Times when you prayed actually worked...

[Dreamhope11]

Have you ever prayed and what you prayed for has come true, i remember when i was about 10 and i had this horrible maths teacher, i forgot to do my homework (i really did) And i was scared about it, so i prayed to god saying "Please make this teacher ill so i don't have him today" I arrived at school almost wetting my pants and then......i looked in his room and there was a supply teacher there, she said he was ill. I was very very happy, my prayer came true or it was a *coincedence, the thing is though, when i used to pray for important things they never happen, but when i pray for little things it works, a quarter of the time anyway..

[Neruo]

This one time, I wore my underpants backwards, and that very same day I was really hoping to catch the bus. And I did! So I guess they worked. Never stopped wearing them since. It was also raining that day, I wished I could find my keys, I wished there was something on tv, I hoped I remembered incorrectly and that there was still something in the fridge, I hoped for my favourite team to win. All that didn't happen. People tend to only see the 'hits' of lucky charms and prayers, and ignore the 'misses'. Really, if you pray for 10 different things every day, one of your prayers is bound to 'be heard'. Or actually, just bound 'to happen'. Sometimes busses come late, and you catch them in time. Sometimes, things that only happen 1/100th of the time, happen. They happen once every 100 times, actually. But you remember those things, and forget about the 99 times it took to happen. Thus: Praying doesn't do anything at all.

[ClassyElf]

Studies have been done finding absolutely no correlation between praying and the prayers being answered. If anything, most studies showed that the prayers created negative outcomes.

[StonedApe]

At the very least prayer makes you think about something. This will affect what you do, so I don't see how it doesn't do anything. Nothing doesn't do anything. The law of cause and effect. But I will say that prayers are not magically answered by God. Prayer is more like intent. Intention does have influence on reality. It does not always work, but I have been succsesful in using it, though it really requires a higher level of focus than what I have.

[Sisyphus50]

ClassyElf is referring to a study done on cancer patients. Not some brand of gaga New Age wishful thinking ala 'The Secret'.

[NickKanieval]

Oh boy, prayer. I have had lots of prayers come through, and lots of them come through in unexpected(and usually unwanted) ways. Although in those unwanted ways I saw the importance of why it came through in that manner, so it was all fine in the end. Here's my biggest praying story, this is copy/pasted from the Who is God thread that I told it in. When I was a little kid, I went to some really formal church, it wasn't exactly Christian...it was some kinda neo-Jewish type of thing. We kept up traditions like Passover and feet-washing and fasting and the feast of tabernacles and all that. But we also had mostly Christian principles in it. Anyway, the main principle I could understand as a little kid was that God exists and if you're in trouble, pray. Well one day, service had ended, and I went wandering out the back door. I kept wandering farther and farther away from the church and I ended up getting lost. So here I was, a scared little kid, obviously in a situation I considered trouble. So I began to pray, I prayed that I could get back to church somehow safely. Well about a minute passes when this family walks up to me, it was four people. A man in a blue button up shirt and brown slacks, he had brown hair. A woman in a dress...I don't remember the color, she also had brown hair. A little boy in a purple jersey with a basketball and black shorts, I think he had dirty-blond hair...and a little girl in a pink dress with a doll, she had very blond hair. Now the weird thing is, only the man spoke to me. The rest of them just stayed completely silent and only watched. They all came up to me and he asked me, "Are you lost?" I told him yes and that I had come from church somewhere behind me. So they all walk with me back to church, and soon enough we get to the back parking lot, right outside the back door. They were all behind me at this point, and the man asks "Is this it?" I say "yeah" kinda absentmindedly because I see my mom looking for me and I wave to her. Finally I turn around to say thanks... AND DUN DUN DUUUUUNNN!!!! They were gone. Vanished, disappeared, not-there! My mom also says she never saw anyone with me at all when I walked up to the parking lot. So to sum that up, I got lost, I prayed, a whole family came out of nowhere, took me back to where I wanted to go, and then freaking DISAPPEARED when I went to say thank you. Now, they may have simply been ninjas and threw a quickly-dispersing oderless smokebomb and jumped onto a roof or something RIGHT before I turned around, buuuuut I don't know. Another instance is when I was playing guitar one day, and I was practicing a song I had made. Well after a long enough time the tendons(?) in my wrist started to hurt, to an intense level. Seriously painful, I of course did not enjoy this in the least. So I remembered Archangel Raphael is supposed to be all good about healing, right? And I've worked with him before so he was at least familiar. So I asked him to help out my wrist because I wanted to keep playing. I get the weird idea that after saying this prayer, to just watch my wrist, to just stare at it, silently, no thought, just watch it. Pretty soon I feel this warm tingly sensation start a little in front of my elbow on my forearm, go up into the painful area of my wrist, and then the pain ebbed away like someone took an eraser to it. Not only was the pain GONE, but I could keep playing, I even played excessively to see if I could make the pain return, but it wouldn't happen. My tendons were as sturdy as anything, and I played well over an hour before finally deciding to do something else. I'd put down a few more but I don't want to make this one post too big, maybe a little later in the thread.

