Prayer God and the Bible

Faith & Science Conversation
41

I was thinking of one more thing. This is about general self reflection and not a post strictly for you.

Have you read the story of Balaam? When you read it in the Torah he sounds like a good guy. Some repenting pagan prophet. At a glance his words and actions seem to show him on God’s side. Yet his story comes to an end by a sword and in the epistles and revelation it mentions how he was evil.

One reason why I bring this up is because often we are praying for something that sounds great and wonderful but we deceive ourselves and in reality it’s driven by wickedness.

42

It sounds as if you are specifically asking about prayers of petition, as they are typically the most common. As I’ve grown older I’ve discovered that petitioning God may not always align with his will but rather my own. Although now I still petition God, I find myself more and more not asking for specific “things” or outcomes but rather praying for discernment with regarding to a situation, concern, or need where I might respond to it in the most Godly way possible.

5 Likes
43

Sorry Nick, I didn’t reply to the first part. When I pray I’m invoking my God as I have for 50 years. But He’s changed. Because I have. He’s still immanent, but Zenilly so (Zen means meditation, contemplation; He contemplates back). Absent present. He cannot intervene. But I’m invoking Him. That works per se, as it is. It can’t not. It is a cause, it has effect. I speak to Him. That works, in itself, whether He’s real or not. My God is the ground of being and sees and feels all. He fits me like a glove. He fully understands. And there is nothing He can do about it : ) And that is liberating. And if He’s real, that’s how He is. Understanding. He’s also good in other ways, but not our ways. Not any of the ways we project on Him. He feels our pain, our confusion, our loss, locally as the glove to each hurting hand (including His own), and we say that He loves us and is kind and tender and patient and merciful and forgiving and just, but none of those human concepts are relevant; but understanding, if anything, is. He’s empathic. And will, can do nothing. But listen and nod back across the cave in the pitch dark. I have His sympathy. His apology that it has to be this way. It’s up to me to realise and work with that. To work it out with Him. It’s up to us. And that can’t not work. Nothing else will. Coherently. Ha! you say. He wants us to be Him to, for ourselves and each other. And its up to us to talk that out to Him, with Him. In each other. He DOES answer. He can’t not. In our thinking. In our response. By our thinking as we speak, walk with Him. In each other. As we see His beautiful sky face, vistas from the hilltop, along the river valley. In every passer by. He walks the mean streets with us. And He understands everything. And all will be well. His other ways of being good are that He will transcend, lift us up, restore us, fix us.

And we need professional psychological help. We need counsel. We need emotional first aid. We need to ask, seek and knock for that. And give it. Whatever we want, give. Listen. Like He does. And hear Him ask for more. We translate a certain Greek word as ‘worship’. That word is therapeuo. Therapy. Healing. Cognitive Behavioural Therapy. CBT. We have to heal ourselves. And as one afflicted with intrusive thinking, with pathological shame, that is an endless battle. He wants in on it. On our side. He is.

All will be well Nick. All IS well. It just doesn’t look or feel like it. Tell Him.

1 Like
44

I can sign off on that with just a small modification. I would just shift the “my” from modifying “God” to modifying “ground of being”. What I believe is signified as “God” is that which makes the more limited, dependent thing “me” possible. But from this limited perspective which I hold I cannot vouch for the idea that the God which makes my existence possible is one and the same for every human being or indeed the entire cosmos. By way of science we are getting ever better, more certain knowledge of the cosmos which may or may not share the dependence we have on a ground of being. In fact our bodies seem to fit seamlessly in this cosmos which at least could be sufficient unto itself in a way our subjective experience could not. So I prefer to reserve “ground of being” to refer to that which makes our subjective experience possible.

45

I dont sumbit to the idea of pantheism . God is common for l creation. Anyway the reason i responded is to prevent any future debates on the mattet. Id like the responses to be close tk the op if possible . Thanks🙏

46

Mark isn’t describing pantheism Nick. And what do you understand by it? He’s describing orthodox deism/theism.

