I found this:
Jeremiah:29:13 - And ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart.
BTW it doesn’t say pray hard it says “search for me with ALL your heart”.
I’m a nonbeliever when it comes to Jesus, as I told the Mormon missionaries who knocked on my door; they said “awesome” – they said “awesome” a lot – and suggested we pray to God in earnest sincerity to ask for the truth about Jesus.
I asked if we could pray in Hebrew.
They said that would be awesome.
They came back another day to see whether anything had changed. I explained that, some time after praying to God in earnest sincerity, I felt slightly more confident that Christianity was false – which surprised the heck out of me, since I’d thought I was already at 100% on that one. Who knew? Learn something new every day, I guess.
They said that was awesome and left.
[quote=“JohnClay, post:20, topic:686329”]
kambuckta:
I know of a small pentecostal church that believes that some other pentecostal churches have been infiltrated by “religious” demons. They believe there are “counterfeit” gifts - i.e. speaking in tongues isn’t necessarily a sign of being a real Christian.
Here are some excerpts of their pastor’s preaching on hell:
JohnClay, it’s moot with me. I’m a card-carrying atheist now, so rantings and ravings from anybody of the theist kind mean nothing. Their words are about as meaningful as the spruiker outside Adairs or Millers touting his wares. It’s all about salesmanship afterall.
BTW in my case I don’t want to put Jesus first in my life and tell others about him - I think there is a risk of that happening if I seek God so I haven’t tried to seek God. I don’t want to go to hell though.
C’mon JohnClay, you’re pulling your usual schtick here. Have you ever thought of getting a blog? I’m serious…when you get all weird and religious here, it’s just in contrast to your vaguely porn stuff with your lady.
I’m sure if you got a blog, you’d get hundreds of subscribers.
kambuckta:
Well I do have a lot of infamy on another messageboard where I have written some really long posts and threads on the little details of my life such as the first romantic hand-holding at the age of 28. I prefer that to a traditional blog.
Another verse:
“But if from there you seek the LORD your God, you will find him if you seek him with all your heart and with all your soul.”
It looks like you might also need to seek him with all of your soul as well as your heart…
What Honey said.
If that’s what God requires, I wouldn’t be a worshiper anyway. Unbeliever and never considered praying to God at any time. You can’t pray to something unless you believe it exists.
Except during baseball games. 
I tried it lots of times. I was raised Baptist and knew all along that it wasn’t taking hold in me the way it should.
I cursed him too. Nothing.
Nonbeliever here. Never done it. I’d be afraid that some elderly flasher would confuse the hell outa me.
I doubt you’ll find resistance to being open about it. Add me to your list. It is something I would never consider doing. If I didn’t reach out to “God” at 3:00’a.m. with my daughter in ICU (or a couple of years later, when she was in bad shape in the ER), I can’t imagine anything that would cause me to consider seeking a deity. God, if he or she exists, knows where to find me. I’m in the phone book.
When I was a brainwashed fundy kid starting to doubt religion, sure. I was raised to believe I would burn in eternal torture if I didn’t believe in Jesus, but it was becoming obvious that even if a god or gods existed, the chances of my particular religion being the correct one was vanishingly small.
So prayed for god to show himself, and since no random occurrence happened for me to mistakenly think was the sign of deity, nothing slowed my inevitable slide into rationality.
Your poll does not have a poll.
I was made to go to church through confirmation and tried praying on occasion when I was young. It always made me feel silly. I never asked for the big reveal.
What RevTim said, pretty much word for word.
However, now as an unbeliever, I find the concept of hell silly and no longer understand how I could have been afraid of it in my past.
Non-believer. I don’t see the point so, yeah, I haven’t.
Never let it be said that JohnClay is constrained by convention.
Yes, I have prayed to God or gods to reveal themselves. They didn’t.
So, John, have you really truly asked the Flying Spaghetti Monster to reveal his tomato based goodness to you? I mean really asked? I’m not talking about the kind of noodly limp-wristed praying that most people do, but really seeking a pasta based deity.
If you haven’t, why not?
In case you think I’m just being a smarty pants here, I’m not. As silly as my above statement may sound, it’s an analogy that works for me because I would feel very silly asking anything of a god I am positive does not exist.
Are you in the habit of doing incredibly unlikely, nay I say near impossible things, as a “just in case” preventative? If putting a set of bull horns on the hood of your car has been rumored to increase your odds of avoiding an accident by .0000000000000001%, are you going out to buy a set and bolting them on the hood of your Buick?
Yes, I have tried.
I grew up unchurched but curious. I gobbled mythology texts, and it was sometime in late middle school or early high school that I realized that what, to me, were fascinating, but completely made up stories about Athena or Thor, were once as true and wholeheartedly believed as the stories about Moses being found in a reed basket or Jesus walking on water. I came to understand that narrative has inestimable power over the human psyche, and our need to understand the universe drives us to create stories even when we have no real knowledge.
I don’t remember having faith before then, but I felt the lack of it afterwards. Part of it was social. I grew up in Texas, and there’s a very strong element of reliosity in our culture. Part of it was wanting there to be a meaningful pattern in the world around me instead of random events. I like the idea of God, even if I find some elements of Abrahamic religions loathsome and foul. I like the poetry found in the Bible. I like the challenge to be a good person and be accountable to the people around me. I also liked and, at times needed, the idea that there was something more than just me, that I didn’t always have to be perfectly strong to bear the travails of this world, that if I was unable to bear the weight of this existence, I would not be alone.
So I have prayed. Maybe not the way your average Christian thinks is proper, but I have prayed to the best of my ability. I don’t ask for any favors. I don’t ask that things be changed to suit my wishes. I just try to open myself to God.
If He (She/It/They) exists, He’s never answered. I’m not looking for a burning bush here, guys. Just something.
So, I retreat to my empirical knowledge of the world around me. I understand that my life is shaped by physical forces and that every event, no matter how random, has a logical explanation. In a small way, it’s comforting. I don’t have to fold myself into theological origami to explain why God is omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent. I don’t have to fear punishment for being imperfect and flawed. If I find some religious practice repugnant, I can eschew it and not worry about displeasing my creator. If I don’t understand something, it’s because I lack information or the necessary faculties to comprehend, not because I should have blind faith.
I would like to have faith. I would like to know that my existence has intrinsic value. I would like to know that I, a veritable sparrow, am marked and known and loved. I would like to know that there is some sort of plan, large scale and small, and that it is unfolding according to its purpose. I don’t.
Most days, it’s okay. The world is still filled with beauty and love and compassion. I love and am loved in return by the people in my life. I try to do good, and I am grateful for the good done to me. Every now and then, I feel the lack and wish it were otherwise, but to quote the prophet Jagger, “you can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometime, you just might find, you get what you need.”