Prayer :Does it work?

Faith & Science Conversation
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Almighty Father of wellbeing and peace, in the name of our highest prince of peace, Jesus Christ, we ask you, send out your infinite legions of peace, reconciliation and salvation, and let it flow into all human hearts and into the souls of all the rulers of this earth: Your powers of benevolence and helpfulness, your powers of modesty and forgiveness, your powers of peacefulness and heavenly faith.

Let your holy lights of mercy and compassion find their way into all beings so that salvation and freedom may work powerfully in them.

May the smoldering fire be extinguished by your heavenly dew of peace. May all dividing walls crumble into nothingness, and your heavenly goodness, heavenly strength, and heavenly wisdom be revealed to all men, because you are the invincible guard over our spirit, our soul, our body, our work and our life.

Your Holy Will, O Father, be done now and forever.

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Hi @NickolaosPappas,

I think this is a really interesting question. I might phrase it this way: if you prayed for something, how could you know God answered it and acted in response to your prayer?

I think for many, any possible outcome is consistent with God answering their prayer because a no or not yet is still technically an answer. In a scientific sense that makes this a rather useless way to interact with reality. Like if I pray for a job and don’t get one “God has something better.” Or if I do pray and get a job, does that mean God gave me the job? This highlights how it is also impossible to rule out supernatural involvement after a prayer because the only way to truly do that would be to have two universes – one in which all of the circumstances were exactly the same and in one you prayed to God and then the other you didn’t. We obviously don’t have access to anything like that and you could never rule out supernatural involvement after prayer.

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That ain’t gonna happ’n, the Bible tells me so.

Nor is this:

That kind of prayer is useless.

There is this, however: 1 Timothy 2:1

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Dear Dale,
Did you wake up on the wrong side of the bed this morning?

Open end prayers are the most valuable because of God’s laws, that you seem to ignore - free will. If I pray for Trump, that is my will and God must accept it, regardless if Trump can accept peace - the prayer ends there. But if I pray for all leaders, then those open to God will get my prayer and I don’t need to know who they are. Same for praying for all beings, God can choose who gets my prayer.

Also, what does it cost me to pray for God to bless all the food in the world, instead of just mine? Prayer is extremely powerful, but when we impose our will on how it is used, God’s hands are tied.

Best Wishes, Shawn (Truly)

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You’re probably right, in part, at least. That’s why I added the 1 Timothy link.

But…
“You have to believe in free will, you have no choice.” I.B. Singer :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:

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This might be the way the Pharisees interpret this revealing THEIR heart which is to bask in the reflected glory of God. Is God actually lacking in something that He needs us to come up with it, or is this just the scam of those using religion to line their own pockets and egos? The one who seeks glory because he has none is the devil and thus it is no wonder that Jesus looked at the Pharisees and saw only children of the devil.

What is the greatness of God?

What did Jesus say made one great?

Hint: It was not seeking glory and lording it over others.

Jesus in Matthew 20:26 and elsewhere says, " whoever would be great among you must be your servant."

So from Jesus’ perspective, for God to be great would mean that He seeks to serve others. And if God is not lacking in anything then isn’t that exactly what you would expect God to do. So I think people are getting God confused with the “god of this world.”

You cannot think that means Jesus is giving us a way to get anything we want or think we need. Frankly this is one of the most common portrayals of the Devil – one who comes into a community offering everyone exactly what they want and the result is hell on earth.

I have said it many time and I will say it again now, “hell is our heart’s desire and heaven is God’s desire for us.” If you think this makes hell sound good then you do not understand the real depravity of the human heart.

But ok, even supposing in some case what a person wants is also what God wants for us… does that mean that Jesus is offering us a way to have God set aside all the laws of nature to give us those things in whatever way that we would like. I deny that the omnipotence of God even includes an ability to do anything in whatever way He chooses as if logical consistency did not apply.

So in all these ways prayer might be understood, no it certainly does not work. Prayer is not a way to direct, manipulate or control God, let alone a way to change the rules of how the world works to what we might like. The very idea is absurd. So what can prayer do then? It can be a way of making effort when we have no idea what to do about something. I can be way of being patient and putting things in God’s hands. For these things at least prayer does work.

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Is God’s name hallowed and honored throughout the world? With a lot of words, you’re trying to tell me that Jesus did not want that. I don’t think so.

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We agree that God is not a vending machine into which you can plug your prayer quarters and routinely get the desired merchandise. (Neither are real vending machines always compliant. :slightly_smiling_face:) Did you not read the Laura Story verse I posted above?

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Does not a little child who loves his father think of him as famous? Don’t squabbles in schoolyards tell you that children defend the honor of their parents? God the Father did not humble himself as a servant! He still is to be revered, and our hearts should want that, too!

