Power of Prayer

[So_crates]

So we start with werewolf telling us our believing affects reality. Dissolve...tine lapse. Werewolf gets the silver bullet. Craigmeister takes the mantle and continues the blame the victim script. Dissolve...time lapse. The great falling away occurs. Splinter groups form. J0hn L1nn teaches believing affects nothing outside yourself.

Seems to me I put forth tons of believing and prayer and took some gigantic risks, praying they'd work out. Most fell flat.

So the question comes: if nothing makes a dent in reality--its going to go chugging along at its own rate with its own purpose--why bother puting your petitions before God? Why bother having pistis?

Maybe the Deist were right, maybe the whole universe was wound up like giant cosmic clock and everything is racing toward its inevitable conclusion.

SoCrates

[WordWolf]

twi's simplistic, mechanical system represents one extreme- reality shifts to match thought.

"You cannot petition the Lord with prayer" represents another extreme- prayer accomplishes nothing beyond a placebo.

In between are all the other positions that healthier Christians take.

James 5:16b (KJV)

The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.

(NASB)

The effective prayer of a righteous man can accomplish much.

[So_crates]

Here's my take on a middle of the road theory. I basically says sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

Can you imagine sending a man to the moon and telling him the same thing? Well, we have this new rocket, sometimes it works sometimes it doesn't. Sure, you have a 50% chance of your forwarding address being Kingdom Come, but the upside is you have a 50% chance of making it into orbit in one piece. Really, who would take a deal like that?

People seldom base their lives on what could be. You can see what happened with the uncertainty of not knowing what was going to happen with the Busch tax cuts. Everybody held onto their cash. Now that we know things are starting to loosen up a little.

Effectual freverent prayer availeth much. How?

Back when I was with da vey, I wanted to write a story about a person who became more than a conquerer. I asked my frend how we were more than conquerers. He didn't know. I asked and advanced class grad in the twig. He shrugged his shoulders at me.

The point of the story is folks are real good at quoting scripture, but, if its a bunch of words strung together with no disernable meaning, it doesn't help.

I'll give you another example. Just before I stopped ABS, I was searching for the reason I had failed to have the windows of heaven pour open (as Malachi promises)(heck, I would have been happy with a living wage and a decent place to live). My twig leaders wife told me: "Have you taken the word and made it your own?" I asked her what that ment. She said have I made it a part of me.

A part of me? I haven't been in cat swinging distance of a church or twig since '86. Yet I can still rattle off retemories like they were right in front of me.

As I've said numerous times: Its easy to promise; a little harder to produce.

SoCrates

Edited January 7, 2011 by So_crates

[Ham]

does believing effect reality..

shouldn't get me started..

yes it does. But one's almighty perspective has to pass many, many committees..

there are quite a few of us, you know..

one has to ask politely. Very, very politely..

sometimes its better just not to ask..

[TrustAndObey]

As I've said numerous times: Its easy to promise; a little harder to produce.

Maybe that is just part of the problem.. Some might "think" that these things written in the scriptures are "promises", but are they? "I wish thou mayest prosper and be in health." You know, if I told someone that, they certainly wouldn't hold me to that as if I promised them something. I don't know. I just don't see a lot of things we were taught as promises as actually being promises in the way we were taught.. That and this mathmatical a + b =c, so you just do this and this and you get result c... Yeah, I don't think God works like that.

Here's my take on a middle of the road theory. I basically says sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

To me, I say we just don't understand God.. And no one will. And anymore than I understand my best friend or my parents, sometimes they do the things I ask and sometimes they don't. I just don't buy into these things like their ice cold calculations, rather than relationships that are built, and reasonings that are beyond me because I don't control the world or other people, and certainly not God. I have enough to control my life. So what others make avail;able (maybe promise) and do, that's great, but I don't require it and I won't wait for it. I trust God has our best interest at heart. And that is what pistis is. Trust. I trust Him to His stuff and I don't assume to understand it and make mathematical calculations out of it.