The African tribals are great worshippers. Their prayers are invariably answered, as they are an invocation of their own powers, perhaps the power of their collective community. There are occasions when their prayers fail. They have a way of "God's Accountability". They drag the idol of God and beat it to their hearts' content for having failed to answer their prayers and throw it into the sea. Very pious families beset with great tragedies sometimes suspend their worship or even give it up. It is too much to tell them that this, too, is an act of God.
It is common for the Pillayar temple to be crowded with students during exams. Unmarried girls ardently pray for marriage, as do unemployed people for jobs. As tragedies pull a few people away from worship, a larger percentage of people suddenly become oblivious of their serious worship when affluence overtakes them in good measure. In a broad sense, Man worships comfort, convenience, riches, wealth, etc. and in that he is worshipping mammon and he is mercenary.
At the same time, we find a small number of people pursuing these mercenary goals with a vengeance and getting less than others, sometimes nothing. The rule is what you seek goes away; the more you seek, the more it goes further away. The secret is most of us have deep down true faith in God, though the surface mind hankers after material results. What comes to us as wealth is really in response to our inner faith and in spite of the worship of the surface mind, not because of it. Those who pursue it with a vengeance are those who have no real faith and that is why they are rewarded with total failure. The best is to seek God for His own sake and educate the mind out of its ordinary motives of mercenary pursuits.