47

Well saying that God is not common for all people it kinda reminds me of pantheism. I was raised one for nearly six years until the age of 11. Then i became an atheist

48

Everyone’s God is different. We experience Him differently. It’s the same in all relationships.

49

Nope.Jesus is not the same with Allah.Jesus is not the same with the 10000000 hindu gods.If you believe that you need to remember no one comes to the Father expect trought me.You are making Jesus a god amongst others.Anyway the debate is over.The rest answers will be close to the op.Sorry for my falling away i just needed to answer that.Thanks

2 Likes
50

No I’m not. If there is a God He is one, He is all. The one I want, I invoke, is the best case possible one, thanks be to Him in Christ.

51

Im just gonna say careful with that statement.Thats all.Thanks for your answers Klax.We still have a lot in common brother.

52

Fret not Nick. God is not just the physical all.

53

You do not understand the verse “Ask, and you shall receive” for the same reason you do not understand the “theological meaning for prayer”. God wants to be a real father to his children. He wants his children to know him, love him, and interact with him exactly the way a man does who come home from work, and his children all come rushing to the door shouting “Daddy’s home. Pick me up, Daddy”, alive with happiness that the one person they know loves them without measure, and whom they admire as the most important person in existence, is there to shower them with attention. God wants to know YOU this way. Do you want to know HIM this way? How much enthusiasm for Him do you show your Heavenly father when you sit down to communicate with Him? Is He eager to hear what you have to say, knowing you will be bubbling over with love and gratitude for him? He may very well have the very treasure you have been longing for in his hand to give you, but when you come you show him neither love nor gratitude, so he puts he back in his pocket to give to someone more appreciative.

1 Like
54

Thanks for the response maggie. Really appreciate it . But the argument is kinda weak. What father doesnt give things to his children even if they are not showing love to him? What father is not there when his children are having difficulties so to support them on a physiological level and lift them and cheer them up? What kinda of father isnt eager to hear what his children have to say (good or bad doesnt matter)

55

Yes and no. We are not going to change God’s mind about what He knows to be the case. But we can change God’s mind about whether we are being responsible enough or not, since prayer is a means of taking some responsibility. Prayer is doing something about a situation. And when there is nothing else we can do then it means being as responsible as we can be. It can be a demonstration that our heart is in the right place – and that is often all God is hoping for from us.

Not everything is about utility and the exertion of power over things. If you are looking for the use of God, then don’t waste your time. You will never use and exert power over Him – it is just not happening. A useful God is a false god – that is one fabricated in our own mind and rhetoric typically for the manipulation and exertion of power over other people.

Sure there are many. But one purpose of prayer in particular that you might want to consider is your submission to God. Stop asking and commanding God to do things for you and start asking and commanding yourself to accept what God wants from you. Here are some examples.

“Show me the way.” sounds like a command to me.
Try this instead, “I will seek the way you would have me go.”
“Help me to change” Asking God for something.
How about, “I want to change,” or “I will try to change.”

I am confused. I thought we were talking about prayer. What makes you think that Matthew 7:7 is about prayer?

"Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.

I don’t see how seeking and knocking is a reference to prayer. Sounds to me like making quite a bit more effort than just prayer, and the simple truism is that you will not get or achieve things without making some effort. And there there is the last verse of the paragraph: 12.

“So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.”

Not only are we advised to ask, seek, and knock making effort to get or achieve what we want but we are advised to do for others very same things we seek for ourselves. I guess that is called modeling the behavior we want to see in others.

1 Like
56

There is a BIG difference when the comparison is between “Dad” and God. Dad brought you home from the hospital to live in his house, as his human child. Then you got your own house. You must invite your Heavenly Father in; you haven’t met him yet. God had only One natural born Son. Unless you want him to adopt you, he will not be your father. God is creator of all; we are all potentially his children, but he does not force himself on anyone in the relationship of Father. He wants us to come to Him and choose Him as Father, rather than simply as Creator. We become children of God by adoption through Jesus Christ (read (Galatians 4:5). First we must make a decision to accept Jesus (King of the Universe) as our older Brother and Lord, if we want God to be our Father. Then, Jesus will petition His Father,who will joyfully adopt us as children. THEN, he will always be on our side, but especially when we express how happy we are to be with him, loving him. If Jesus is not your Lord yet, God cannot yet be your Father. More than 50 years ago God let me in on his blessings on a “trial basis”, because I didn’t know if he existed, but I was willing to make a good-faith effort to find out if he did. God proved his reality, power and love, and I became a follower of Jesus. It is the Father’s pleasure that we should call Jesus, Lord, so we can become children of God.

