Thread: Tell Me About Prayer

Praying isn't just simply the act of folding your hands, closing your eyes and wishing. It's more of a personal communication with God, or whatever diety you choose to pray to. It's hard to explain. The "wishes" that are made during prayer require a certain amount of faith and belief in what you are doing. I used to be very unspiritual, so just trying to pray made me scoff at the idea that I was actually being heard. I'm very spiritual now, and when I pray, I mostly am telling God "Thank you for (fill in the blank)" or I pray for patience and strength, either for myself or for others. I do feel like, for example if I ask for patience for myself, I am more patient after prayer, but only after I start to notice situations that come about requiring me to be patient; I just use them as an opportunity to practice my patience. I just look at the situation differently after prayer, and, when my prayers are for others, I simply must have faith that they will be answered to some extent and if not, then the person will still be ok.

In short, having faith in what you're doing, in this case praying, is what affects the outcomes more than anything. It's a very hard concept to grasp.

As for probability, no, I don't think prayer affects probability. Then again, God transcends probability. I am a firm believer that God, prayer, many dreams, and the afterlife are all things that our tiny human minds can't grasp, because we cannot think on a level high enough. Besides, if we understood it all, it would take the spice out of life, no? Hope I've helped you out!

Yeah, prayer can be many, many things. I find the ways of the Huna prayers to be really fascinating and interesting to read about.

Christian prayer is very unstructured and disorganized (except for some catholics who memorize them). Look at Islam for some hardcore praying action, there's a huge ritual to it.

Salah - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I'm not a typical Christian (Jehovah's Witness though not now practicing).

"Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name
Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done, on Earth as it is in Heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread
And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us
Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil
For thine is the Kingdom and the glory and the power
Forever and ever, Amen."

(I think that's right. It's the King James version. Matthew 6:9-13)

In prayer, you first acknowledge God
You pray for theocratic success
For practical needs
For strength and guidance
You close the prayer in Jesus' name in acknowledgment of his ransom sacrifice.

Somewhere, though, it also says not to pray the same thing over and over again. Prayer isn't an incantation, it's communication. And it should come from the heart.

What you don't pray for are things that are against God: to win the lottery lol, to hook up with some random person, for someone to die etc. Praying for a miraculous cure is often futile. While miracles do happen from time to time, what's usually given is the strength to endure.

Prayer isn't suppose to be like wishing on a genie. It's to keep believers close to God in thought and deed.
And while God doesn't directly talk back to us, when faced with problems believers will often recall Scriptural or modern day examples of how others faced a particular problem and they draw strength and sometimes answers from it. God "talks" to us through the words of the Bible. We communicate to God through prayer, He communicates to us through his Word.

***EDIT***
Oh yeah, it doesn't matter if you fold your hands of not. I can't remember the last time I did. You don't even have to close your eyes and you can say prayers silently to yourself in your head.

Thanks for the answer, KristaNicole07 (the system won't let me quote yet).

You said that you pray for patience and then feel more patient afterwards. How do you know that it's God giving you the patience (or prayer giving it to you) and not you psychologically determining that you're going to be more patient? Could it be like setting a personal goal and motivating yourself to improve your character/personality in fields X, Y, and Z?

Maybe it's a placebo for personal goals. Anyone can say, "I'm not a very patient person. I'm going to try to be more patient today." Of course, this can only be acted upon with concrete actions throughout the day, but anyone can mentally determine what goals they'll strive for that day. I think prayer is just a roundabout way of doing just that: you're improving your character, but rather than having self-confidence and pride in your own improvements you attribute these character values to God.

What do you mean by "personal communication with God?" Is that just you thanking Him? Does he respond? Is there any indication that He has acknowledged your conversation? Perhaps it's just you being thankful for everything you have and attributing everything good to a [removed?] third party. There isn't anything wrong with being thankful, and I guess I kind of understand it if your prayers are just "Thank you God for food. Thank you God for family. Thank you God for shelter..."

You close the prayer in Jesus' name in acknowledgment of his ransom sacrifice.

But Jesus' name wasn't actually Jesus.

Praying is having the astonishing amounts of hubris required to think you know better than God's plan.

You're welcome, GMoney!

I think that God helps us to realize the strength we have within ourselves. He doesn't just hand you the answer to your prayer on a silver platter, you have to be willing to accept His help, and He is always helping us, even when we don't pray. So, basically, we're both right. We can't do it unless we psychologically think that can, and God helps us to realize that we can.

By personal communication, I mean any kind of talking to God. My prayers aren't really that structured; they can be one word, one sentence, a hundred sentences even, but basically it's just me giving thanks, telling God my problems, pondering, and asking for things such as patience. I'd compare it to a conversation. I know He's listening and that He hears me because, even though I don't get a physical answer, such as a verbal response, I just have this feeling that He hears me. I wish I could explain it better than that, but I can't. It's just a sort of "knowing" feeling.

My name isn't Abril, it's April, but if I'm visiting a foreign country I would still recognize that as my name.
Jesus' name was Yeshua. "Jesus" is a translation of that name.
Just as God's name is YHWH, Yahweh, Jehovah. Hallelujah means "praise Yah" (or, praise God). Yah/Jah is the poetic rendering of God's personal name (not title).

My prayers aren't usually that structured either. When I was a kid/teen I would silently talk to God throughout my day- telling him about it as if he were a friend walking beside me and I was much closer to God back then.
Over the last couple of years, I've pretty much stopped praying entirely.

Has you life changed whatsoever as a result of you not praying? Are you worse off for it?

