Prayer :Does it work?

Faith & Science Conversation
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Hi Nick,
I rejoice in hearing of your newfound faith!

In regards to your question about unanswered prayer. It might also be helpful to reflect on Jesus’ prayer in the garden of Gethsemane, when He knew the time for his betrayal and crucifixion was near.

Luke 22:41-44
He withdrew about a stone’s throw beyond them, knelt down and prayed, “Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done.” An angel from heaven appeared to him and strengthened him. And being in anguish, he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground.

Jesus must have known that his prayer to “take this cup from me” could not be answered, which is why he said “yet not my will, but yours be done.” However, taking that time to convene with His Father clearly helped Jesus reflect on the importance of what He was about to go through and helped strengthen Jesus for His mission. Reading Jesus’ prayer now also helps us understand how difficult Jesus’s mission was, and helps us appreciate His sacrifice, and helps us worship and thank God for His work on our behalf.

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It might also be helpful for you to know that sometimes answers to prayer are a VERY long time in coming.

I was raised in a nonchristian home by an atheist and an agnostic. I was born again at the end of my time in college in 1998. I have been praying since then for the salvation of my parents. I believe my father was saved a few years later. However, only now after 20 years of prayer am I gaining more hope that this prayer will also be answered for my mother. I just learned a few weeks ago that my mother has started reading a One Year Bible. So I continue to pray that she will encounter God through her reading this year.

It also took 10 years of praying for me to meet my husband. Those prayers were sometimes anxious and I worried that they would never be answered. However, the Lord used that time to bring me to a place of acceptance and into a deeper relationship with Him. I realized that EVEN IF my desire for a husband were never fulfilled in my current lifetime, that that good desire was pointing me to my relationship with the Lord, which would ultimately be fulfilled in heaven. Looking back now, it makes sense why I had to wait for so long. It also amazes me how beautifully the Lord answered my prayer, with a man who fits me so well, and is better than I could have imagined for myself. I feel that I don’t deserve that blessing, but I thank God for it.

Hear are some more scriptures which could help us think about how God shapes us through our prayers (whether answered or “unanswered”…and to be answered in heaven):

Daniel 3:17-18
Daniel speaking to King Nebuchadnezzar:
"If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to deliver us from it, and he will deliver us from Your Majesty’s hand. But even if he does not, we want you to know, Your Majesty, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up.”

Hebrews 11 (which some people call the “hall of faith” passage)

v13-16 All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance, admitting that they were foreigners and strangers on earth. People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own. If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. Instead, they were longing for a better country—a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them.

Deutoronomy 8:3

He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your ancestors had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.

Psalm 16

1 Keep me safe, my God,
for in you I take refuge.

2 I say to the Lord, “You are my Lord;
apart from you I have no good thing.”
3 I say of the holy people who are in the land,
“They are the noble ones in whom is all my delight.”
4 Those who run after other gods will suffer more and more.
I will not pour out libations of blood to such gods
or take up their names on my lips.

5 Lord, you alone are my portion and my cup;
you make my lot secure.
6 The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places;
surely I have a delightful inheritance.
7 I will praise the Lord, who counsels me;
> even at night my heart instructs me.
8 I keep my eyes always on the Lord.
With him at my right hand, I will not be shaken.

9 Therefore my heart is glad and my tongue rejoices;
my body also will rest secure,
10 because you will not abandon me to the realm of the dead,
nor will you let your faithful one see decay.
11 You make known to me the path of life;
you will fill me with joy in your presence,
with eternal pleasures at your right hand.

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When I’m faced with this question by unbelievers that I’m study with this is the general approach I take. I try to hit a wide range of issues.

The first is about how should we pray?

One thing that stands out if the example Jesus gave in Matthew 6.

It first starts off talking about how when we pray it should be to God, and not for the sake of appearing righteous. One of the examples it brings up also concerns helping the needy. Helping them because it’s the godly thing and not because of being recognized for doing it.