[Needcatscan]

Oh boy, prayer. I have had lots of prayers come through, and lots of them come through in unexpected(and usually unwanted) ways. Although in those unwanted ways I saw the importance of why it came through in that manner, so it was all fine in the end. Here's my biggest praying story, this is copy/pasted from the Who is God thread that I told it in. When I was a little kid, I went to some really formal church, it wasn't exactly Christian...it was some kinda neo-Jewish type of thing. We kept up traditions like Passover and feet-washing and fasting and the feast of tabernacles and all that. But we also had mostly Christian principles in it. Anyway, the main principle I could understand as a little kid was that God exists and if you're in trouble, pray. Well one day, service had ended, and I went wandering out the back door. I kept wandering farther and farther away from the church and I ended up getting lost. So here I was, a scared little kid, obviously in a situation I considered trouble. So I began to pray, I prayed that I could get back to church somehow safely. Well about a minute passes when this family walks up to me, it was four people. A man in a blue button up shirt and brown slacks, he had brown hair. A woman in a dress...I don't remember the color, she also had brown hair. A little boy in a purple jersey with a basketball and black shorts, I think he had dirty-blond hair...and a little girl in a pink dress with a doll, she had very blond hair. Now the weird thing is, only the man spoke to me. The rest of them just stayed completely silent and only watched. They all came up to me and he asked me, "Are you lost?" I told him yes and that I had come from church somewhere behind me. So they all walk with me back to church, and soon enough we get to the back parking lot, right outside the back door. They were all behind me at this point, and the man asks "Is this it?" I say "yeah" kinda absentmindedly because I see my mom looking for me and I wave to her. Finally I turn around to say thanks... AND DUN DUN DUUUUUNNN!!!! They were gone. Vanished, disappeared, not-there! My mom also says she never saw anyone with me at all when I walked up to the parking lot. So to sum that up, I got lost, I prayed, a whole family came out of nowhere, took me back to where I wanted to go, and then freaking DISAPPEARED when I went to say thank you. Now, they may have simply been ninjas and threw a quickly-dispersing oderless smokebomb and jumped onto a roof or something RIGHT before I turned around, buuuuut I don't know. Another instance is when I was playing guitar one day, and I was practicing a song I had made. Well after a long enough time the tendons(?) in my wrist started to hurt, to an intense level. Seriously painful, I of course did not enjoy this in the least. So I remembered Archangel Raphael is supposed to be all good about healing, right? And I've worked with him before so he was at least familiar. So I asked him to help out my wrist because I wanted to keep playing. I get the weird idea that after saying this prayer, to just watch my wrist, to just stare at it, silently, no thought, just watch it. Pretty soon I feel this warm tingly sensation start a little in front of my elbow on my forearm, go up into the painful area of my wrist, and then the pain ebbed away like someone took an eraser to it. Not only was the pain GONE, but I could keep playing, I even played excessively to see if I could make the pain return, but it wouldn't happen. My tendons were as sturdy as anything, and I played well over an hour before finally deciding to do something else. I'd put down a few more but I don't want to make this one post too big, maybe a little later in the thread. So. . . Do you believe these were coincidence or acts of god? (or Raphael?)

