OK..Seriously..Has GOD ever answered your prayers???? (page 4)

talesin

Vanderhoven - That's about psychology not "spirit".

I don't believe in 'spirit' either, but it sho 'nuff ain't psychology to put your hand on someone's head and they lose consciousness. Poppycock!

t

cofty

Nobody lost consciousness FFS!

Have you never seen the hysteria at a charistmatic service Talesin? People falling over and rolling about on the floor. The woman asked for a "christian", she knew the script.

Derren Brown has demonstrated the psychology of it plenty times.

yes. but whenever i pray, i keep reminding myself that God is not obligated to answer any of my requests and i try not to act as a self entitled teenager when things don't go my way. i keep reminding myself that i am a lowly being and that he is God, although i now come to know that even he doesn't care about his dignity.

anyways, i am amazed sometimes at how he answers. i feel that everything he does is for the growth and learning of our souls, so that the answers and non-answers are equally important. of course, i can easily dismiss his answers as just natural occurrences.

however, every miracle must in the same time be a natural occurence.

this reminded of C.S Lewis thought about miracles:

"It is therefore inaccurate to define a miracle as something that breaks the laws of Nature. It doesn't. ... If God creates a miraculous spermatozoon in the body of a virgin, it does not proceed to break any laws. The laws at once take it over. Nature is ready. Pregnancy follows, according to all the normal laws, and nine months later a child is born. ... The divine art of miracle is not an art of suspending the pattern. ... And they are sure that all reality must be interrelated and consistent. I agree with them. But I think they have mistaken a partial system within reality, namely Nature, for the whole. That being so, the miracle and the previous history of Nature may be interlocked after all but not in the way the Naturalists expected: rather in a much more roundabout fashion. The great complex event called Nature, and the new particular event introduced into it by the miracle, are related by their common origin in God, and doubtless, if we knew enough, most intricately related in his purpose and design, so that a Nature which had had a different history, and therefore been a different Nature, would have been invaded by different miracles or by none at all. In that way the miracles and the previous course of Nature are as well interlocked as any other two realities, but you must go back as far as their common Creator to find the interlocking. You will not find it within Nature. ... The rightful demand that all reality should be consistent and systematic does not therefore exclude miracles: but it has a very valuable contribution to make to our conception of them. It reminds us that miracles, if they occur, must, like all events, be revelations of that total harmony of all that exists. Nothing arbitrary, nothing simply "stuck on" and left unreconciled with the texture of total reality, can be admitted. By definition, miracles must of course interrupt the usual course of Nature; but if they are real they must, in the very act of so doing, assert all the more the unity and self-consistency of total reality at some deeper level. ... In calling them miracles we do not mean that they are contradictions or outrages; we mean that, left to her [Nature] own resources, she could never produce them."

defender of truth

The Searcher said: "Why does God allow suffering? The answer is found by examining why he allowed his own son to suffer and die!".. That doesn't answer everything.http://www.jehovahs-witness.net/watchtower/bible/222352/1/Theists-why-does-God-allow-suffering

free and happy

I,ve only thought so once, when I was 18 and the cong my parents had dumped us in was in the sticks and to pioneer I needed to be able to drive. Trouble was I was really bad at reversing round corners and even my instructor thought I had a slim chance of passing! I remember praying really hard and the miracle happened and I passed first time!

Since i'm no longer in the cult, I realise I was just good on the day and must have concentrated on what I was doing more than usual which is more plausible.

sarah-is-free

yes

committeechairman

He used to. A few years ago He stopped. I know this sounds sarcastic but it isn't. I'm not sure why He stopped.

cantleave

I prayed to the FSM and had pasta for dinner.

KateWild

I don't think God cares about anyone. I was chatting on another board to a victim of child abuse at the hands of his father who was the PO. I asked him if he ever remembered praying to God to help him and stop the abuse.

He remembered the last time he prayed was when he was 14, his father was having sex with him at the kingdom hall in the office. He prayed during the experience, and another elder walked in and saw them. At the time he thought his prayers were answered. Sadly the other elder just said "Oh sorry excuse me brother" and walked out. His dad finished what he was doing.

The next time the victim saw the witness who was an elder, the elder said and did nothing. The abuse continued until he left home.

The way I see it, how many prayers and for how long did this victim pray as a child up until he was 14. He was brought up by a hypocrite who prayed all the time and regulary abused him. Before I heard his experience, I was having doubts about prayers. When I read his story he helped me see that God is indifferent to suffering, he simply creates and leaves us to it. Good and bad all in the mix left to our own devices.

Kate xx

MadGiant

Beside the times I prayed to find my car keys, No Never.

It's called selective observation, where a believer counts the hits and discounts the misses. List the specific prayers you pray. Keep in mind that you generally will only pray for things which you expect can happen too. You do not pray that a mountain is uprooted and planted in the sea. So already your prayer requests are limited and already you do not pray for the kinds of things Jesus told you could happen because you live in a scientific era.

Then be brutally honest with the results. No fudging like horoscope readers regularly do. Was the prayer answered exactly as you prayed it? No punting to what believers around the globe do, either. No saying, well God knows best, or that he didn't give me what I wanted but what I needed. Then see what happens. Then see how many times prayers are answered.

Short list: Never

I prayed for twenty years but received no answer until I prayed with my legs.

~Frederick Douglass, escaped slave (1817-1895)

Take care,

Ismael

OK..Seriously..Has GOD ever answered your prayers????