It then leads into Jesus giving an example of prayer. One of the things people overlook is that it does not say give my daily bread but give us our daily bread. We don’t need to just pray for ourselves but for others as well. We want all to be blessed. Not just our own individual well being. Ephesians 6:18 talks on this too. We are even told to pray for our enemies in Matthew 5:44 right before this.

Finally it goes into praying to God and having faith in him because being stressed over things beyond your control is a bit meaningless. Trust God will provide for you. But with that said is the examples of the birds. We are told to meditate on these things and consider them. What’s one thing we know? In addition to the goodness we see that birds starve to death. Jesus knew this. Jesus knows that even the blessed will face rough times and even the best will be hurt and die. I believe this is strongly associated with prayer for a reason. It’s alluding that despite God and wrong our prayers, we will suffer, we will want, and we will die and that goes for those we care about.

We are also told that we need others to pray for us as well. In James 5:13-16 it mentions getting elders to pray for us and confessing our sins to our brothers and sisters so that we may be healed. Why would confessing sins be tied into prayers?

Well plenty of scripture shows this.

Proverbs 15:29 NASB
29 The Lord is far from the wicked,
But He hears the prayer of the righteous.

Isaiah 59:2 NASB
2 But your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God,
And your sins have hidden His face from you so that He does not hear.

Sins make God turn from us. It’s when Jesus cried out why have you forsaken me. God turned away from the sins of the people.

Additionally we can pray with the wrong motive. Not only to be seen but for completely selfish reasons.

James 4:3 NASB
3 You ask and do not receive, because you ask on your pleasures.

Another thing is to remember we are praying for his will. Not our own. Jesus set this example in the garden of Gethsemane.

Also in:
1 John 5:14 New American Standard Bible (NASB)

14 This is the confidence which we have before Him, that, if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us.

John 15:7 NASB
7 If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.

Sometimes prayer and fasting are required together. Some debate exists over the exact wording of these.

Last thing to consider is this verse.

Matthew 7:7-8 New American Standard Bible NASB

Ask and you will receive. Seek and you will find. Knock and it will be opened to you. 8 For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened.

All these verses are about prayer. Prayer is not just asking once. It’s seeking it. It’s putting in the work for it. God is not a genie.

When someone is sitting a subject often they just select a few verses. In reality a subject needs to fit into a systematic understanding.

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…the very first petition, at least: “Hallowed be thy name.” It reveals the petitioner’s heart – he wants to elevate his Father’s renown.

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This is the second part of my response. I wanted to do it separate because it’s not my doctrinal understanding. It’s my experience. It’s anecdotal. I believe all supernatural interactions are anecdotal and always done in a way to where if your heart is set on it you can explain it away. After all coincidences happen all the time and does not the prayers to other gods also get answered?

When I was 19 I was living thousands of miles away from any family or friends. I moved away and felt empty and lonely. I believed in God and I thought I studied scriptures well and that new the truth. But I was no longer going to church and only had acquaintances from work. Sometimes I went to work on my day off just to small chat with an acquaintance or help customers because I literally did not hang out with anyone outside of my house and never had people over.

So one day, feeling especially alone I prayed to a god that I could find a Christian guy to hang out with. Not just any Christian guy but someone who studied the word, someone who I can work out with too. A few minutes after the prayer I went to a subway and while in line I saw this guy who obviously worked out also talking about God to a homeless woman and gave her a Bible. I knew my prayer was answered. But before it was time for me to be next I chickened out. I realized how stupid I would sound to ask this stranger making sandwiches if he wanted to hang out. So I never said anything, felt like a failure, and left without saying a word. I told the girl I was with then about what happened. She said God answered my prayer and I have better respond gratefully. I knew she was right and so I headed back to the subway. The guy was gone, even though it was only like 10 minutes has passed. I asked the woman there in his place and she said his name was Josh and today was actually his last day and he left and she does not know how to contact him. I felt like I got what I deserved.

