About a prayer

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girlhappy

War Child
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I just wonder... what do you think how powerful is prayer? Do you believe that you can really connect with God that way?I know it maybe sounds like stupid question, but i am thinking about it last few days. I just think i cant pray right!
 
There is no "right" way to pray. There are many examples of how to pray, but no strict limitations.

One suggestion is to look through the Psalms. It is essentially a book of prayers expressing many different emotions.
 
nbcrusader said:
There is no "right" way to pray. There are many examples of how to pray, but no strict limitations.

One suggestion is to look through the Psalms. It is essentially a book of prayers expressing many different emotions.

I was once told to use The Lord's Prayer as a "template" but I just say what I want and I know God hears me :)
 
Just be honest. That's all God wants.

I've heard it's also good to ask for forgiveness, praise God for who he is, give thanks, pray for others and then pray for yourself. But these are just guidelines. Think of prayer as conversation with God. It's important to listen too and read his word as well.
 
The purpose of prayer is to build a relationship with God. Just like with people, no one "builds relationships" the exact same way, so why should prayer be so cut-and-dry? There's no wrong way to eat a Resees and there's no wrong way to pray :shrug:

I'm not a very emotional or talkative person with other people, so I'm not the type of person that spends an hour before falling to sleep "talking" to God. I actually feel the most spiritual when I'm out doing something like taking a walk and listening to music.

The concept of prayer is actually the one thing I've really struggled with in terms of how I perceive Christianity and what theology and doctrine I believe in. In one of my theology courses, we had to read an essay by Friedrich Schleiermacher on the purpose of petitionary prayer and that essay really has changed my life in terms of coming to terms with my faith and how prayer fits in. "Petitionary" prayer is when you're asking for something, like "God, please don't let my mom die of her cancer". I struggled with prayer b/c I have a very absolute understanding of God and God's power and I don't believe that humans can actually change the mind of God, because God is already all-powerful and all-knowing. Schleiermacher's essay gives the example of Jesus Christ praying for God to "take the cup" away from him, before he is going to be crucified. Sch. argues that if Jesus Christ was not able to influence God in such a way that the outcome changed, no human ever will, BUT if you look carefully at those passages where Jesus is praying, you will see that at first, he is desperately praying for God to save him, but as he prays, he also becomes more calm and eventually resigns his fate to God's will. Therefore, according to Schl., the purpose of petitionary prayer is not to convince God to intervene on our behalf, but it's used as a way for humans to change from a state of desperation to understanding the will of God. Knowing this helped me a LOT because I was taking that class right after one of my best friends, the sweetest person in the world, died of cancer at age 20, despite the entire community praying for her health on a daily basis. It felt good to know that petitionary prayer DOES have a purpose and just because God doesn't do what you want doesn't mean you weren't a good enough Christian or you didn't pray right or you didn't pray hard enough.


Prayer is great because talking and being involved in relationships are human functions, not Godly functions, but yet God encourages us to establish a relationship in ways that we're used to. God could've said "to know me better, you must cover yourself in dirt and roll down a hill three times". Would this really make sense to us, or bring us any feelings of peace and love? No. God instead lets us talk to him the way we talk to each other in order to find peace and fulfillment.
 
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