This is my question. Please note the initial qualifier. This isn’t a poll.
IF you are someone who prays, the short version is “why?” The long version is “what effect do you believe prayer has on [fill in the blank]?” IOW what does prayer do for you, for others, for events, etc.? What do you get out of it?
For purposes of this question, take “prayer” to mean anything you like, formal prayer addressed to a specific or non-specific deity or entity within the framework of an identified religion or not, as well as meditation, affirmations, positive thinking, ritual, or something else. Just define how you are using the word.
I’m not necessarily asking how or why you think it works or doesn’t work, just** if you do it**, what effect does it have, and on what does it have this effect? Describe your specific prayer experience(s), if you’re inclined to.
For example, some possible answers might be things like it calms me, it makes me feel connected to something greater than myself, I believe it can and does change the course of events, I don’t know that it has any effect on anything but it can’t hurt, I do it out of habit because of how I was raised, etc.
If you don’t pray or do anything remotely like prayer and think it is a total crock, I absolutely accept that as a valid point of view, and I guess you’ll have to decide whether posting that adds anything to the discussion.
It is immediate access to my heavenly parents (as opposed to my bio/human-parents) - some may call these heavenly parents guardian angels and that term is also correct IMHO. The beings of which I am of one essence with, but am only a child and I have been given parents. It is the family God placed me in, and I believe the way it is suppose to be.
Yes God knows everything and thus I don’t ‘need’ to let God know stuff. However God desires a family relationship with my heavenly parents and God has sent them the great blessing to care for me. They make mistakes and do not know everything, but God’s promise is that those mistakes God will corrected as God knows everything and is all powerful to do so. It is the basic design of the Kingdom, to trust where God has you.
In that I believe I have the absolute right to go above my heavenly parents head (or halo), so to speak and go directly to Lord God Almighty, the one who sits on the throne of all eternity with any issue I so desire. I do believe my heavenly parents desire and love when I do this and it is good to do this as they want me to realize that they are not perfect and I have the same inheritance rights of all God’s children to bring anything I so desire directly to God. Especially things I feel my heavenly parents got wrong (they are learning too and are someone’s children at their own (more advanced) level also)
So why not go to Lord God Almighty all the time. Well my heavenly parents are suppose to raise me and are suppose to make mistakes which will help them and myself learn as God corrects the problem. I love that God has given me them and I love them and their intended purpose in my life
So what does prayer do? It lets my heavenly parents know that I want to tell them something, and desire to be able to talk to them, that I want the relationship. If the prayer contains a request they will consider it, my level of development and understanding and evaluate if they should grant it, or perhaps if they should lead me in another direction, again as a parent would consider the request of their small child considering the benefit and well being of that child and that child’s needed development.
It is a normal part of being part of God’s family.
The first kind I call the “I want a pony” kind of prayers. These can be very discouraging when the answer is “No.” Praying for someone to be cured of disease may make the person praying feel better if the ill person recovers, but it leads to adverse emotions if the person does not recover.
As I’ve gotten older I’ve learned to pray the second kind of prayer: “Give me guidance.” or “If this must pass, let me learn what to pray for.” Sometimes all you can pray for in the end is a good death or a relief of pain. I’ve prayed Novena’s for my mother to St Jude, asking him to pray for her. She has some mental issues, and in the end I stopped praying for a recovery and started praying for guidance, then prayed for her at least to be happy now and then. My prayers for her occasional happiness have been paid back a hundred fold. In the past few months I’ve seen a complete turnaround in her personality.
I believe in prayers for the living and I believe it helps. The how and why I debate even within my own mind. I don’t personally believe we can change God’s mind about people He has already called home so I don’t pray for those who died. But there are those cases that shock doctors and they happen on a daily basis. Could it be that we can influence him about those still around us? Maybe so. And in the end what does it cost me? Some time and thought? If you mean enough to me to warrant that, you can have it and more.
Now prayer in a general sense more than what I call “intentions” (prayers for a specific person or thing). To me a relationship with God should be a personal thing and an active thing. Just as our relationships to other beings important to us - relatives, friends, whoever. The problem is its a one-way conversation - which makes that personal connection that much harder to maintain. By praying regularly and dedicating part of myself to it, I can keep my heart God-centered and keep Him an active part of my life.
Please Don’t Ding me; I’ve Parsed that spacing to make that quote as exact as I can
There are other people’s prayers & there are Yours (aka the Readers, though ThelmaLou IS pretty damn cool and as Deities go, if there were Deities, you could do worse).
Other peoples prayers come from their words, their books, their songs, their scrolls. Some are beautiful in what they want to achieve, and that is admirable.
Still, those words are not yours. You can hum and sing a line from “Dark Horse”; that’s STILL Katy Perry’s song & not yours.
Prayers in your own thoughts are quiet meditations; you still your thoughts, focus on the subject that is to be thought, and you think (and occasionally speak) your soliloquy.
Its a focus of purpose, a listing of wants and needs, a venting of frustrations with the acceptance that they are frustrations. In the end, its a one sided conversation that helps you
rationalize your way across the minutes to get from now to tomorrow on days when the trip is less than pleasant and much more difficult than easy.
A prayer is all You… and its what you make of it, in the most positive fashion that your mind is capable of crafting. It would be intensely private and not something to be shared lightly.
The effect is that it lightens your load & it takes from you some of your baggage. It rips the dirty bandages off of your wounds inside, lets you wash them clean through your pain,
and it lets you bind your cuts up again as you prepare for another day. The effect is on YOU.
It is healthy in that it can aid in the healing process, as long as you don’t lose yourself in it or attempt to inflict your style of it on others*. Even Atheists have rules.
*In as much as I have no love for any religion, I’d guess I’ve broken that rule many times. I guess I’m just not a very good Atheist.
