Do you pray?

Fisherman

I’ve always had a personal relationship with God that is not affected by any issues or controversies I have with anybody.

Biahi

Thanks, Vanderhoven. Many years ago I attended an ExJW conference at the Billy Graham Center at Wheaton College. There were ex Mormons, there, too. Ironic, huh?

stan livedeath

prayer--oh--you mean a one way conversation with your imaginary friend in the sky?

Sea Breeze

I’ve always had a personal relationship with God

@Fisherman - scripture says that "if any man have not the spirit of Christ, he is none of his".

Have you been born again with a new spirit?

truth_b_known

I used to. I stopped. I find it rather pointless.

A few years ago I read The Cost of Discipleship by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. If you are a practicing Christian I highly recommend the reading this book. Bonhoeffer's life story is a powerful one.

It matters little what form of prayer we adopt or how many words we use. What matters is the faith which lays hold on God, knowing that He knows our needs before we even ask Him. That is what gives Christian prayer its boundless confidence and its joyous certainty.

If God is already tending to everyone, prayer is pointless. God will do what he will do, and your prayers are as useless as they would be if God didn’t exist.

Either -

Prayer makes a difference: God only tends to people when we ask them to. (Which raises the question, why is our request so special?)
Prayer does not make a difference: God will do what he will do when he wants to do it, and our praying is pointless regardless of whether God exists or not.

Prayer lulls believers into a false sense of accomplishment. We cannot solve our problems – much less the world’s – through prayer. We often see people with good intentions praying for victims in the wake of a tragedy, but prayer is useless without action, and those actions make the prayers irrelevant. To paraphrase the great Robert Green Ingersoll, hands that help are far better than lips that pray.

Meditative, self-reflective prayer may be beneficial. Outside of that, it is a waste of time that could be better used taking action.

Disillusioned JW

truth_b_known, the points you make about prayer are good ones. Even before I got baptized I discovered that prayer doesn't work - I discovered it doesn't make any difference in outcomes whether I pray or not. Instead what makes a difference is determining (through contemplation and study) which actions should be done and then doing them to achieve what I want.

Vanderhoven7

Our fellowship is with the Father and the Son. Christians don't need to address God as Jehovah, but relationally as Father. Sadly 8 million Jehovah's Witnesses confess that they are not sons of God, they are not indwelt by His Holy Spirit and do not have a saving relationship with the real Jesus....or with the archangel Michael for that matter.

Of course, they look at God propectively as their father. If they follow men in NY and faithfully work for 1000 years...they will be saved and God will actually become their father.

Do you pray?

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