Pray about Everything

What things should we pray about?
What things should we not pray about?
And how can we possibly "pray unceasingly"?

When looking up prayer in the Bible, I realized that I needed to look up "asking" as well. It seems like they're interchangeable. But is praying just asking God for things? Sounds selfish.

I wanted to figure out if there was a synonym for praying, based on the actual Greek word we translate "pray". I've come up with "wishing to God".

So. Is it wrong to pray for petty things? Is it selfish to ask for personal favors? Are we pagans if we ask God for material things, for the purpose of our own enjoyment? Is there a problem with asking God for what we want? I think that He already knows what we want anyways. God 'creeps' our thoughts. If we want something, we think about it; as we think about it, it becomes important to us.

The hard part is guarding our desire for God, so that He is most important. Prayer is not "wishing from God". He's not Santa Clause. If someone were Santa Clause, it would be Satan. If we stop to pray - and pray with an honest heart - the act should help to keep God as our central desire. Wish to God. "God, I want this - but it's Your call." If you find yourself praying like that, and find that you're not ok with it being God's call, then you've made a breakthrough - you've found your honest heart. Now you can grow.

Now, if He knows what we want before we ask Him, why do it? When we desire some worldly thing, we are automatically wishing for it. But not to God. That's what wrecks our relationship with Him. Our mind is set on "the things that are on earth", not on God and how we can give Him glory while we're on earth. We need to let God saturate our lives. It starts with prayer.

If we pray - if we wish to God - about every little thing in our lives, we must also thank Him for every little thing in our lives. "Always rejoice, unceasingly pray, in everything, thank - for this [is the] will of God in Christ Jesus for you (pl)" (1 Thessalonians 5:16-18, BWT). Otherwise, we will be ungrateful to God. God doesn't care about what we ask Him for when our relationship is broken, when we want to treat the Almighty like Santa Clause. Thanking God is the balance for wishing.