[Original Poster]

I have a good story. Here it is. So I was banned from the dorm my freshmen year at college for getting caught smoking the herbal cider and occasionally drinking maybe some egg nog. Anyway, I didn't have a place to stay, so I stayed in the dorms as a homeless person facing felony charges if I got caught. I got caught one time, and the hall staff guy said I'd be arrested if I ever came back. Well I did come back, and I got caught again. I wasn't being stupid, well I was but I mean it's not like I got caught every day. There was hall staff on every floor, no where to run, and these two abductions happened over a period of 3 months. Yeah, I was a good ninja, but not good enough. I got arrested but only got misdemeanor charges and it was taken off my record later. So my point is this, there was this last time I pretty much ever went to the dorms, the time that made me realize it really just wasn't worth it. I was in a room with pot in it, fucking pot plants, and the door got knocked on. They saw me come in, those bastards. I hid behind a stack of mattresses so low you wouldn't think someone as tall as me could make their body so small. He was so short, he couldn't fucking see me. He made all sorts of threats and gave those guys a bullshit time, making them open the closet and stuff. Yeah, I prayed then. I believed in a Heavenly Father for like 5 minutes straight, longer than ever before.

[NickKanieval]

So. . . Do you believe these were coincidence or acts of god? (or Raphael?) They were answers, I believed the family to be angels and the healing came from Raphael himself. So yes I believe they were acts of God and the angels, and on that one, Raphael. I've looked at the way of looking at it as a coincidence, but it just doesn't work out. I've had a LOT of "coincidences" happen from praying to God and Archangels and so on and so forth, and it doesn't add up. I mean how convenient for a coincidence to happen right when I ask for one? And of course I can't say that every prayer resulted in a miracle, but that wouldn't be good if they did. Prayer is such an excellent opportunity to LEARN things from the angels, at least it has been for me. Because like I said, a lot of times it didn't happen like a miracle, sometimes no solution came and nothing happened, and it confused me. Why not just help me out here? And so I thought about it, and I got the idea, would it be better that I learned something from this? And EVERY time since that idea, I have learned something from each instance where nothing has happened when I prayed. And once I learn what I needed to learn, or to experience for growth, a solution comes, and it's not always a miracle like with that one healing or when I was lost, but it does come, and it's always awesome to me. It's not always fast, but I do find something that my intuition leads me into, and I've learned a lot from these detour-prayer sessions. Anyway, there's a long answer for a short question XD

[Dreamhope11]

^^ I really don't know what to make of that! I think people pray for things like saving someone who is on deaths door, which i don't think is possible. Maybe it's us who answer our own prayers, maybe the family you saw was your subconcious memory taking you back the way you came, maybe your arm felt better only because you truly believed it would. Being able to walk around a dream world where you can do anything you want sounds wierd...So maybe ourselves answer our prayers.

[Mes Tarrant]

I prayed for snow once, as a kid. It came true. I don't think god knew at the time that I'd become an atheist. Sucka.

[Rakjavik]

Well about a minute passes when this family walks up to me, it was four people. A man in a blue button up shirt and brown slacks, he had brown hair. A woman in a dress...I don't remember the color, she also had brown hair. A little boy in a purple jersey with a basketball and black shorts, I think he had dirty-blond hair...and a little girl in a pink dress with a doll, she had very blond hair. Now the weird thing is, only the man spoke to me. The rest of them just stayed completely silent and only watched. They all came up to me and he asked me, "Are you lost?" I told him yes and that I had come from church somewhere behind me. So they all walk with me back to church, and soon enough we get to the back parking lot, right outside the back door. They were all behind me at this point, and the man asks "Is this it?" I say "yeah" kinda absentmindedly because I see my mom looking for me and I wave to her. Finally I turn around to say thanks... O O!!! I know this one! What you didn't know was..... they were already dead! DUN DUN DUUUNNNN! AND DUN DUN DUUUUUNNN!!!! They were gone. Vanished, disappeared, not-there! Damn, I was close. Seriously though, how little of a kid were you? Because umm.... it does sound a tad bit far fetched.

