that only which you feel you deserve. 

If you do not get it, you may depend upon it you have not yet qualified yourself for it. 

Pray that you may first be qualified. 

If you do not know how to become qualified, pray for light on the subject, also—

Wherever the difficulty may be, prayer will assuredly find a satisfactory solution. 

This being so, it follows that if you are qualified for what you think you merit, you assuredly ought to get it, and so you certainly will. 

There are conditions, which you are not qualified to judge of. 

You cannot possibly tell what the qualifications of another may be—or how far such a reward as he may seem to deserve, say wealth, for instance, may be desirable or undesirable. 

There are many poor who would be cursed if wealth were showered upon them—

So are there also others to whom honour would be an affliction. 

It depends upon each one's particular idiosyncrasies of character how far he might be properly rewarded in the way others imagine him entitled to be rewarded or he himself may think so.

Spirit-lives can, and do answer prayer, that is, they impress you to do their wishes. 

You think you are a free agent, but you merely act according to the thoughts that are in your head at the time. 

Spirit-lives have the power to put those thoughts there—be they good or evil. 

This does not mean to say that all thoughts are given to you by spirit-lives. 

This is not the case, for you may have original thoughts in no way connected with anything spirit-lives may have told you. 

Like you, spirit-lives are men and women, and are subject to laws. 

They are not omniscient. 

They know a little more than you because they have an enlarged experience, but that is all.