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With a few words you are trying to tell me you worship the god of this world who seeks glory and only sees greatness in lording it over others like the Pharisees.

Gosh changing your words to make you sound horrible is soooo easy. I wonder why everybody doesn’t do that? Honesty maybe?

Is making everyone believe in Him and honor Him God’s highest priority. Obviously not.

But… we certainly see God expressing a dream many times in the Bible where the people of the world have the law of God written on their hearts – doing what is right because it is good and not because they are trying to curry favor with God so they can self-righteously lord it over others like the Pharisees and so many others who use religion as a personal means to success

Nope. And I didn’t read it in the other threads you posted it either. …since you asked.

So is God the Father not great or was Jesus simply mistaken about what greatness consists of? Or is it like a class society where some people are great for lording it over others while everyone else can only be great by serving them?

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Good grief. That is one of the more inane things that I’ve read.

I’m glad you understand that much.

I’m sorry you didn’t read Laura Story’s verse. It is actually quite relevant, and it’s to your loss if you don’t. You’re above reading it for some reason – don’t talk to me about humility.

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Gentleman, Nick asked a sincere question, as a recent convert, about prayer.

The following kinds of answers, which are reflected in some of what I see above, are appropriate:

  1. Personal experiences with prayer.
  2. Reflections on what the Bible says about prayer.
  3. General encouragement to have faith and hope.

The following kinds of answers also reflect part of what I see above, and are not really appropriate:

  1. Responding to someone else with some kind of theological measuring contest.
  2. Descending into petty bickering because someone else did not think your post was the most enlightening thing they’ve ever read.
  3. Going off on tangents about completely unorthodox theologies.

If you simply must engage this way, do it via PM, please. :slight_smile:

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39

Don’t forget,

As surely as I live, says the Lord, every knee will bow before Me; every tongue will confess to God.

But not every knee will bow nor tongue confess willingly.

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yes it does, but you have to understand what it is about. The worst kind of prayer isto ask God to give wisdom to our leaders. Thou shall not tempt the Lord. The democratic system causes us to select leaders that perform to our will as most people vote for self interest, so you get the leaders you vote for because they promised to you what you like to hear. To then ask God to make them wise is a joke. Better pray for giving wisdom to us to vote for leaders that cause the least damage :slight_smile: To let him fix the Santa Clauses we voted for is indeed very naive.

Te video to watch is the one from Marshall Brain The best optical illusion in the world! - YouTube or The best optical illusion in the world! - YouTube
He built his whole atheism and his book “how God works” (after all he built the “how stuff works” domain so he clearly knows :slight_smile: ) on the lack of prayer to work starting with those who would have prayed for their life in the Tsunami of Banda Aceh in 2004 and on his work in why God does not heal amputees. If you want to see how God heals amputees look how he gives them wings like Harry’s Heroes (army amputees doing challenges I could not do with all the limbs I have) or Martine Wright
or how he healed Nick Vujicic or others who live without limbs, - not by giving them the body they wished for. Healing is body mind harmony, not getting the body you wish for as in “my will be done”. It is tempting with the tools of modern surgery but ill advised as we can see in those who try it.
The concept of prayer is not to ask God to change reality as we wish as if he were the magic Genie who needs telling what to do by us (as most of us do on a weekly basis as a matter of ritual) but to ask God to change us / make us act to make his wish for reality come true.

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Thank you for this @Christy. I was trying to be as helpful to @NickolaosPappas as possible, as the wording of a prayer and its intent is very crucial to determine its impact. The pope just demonstrated this, thankfully.

The traditional Lord’s Prayer was falsely passed down as “Lead us not into temptation.” This conflicts with the beginning of prayer, “may Thy Will be done.” What value is a prayer to God to ask Him to not do something that is His Will, like testing us with temptation?

The pope corrected the Prayer and increased its effectiveness dramatically by asking God to be with us during temptation - “Lead us through temptation.” In my first post above I tried to show how important these little words are in changing the intent of prayer, and I hope this post does too.
Best Wishes, Shawn

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Praying is like flossing your teeth.

I have had great personal results when I do it, I don’t (and I think most people don’t) do it as much as I should.

There is no scientific evidence that it actually produces results.

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@NickolaosPappas, your question about whether prayer “works” or not is a great question. As a Pastor I am confronted with this question in various forms many times. As a Christ-follower myself, I also have to wrestle with this question in my own life. Additionally, seeing the brokenness in the world, I have to ask myself this question with regard to the what the rest of the world experiences too.