The next day I went to a coffee shop. While in line I heard about 6 guys sharing the gospel with some dude. I was thinking God gave me another chance. As soon as I got my coffee I would approach them. Right before I got my coffee others in the Starbucks begin to yell at them. One guy even threw a water bottle. I again chickened out. Did not want the drama. Was acting ashamed of Christ. So I got my coffee and went to leave. As I was opening the door I heard someone yelling hey dude hey dude and come running up to me. It was the same guy, Josh, from the day before in the sandwich shop. He said that this sounds crazy but that he felt like God wanted him to talk to me yesterday in the store but he felt stupid. He said he regretted his choice and when he saw me in the coffee shop he knew that it was a sign from God and a second chance.

I was surprised. God not only gave me two chances but extended his hand the full way. I started hanging out with the guy and we eventually started studying the Bible together. I realized I never truly learned the gospel. We studied it together and finally I learned the truth and got baptized into Christ a few months later and was finally added to the body of believers.

I also consider how I’m alive. The word of God has guided me towards everything I am today. It softened my heart. It helped me with my paranoia anger. It helped me value life more. It was my inspiration to give up meat and focus on ecology. Especially the botanical side. The Bible is littered with plant references. The garden, the tree, the burning tree, the cross as a tree, the soil metaphors, Jesus hung on a tree, and we are grafted into the tree and wheat being collected and so on. Genesis lead me to wanting to be a steward of the earth. It’s through God and because of God that I am with the woman I am with. It’s his promises I stand on that give me hope. To me God definitely answers prayers.

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If they do, they are counterfeits, or the accounts are, from the adversary:

…he is a liar and the father of lies.

 
I like @gbob’s analogy about lottery tickets which he relates in My Turkish translator experience –

It was like, in all the world, only one ticket was sold to this drawing. It was sold to three people who shared the cost, no other tickets were sold, and they won the Powerball. Someone might think the game was rigged if that happened in real life.

 
Then, of course, there is the sequence in Maggie’s account that I love and that I have mentioned several times before, a series of five, in the sequence of her requests, and in 48 hours!
 

The evidence of God’s sovereign and interventionist reign over the events in my life is plentiful, but a favorite and surprising answer to a prayer is what I have called Request and articulate reply.

 
Unfortunately, accounts like these are not compelling to the resolute unbeliever.

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Another account which I may have mentioned before is this one, at the end of Tim Kellers book, The Reason for God:

During a dark time in her life, a woman in my congregation complained that she had prayed over and over, “God, help me find you,” but had gotten nowhere. A Christian friend suggested to her that she might change her prayer to, “God, come and find me. After all, you are the Good Shepherd who goes looking for the lost sheep.” She concluded when she was recounting this to me, “The only reason I can tell you this story is—he did.”

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I agree prayers answered by other gods are either coincidences or being answered by our enemy. But that was my point. I have faith it was the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The Father of Jesus.

But wiccans, muslims, and so think they same about our prayers.

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I don’t know. I doubt if they could be any sweeter than @maggie777’s.

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The last three episodes of the podcast has been focused on faith and psychology.

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Forgive me, but there has been a heady combination of experience and theory here. It seems that reality and experience does not always confirm the throry and / or belief.
The problem starts when we start trying to understand or even second guess God. There is a point when we have to distance ourselves from what we see or percieve. Faith should not need proof. Either we believe or we doubt.
I believe in prayer. It is as simple as that.
Richard

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Hi Dale. I don’t visit Biologos anymore unless they send me something (as when someone mentions my name). You just did. I do hope people read my testimony to the reality, love and power of God, but Biologos is much more intellectual than my interests. Jesus is such a dynamic person in our daily communication and interaction, that Biologos is not the best forum for me to share my faith. I invite you to follow me at quora.com. (https://www.quora.com/profile/Maggie-Eriksson) I have posted more than 3,000 answers, about 60% on the Bible, theology Jesus; 20% sciences 20% miscellaneous subjects.

