In the last 2-3 months, I started to regain some sort of confidence again in spoken prayer. Or the whole concept of prayer, really. But after a casual cyber conversation, and someone mentioning to ask Girl A to pray cos their prayers are effective, I once again am starting to doubt the ‘prayer’ thing. Why would one person’s prayer be more effective than another? What does prayer really accomplish? If someone else’s prayer is more effective, then why should I bother? What is prayer about? What the hell is a prayer warrior? Why do some people’s prayer seem to be constantly more effective than others? Is it because the have more faith? What qualifies for someone to have more faith? Does that mean that because I am at a stage where I am questioning lots of things about God and faith, that I have less faith? How do you measure the extent of someone’s faith?
I am off to our staff gathering tomorrow, which I am sure will include quite a bit of prayer in it – a whole week of it. *sigh* Not an easy time when coping with questions of prayer. Hearing people pray just makes me wonder more and hearing the contents of some people’s prayer just makes it worse. I wish we could just have silence during prayer time.
Monday, January 24, 2005
That thing called prayer
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2 comments:
hi, stu here...
prayer is a sticky thing and i'm sure i could throw a whole lot of verses at you if i looked up my concordance. but that wouldn't help. i so identify with your struggle. if God knows my needs before i even do, then why doesn't he use his initiative : isn't that the model of servant that he wants for us? if God does answer prayer, does that mean he will impinge on someone else's free will to effect the answer?
sometimes i feel i am shooting arrows randomly into the sky...but i know that if i don't pray, i our community doesn't pray, then we are less effective.
and then i ask the question, if we do this together and frenzy ourselves with enthusiasm, how do we know we're not brainwashing ourselves? and then, how much answered prayer is us being revisionist about the past : hindsight is a poor lens to use when looking for anwered prayer, we can find any prayer answered.
i suspect the issue is that prayers are not meant to be offered to be answered. i suspect that prayer is a processing method much of the time. and it's communication with God that brings communion with him, it draws us closer to his heartbeat.
maybe i stand on this wobbly idea : to pray seems foolishly faithful, not to pray is recklessly faithless.
kia kaha
Like your quote, Stu. I have the similar struggles with Karen. I believe so strongly in God's sovereign care for us that sometimes I think, why pray?
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