One of the very tough things about answering your question is that it is very difficult to sometimes to define what “works” means. Using the example of the Lord’s Prayer that has been cited several times in this thread already we can note several things:

  1. Jesus encourages prayer to be personal and simple. Many English translations have Jesus’ prayer starting with something like “Our Father, who art in heaven.” This is not a very good translation for modern readers because it is far too formal for what Jesus originally taught his disciples. A translation that gets at the sense of what Jesus teaches here would be something like “Dear Dad in Heaven”. Jesus then goes on to say that we should pray that all people would praise God’s name and worship God appropriately on Earth as it is already done in heaven. You could say, “Dear Dad in Heaven, please help all the people on Earth to come to know who you really are and help them to praise you because of that.”
  2. Jesus then teaches us to pray that all the wrongs of this world would be made right. That is what he means when he tells the disciples to pray that God’s Kingdom would come, and God’s will would be done on Earth as it is in Heaven. Jesus is telling his disciples to pray in a very big way here. In theological terms we call this “eschatological”—we are praying for the coming of the divine future.
  3. Jesus also then teaches us that our prayers should not only touch on “spiritual things” like asking that people would worship God, or future things (like the Kingdom coming) but that our prayers ought to also be practical—pray for our daily bread…you could say “Dear Dad in heaven,…please provide our food today.”
  4. Jesus reminds us to then pray for God to forgive our sins—but he also reminds us that we should pray that it would be disingenuous to pray for forgiveness for our own sins if we’re not forgiving others. (“Forgive us our sins, as we forgive others”)
  5. Others have mentioned this too…the translation “Lead us not into temptation” is a bad translation…Jesus is teaching us to ask God to protect us from temptation and from the spiritual forces of evil…Satan and the like.
  6. And the last part, “For thine is the Kingdom…” is not really a part of what Jesus taught…it was a later addition by someone else.

So, Jesus teaches us to:

  • Relate to God personally: He is our “Dad in heaven”
  • Pray for the “big stuff”: “Please make the whole world right, God”
  • Pray for the everyday stuff: “Please give us food”
  • Pray for our personal spiritual needs: “Please forgive me, but please also help me to forgive others”, and “Please protect me from evil”

Now, this is what Jesus teaches us to pray. However, we need to note a few more things:

  1. Jesus is reluctant to teach his disciples “how to pray”. He only does so because they ask him to teach them how to pray like John the Baptist teaches his disciples how to pray. What Jesus really seems to want is for his disciples to figure out what to pray on their own. Jesus condemns the idea of praying with lots of fancy words, and Jesus condemns the idea of praying arrogantly. He affirms the idea of quiet, humble personal, relational prayer with God.
  2. Just because Jesus teaches us that this is how to pray, it doesn’t mean that praying in this way will get us what we want. As was noted elsewhere we are to pray for “God’s will to be done”—and not necessarily our own. Even Jesus himself prayed that the “cup of suffering” (on the cross) would be taken from him—but God effectively said, “No.”

So, for me, prayer “works” in the sense that it helps build my relationship with God. This is true, for me, in the same way that talking with my wife “works” in helping us build a relationship. When I talk with my lovely wife I don’t always end up “getting what I want”—but I do end up in a closer relationship with her. This is the primary way in which prayer “works”—in building relationship with God.

Secondarily, and somewhat incidentally, sometimes prayer “works” in the sense that God and I come to agreement about something in such a way that I get what I asked for…God gives me daily bread, God helps me forgive someone, etc., But that isn’t the point. God always “answers” my prayers…“Yes”, “No”, “Later”, “You decide”, etc., but the key isn’t God’s answer, the key is the relationship.

Do I like the fact that there are many in this world who genuinely ask God for daily bread and do not get it? Am I okay with the fact that many in the world ask God to protect them from evil, and instead they suffer abuse, or worse? No. I’m not okay with that. I’m not even okay with the fact that God doesn’t just “fix” me and make me “perfect” so that I don’t hurt people or do wrong anymore. These are some of the biggest things I talk about with God.

The key is, though, that we talk with God. That is what prayer is for, and that is how it “works”, IMHO.

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Why does actually the Lords prayer says “Let us not into temptation”. So we beg God to not temp us? I dont understand this one

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Yes, I think this is a helpful translation adjustment. I think the meaning of the original text is along the lines of “help us not to yield to temptation,” the idea that God gives strength in trials to those who ask, not the idea that God might bring us to a place of temptation like the English “lead us not into temptation” implies.

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I think this is really essential. Many of us have gotten the impression that prayer is transactional in nature, either a requirement to get what we want from God, or some kind of work of righteousness that earns us godliness. Prayer is relational. Its benefits are relational. God cares about us and the desires of our hearts and wants to give good gifts to his children, so it is fine and good to ask God for things in the context of our relationship with him as our Father and Provider. But most importantly, prayer (and I would include prayerfully meditating on Scripture in that) is how we encounter God as a Person, and that is how our faith is deepened, we become assured of his love for us, we experience the peace and joy of being connected to our Creator, and we hold on to the hope of his promises.

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