Be blessed. I hope you will bless yourself, and order my book, The Still Small Voice of Jesus from Xulon Press. Maggie

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There are a lot of interesting responses on this discussion, and one of the strong themes that have emerged here is the awareness that prayer can lead to relationship with God – either the beginning of a relationship or the strengthening of a relationship.

Questions about prayer have long haunted those who long to be in relationship with God. I have no doubt that some people have been driven away from the church because they believe God isn’t listening to their prayers and therefore must not care about them.

God cares about everyone and always hears what we’re saying. But church leaders make definitive statements about the power of prayer without ever asking God or God’s angels how God feels about these definitive statements. The situation is further confused by certain statements in the Bible (including the statement in the OP) that give false impressions about prayer. These statements make it seem as if prayer is embedded with universal contract obligations that require God to obey our requests, demands, and immediate needs. But as several members here have already pointed out, this isn’t how prayer works.

I learned the hard way in the early part of my journey that what I’d been taught about the power of prayer had little to do with God’s understanding of prayer. I had to unlearn a lot of bad habits before I could talk with God in ways that built our relationship in loving, respectful ways instead of continually undermining our relationship.

In no particular order, here are some of the things God and God’s angels have taught me about prayer:

  • Prayer starts with relationships of the Heart and Soul. Other factors, such as practical needs of the body, may enter into the equation, but God’s chief concerns are your relationships; your ability to take personal responsibility for the choices that are within your control; your chances to learn; and your ability to understand and work with the mysterious laws of Time and Timing that undergird God’s Creation.

  • When God answers prayers, there are always several layers to the answer. Maybe you’ve asked for a package of flour so you can make bread to feed your family. God’s response will involve the people you interact with as you go to the store or the food bank or the church to get the flour; the personal responsibility involved in finding lawful ways to obtain the flour (instead of stealing it, which may be effective in the short term, but isn’t very helpful to you as far as your Heart and Soul are concerned); the chance to learn something new while you’re on your way to get the flour (this could be almost anything, but is often a practical bit of information – such as a poster or an ad for free services – that could help you solve a practical problem); and if you’re really paying attention, there will be small but important occurrences of timing, synchronicity, and coincidence that can help you feel God’s presence in your daily life. In other words, when you pray to God about the flour, it’s never just about the flour as far as God is concerned. God’s Love feels like a hand around you, a hand with gentle fingers, fingers that do different jobs yet work together in harmony and balance to lift up your Heart and Soul. If you’re only looking at today’s bag of flour, you’re missing 90% of God’s response.

  • God doesn’t answer your prayers in isolation. You have prayers, but so does your neighbour. Your community has group prayers. Your region and country have joint wishes and needs. The planet as a whole has to be factored in. So God’s responses always start with the “big picture.” This is where a lot of people get tripped up, because we can’t see the “big picture,” and we get angry when our understanding of what’s needed doesn’t match God’s idea of what’s needed. It’s important at this point to try to be patient and to accept our human limitations. We’re not God. Only God is God.

  • Sometimes you can ask for the right thing in prayer, but it’s such a “big thing” that God and God’s angels have to step in and set up a lot of learning for you before you can get from A to B. This is another area where people get confused and angry about prayer. We’re led to believe by religious and spiritual leaders that if we ask God for courage, we’re going to get it immediately, like an apple falling from the tree onto Newton’s head. But this isn’t true. (And I wish that I’d known this when I started my journey. It would have saved me years of frustration and self-doubt.) God absolutely insists that we work within the scientific paradigm of our human biology; so if, for example, we want to know what courage feels like, we have to work with God on a long term basis to reshape the wiring of our human brains and central nervous systems so we can feel courage. There are no free passes on this one (despite what we’ve been promised by our human leaders). On the other hand, as we struggle our way through the process of knowing what courage is, we have no choice except to work on our relationships, work on our understanding of personal responsibility (well summarized by the Serenity Prayer), work on our learning, and work on trusting God’s Timing. So the prayer is answered, and we get from A to B – but it’s not the quick, easy process we’ve been told to expect. Yes, it’s a lot of work, but God knows that when you learn the “hard way,” so to speak, nobody can take your learning away from you. The learning goes deep into your Heart and Soul, and it becomes a permanent part of who you are. This is the kind of learning God always wants for you. It’s the difference between the leaves that fall from the tree in autumn (“the easy way”) and the roots that can sustain a tree during drought or winter hardships (“the hard way”). If God and God’s angels have to decide between your leaves and your roots, they’ll always go with the roots.