57

The Bible has a number of different perspectives on prayer, and some perspectives contradict other perspectives. So there’s really no one “biblical” take on prayer, except for the very general idea that prayer involves an intentional communication initiated by human beings and directed toward God.

You’re right in stating that many verses in the Bible teach you (or at least strongly imply) that if you ask for specific gifts from God, you’re guaranteed to get them – but usually you have to be a “righteous person” who obeys all God’s laws of purity, piety, and perfection before you can be sure God will hold up his side of the contract. Much of the Bible (both in the Jewish Scriptures and the New Testament) consists of various attempts to explain in meticulous detail the exact nature of God’s laws. The underlying assumption is that you can only benefit from the laws (i.e. receive the gifts you ask for) if you fully understand the laws. Much religious thought across world religions, across world regions, and across historical periods relies on this underlying assumption. Much political and philosophical and scientific thought is also based on this underlying assumption about universal laws (though they usually phrase their doctrines differently).

One aspect of Jesus’ teachings that is overlooked – and shouldn’t be overlooked – is that even for Jesus, prayer was about relationship with God and not about guaranteed outcomes. In Mark 14:32-42, Jesus talks with God for a long time in the Garden of Gethsemane, and hopes the cup will be taken from him, but then says the important thing: “yet, not what I want, but what you want.” Jesus has shared his thoughts and feelings with God in an open and honest way (the basis of prayer), but in the end he has to let go of his fear and trust God.

God always knows us better than we know ourselves, and God often takes us on “the long road” to get us where we need to go. This means that short-term prayers often aren’t answered (at least, not in the way we expect) because God sees a pathway that will lead to greater healing than we could have hoped for with our limited human insight. The road God and God’s angels are interested in is ALWAYS the road that helps us expand our understanding of what it means to know God more dearly and to know what it means to love our neighbours as ourselves (Mark 12:28-34).

So, yes, sometimes you have to wait until you’re in your 60’s to understand what God is saying to you. I’m now in my 60’s, and I’ve been struggling every day for the past 20 years to listen more deeply to God’s voice.

But here’s what you need to know (and what most religious leaders won’t tell you): The answer to your prayers always begins right away, even if you can’t see it, and the answer continues to unfold over time until the answer is full and rich and complete, even if you can’t see it until hindsight reveals it to you after many years.

And then you laugh with joy and wonder, because suddenly you see the pathway you’ve been taking with God all along. It kind of materializes with a backwards, wonky, non-linear form of vision, as if you’ve grown eyes in the back of your head.

It only makes sense after you’ve got where you’re going.

God bless,
Jen

58

Honetsly is tiring hearing from people saying you need to meet God.News flash im already a christian.You made the comparison between Dad and God and you now say theres a bid difference?Sorry for that miss but i think thats a contradiction

2 Likes
59

People have died without getting that answer to their prayers.Sounds pretty uselles to me.Sorry for my harsh words but thats just how it really is.Plus the comparison of Jesus with us?Jesus knew what was waiting for him.He knew its outcome.He knew the will of his Father.We dont

1 Like
60

Nick, none of this talk about prayer matters when your biological health and your mental state are under intense stress. I understand from your comments above that you’re currently going through a difficult time in your life. I would very much hope you’re taking the opportunity to seek assistance from a medical professional trained to deal with depression. The world looks very bleak when your brain’s neurotransmitters need some support to get back in balance. Please look after your health.

I hope you have some people you trust that you can talk to.

Take care,
Jen

4 Likes