I am absolutely worse off because of my separation from God. Prayer is only part of my story.
Imagine not speaking with a friend or a spouse for a couple of years. I don't pray or read the Bible. I'm leading a completely hedonistic life. My children are hellions and my marriage is barely surviving. I have no connection with anything outside of selfishness and addiction (tobacco and entertainment).
I hadn't always been this way. When I was close to God, my life was far from being all roses and sunshine all the time, but my life was in order.

I'm an athiest, but I think you're painting prayer badly.

If someone kneels down every day and says "Dear God please let me win the lottery kthnxbye," then yes, that is just selfishly hoping you're important enough to gain your god's favor. But that's a problem with the person praying, not the diety or the act of prayer itself ('guns don't kill people').

In a better form prayer is a time to seek connection with your diety, to stop everything else you're doing and worrying about the bills and so on and just devote yourself during that small ritual to your god. Likewise someone who isn't selfish would hopefully have different words during their communing time. "Dear god, please help me find the strength to make it through until I find another job. Please watch over my kids and keep them safe. Help me to move away from sin and closer to your grace. Amen."

I know it's easy for skeptics (like myself) to sneer and make snarky comments ("you're just kneeling, asking for favors and thanking god then saying amen") but there is potentially a lot more to praying if you think about how you can devote that time.

Thanks for the replies, everyone.

Zhaylin: Is your life worse because of prayer, or is your loss of prayer an effect of your life being worse? Maybe there are other factors involved? It's also possible that you're being too hard on yourself - if you didn't think prayer was necessary, you wouldn't feel guilty about not doing it. Ever since I became an atheist I've felt a lot more comfortable with myself, like weights and burdens are lifted. I used to feel awful whenever I forgot to pray, and it really hurt my self-confidence and internal Happiness. If you feel like you're doing something wrong, you feel bad and guilty and that affects other things. If you don't have that burden, everything else goes along a little more easily.

Best wishes in the future and I hope that you can find Happiness.

Velzhaed: What does it mean to say you have a "connection with your deity?" Is that just a feeling, or you think you're connected? How do you know if a connection has been made (you probably wouldn't know, but you said it so maybe you have some idea)?

Also, I understand your distinction between someone praying to win the lottery (selfishly) and someone praying for their kids (unselfishly). But aren't they both asking for something? While the intentions are clearly different, the result is the same: they're both asking something from God.

I can imagine what it's like to feel connected to your god, as I'm sure you can too. Think about it as a relationship. The believer is devoting a few minutes a day to just think about their god, try to be thankful for the influence they think exists in their daily life, and so on.

Is it that you can't imagine what it would be like to believe in a god? You used to be a believer...so I'm not sure what it is you're looking for in this exchance.

Originally Posted by Zhaylin

I am absolutely worse off because of my separation from God. Prayer is only part of my story.
Imagine not speaking with a friend or a spouse for a couple of years. I don't pray or read the Bible. I'm leading a completely hedonistic life. My children are hellions and my marriage is barely surviving. I have no connection with anything outside of selfishness and addiction (tobacco and entertainment).
I hadn't always been this way. When I was close to God, my life was far from being all roses and sunshine all the time, but my life was in order.

I understand how this feels. I've gone from no spiritual life, to an intense spiritual awakening, to suffering from nicotine/entertainment addictions and struggling to think outside myself.

I do still feel a connection with God, I still pray, but I don't pray as much as I did, though I know that I need to. It's frustrating. I'd definitely agree that not praying or having some sort of connection with God or a diety has a negative effect, though I would say that this negative effect would be very hard or even impossible to recognize to someone who's never had a "spiritual awakening" or an innate knowledge of God and spirituality. That's just my opinion/experience though.

Prayer is amazing. I feel so refreshed after each prayer.

I always liked the wiccan/pagan rituals for prayer. There's lots of variations depending on the specific branch, but in essence you create a sacred space with the drawing of the circle, then you make an offering to the god and goddess, then you invite them to join you in the sacred space. There still might be the 'asking for stuff' portion of it, probably embodied by casting a spell, but at the core of it the practitioner is getting face time with the gods. The lord and lady are invited into the space and in theory are overseeing and participating in the ritual.

I looked back at your posts and it seems like you're saying that prayer doesn't make sense to you, in that it doesn't actually change the potential for this or that to happen, and you don't feel that there is any 'connection' happening. Which makes sense, assuming you and I are right about there being no god, as there is no one listening, and no one tipping fate for weal or woe.

Sorry if my responses where cagey, but at first glance this looked like one of those "I want you to tell me what prayer does, and then I'll tell you why you're wrong" threads. We have more than a few snarky members in the ol' nonbelievers club on DV, and zealots are annoying whether they're thumping bibles or thumping science.

Prayer for me is not necessarily an "organized thing where i have to fold my hands just right and bow my head at a proper angle. prayer is not always wishing for somehting either. Whenever I talk to God, I consider that prayer and I am not always asking for somehting. I can be talking to God like I am talking to a friend. I can be thanking him for something that happened to me or someone I know or I can be asking for help with something like a situation I am facing when I don't know the answers or the right way to go. God has his own reasons for answering or not answering your prayers and sometimes he doesn't give you the reasons right away. i know there are times when I have prayed for somehting and God did not answer but later much later the reasons were revealed to me. There are times when I didn't follow his plan for me and the outcome was not what i desired.
You don't just pray to God when you need something. That is like using God as a spare tire. You only pull it out of the trunk when you need it.