  • About the specifics of prayer, I think it’s really important to remember that God has feelings (lots and lots of Heart feelings), so when you’re talking to God, it’s the same as talking to a person you love. If you rant and swear and treat the other person disrespectfully, it doesn’t help build your relationship. Be candid and frank about your worries (because God knows about your worries even before you raise them), but practice your relationship skills through your conversations with God. Practise the art of finding respectful, honest words without vengeance, self-entitlement, or petulance, because words really do matter in a relationship. At the same time, practise the art of listening. This is what your Heart and Soul long for.

Anyway, gotta run. Thanks to everyone here who has shared their stories of relationship with God. I think it helps us realize that God answers prayers in many different ways, and all ways are equally important.

God bless.

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The way AA works is by invoking a higher power. It doesn’t have to be real. And in fact, whether one is transcendently there - immanently here, or not, they aren’t actually materially real and do not put thoughts and feelings in our minds, they do not edit us any more than they do any aspect of creation including evolution. We change by being open, by yearning, by confessing, by singing, by worshipping one of the Greek words for which is therapeuo - healing, by differentiating our feelings, telling their story, opening our bitter closed flowers; by praying. It’s the cheapest, most available and effective form of CBT there is.

When I’m bombarded with the inner gibbering monkey - which can be many times a day - if I can find head space to call on my higher power and walk, talk it through, I can get a grip.

And it actually reinforces my faith.

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Hi Nick,
I was thinking of you today during church as our pastor was preaching, which made me wonder if I should share these two additional verses with you. Of course, we do not know what it is that you are struggling with and are not getting answers about. Hopefully it might help to know that we are praying for you, too.

In case these verses might speak to you, I will cite them for you:

This first one is from a section where Jesus is encouraging His disciples on the night before His crucifixion:

John 16:33
I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.

In this one, Paul explains what he heard from God in response to Paul’s request for God to provide relief from some physical challenge:

2 Corinthians 12:7-10
Therefore, in order to keep me from becoming conceited, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

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For me the first four lines of the Lords prayer paints a picture:

  • We are Gods children
  • God loves us more than we can comprehend
  • God knows a lot more about reality than we do
  • We love God and want all Gods children to love him too.

If we really believe this, if this is the perspective we are coming from, then anything we ask we can ask with confidence that God will give us what we want or something even better.

I wonder sometimes if most of the time God is just empowering us to answer our own prayers.

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One of my pastors from years ago said that God answers all prayers, not just some, but his answers are not necessarily what we asked for. Recall that Paul famously asked to be healed from a physical afflication but God denied his request.

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Well now I feel confirmed in my decision to get a knee replacement rather than hope that exercise and a certain je ne sais quoi will get it done. I mean, I don’t think I have any where near as much pull as that Paul guy. So if he didn’t get a love job from on high there isn’t much chance I will either.

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I assume your surgery went well? Thank God for modern medicine and the ability to access it. D.a.m.n. the parents who withhold it from their sick children.

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I’m afraid I may be counting an unhatched chick here. I do hope to be among the 80% who are definitely happy to have done it but I’m told that a lot of the less favorable responses come from younger, more athletically inclined patients who don’t feel the replacement is up to level of the one they blew out. There isn’t much danger of that. It took me more than a year to be able to completely straighten my leg after that knee was injured and injections were keeping me going for the last couple of years. But now I find myself walking less to avoid swelling which means I have to get most of my exercise on machines. No fun for the doggies and not at all the life I had hoped to share with them. Shhh … I’m going to sneak in a couple photos of my two. I take it yours is in your avatar?

This is them …

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… and this is what they like:

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