[Keeper]

Every time.

[Neruo]

Every time. lol @ self-deception. Also, if you are telling the truth, apparently you never ever prayed to stop war, world hunger, AIDS, malaria and racism you egocentric ass. Even I express my hope for those things every now and then.

[Bonsay]

That's the funny part. Whenever I see preachers or whatever, I only hear "God bless" this or "God bless" that, where this and that are both some lame short sighted or selfish thing. I never hear anybody praying for the world. As Neruo said... The only nice thing I saw was on the TV a year ago. There was this Hindu priest all alone in some thousand year old temple praying to his gods for world peace and to end hunger.

[Keeper]

lol @ self-deception. Also, if you are telling the truth, apparently you never ever prayed to stop war, world hunger, AIDS, malaria and racism you egocentric ass. Even I express my hope for those things every now and then. lol @ denial & straw man You're assuming that I don't. However, nothing has ever happened all at once, and last I checked, things like world hunger are going down. Now, you seem to be thinking that when I pray I get exactly what I asked for. I don't: the problem just gets taken care of. Whenever I ask Father for something, He helps me. I don't suppose you could explain that without using the word 'chance'?

[Bonsay]

Things get taken care of for me too. And I never pray. You can explain that with the words "shit happens".

[Keeper]

Things get taken care of for me too. And I never pray. You can explain that with the words "shit happens". Well, at least you didn't say 'chance' Let me put it this way: Something bad is going to happen, and you can see it. It is all but inevitable. How often does it effect you?

[Bonsay]

Rarely or not at all. By the way. I meant chance when I said shit happens. And asking "how would you explain it without chance" is like saying "if you exclude everything rational, what do you have left" the irrational of course.

[Needcatscan]

Yeah, I've gotten out of extremely tight situations that potentially could have ruined my life and other's lives, and I didn't pray once. I was lucky, go me. And I'm sorry, but it just sounds absolutely ridiculous when God (and Raphael) will take the time out of their busy schedules to fix a kid's wrist that has a boo-boo, but not help the 13 to 18 MILLION that die from starvation each year, many who are innocent children. Either you're in really good with God and he is a complete ass to 99% of the world, or (as Penn & Teller would say) "Prayer is bullsh!t"

[suttsman]

I don't pray much (at dinner w/ my family I fold my hands and pretend to give a crap ) but I always do a mental prayer whenever I see the Mayo 1 helicopter fly by. I should hope those doctors can answer that prayer most of the time.

[NickKanieval]

Yeah, I've gotten out of extremely tight situations that potentially could have ruined my life and other's lives, and I didn't pray once. I was lucky, go me. And I'm sorry, but it just sounds absolutely ridiculous when God (and Raphael) will take the time out of their busy schedules to fix a kid's wrist that has a boo-boo, but not help the 13 to 18 MILLION that die from starvation each year, many who are innocent children. Either you're in really good with God and he is a complete ass to 99% of the world, or (as Penn & Teller would say) "Prayer is bullsh!t" Hehe, to reply to that completely would take a thousand posts at maximum length....but all I know is all the times I have prayed and all the things that happened after doing said prayer.

[Needcatscan]

Do me a big favor then, pray that I will be able to pass CS430 - the first programming assignment is already killing me.

[really]

lol @ self-deception. Also, if you are telling the truth, apparently you never ever prayed to stop war, world hunger, AIDS, malaria and racism you egocentric ass. Even I express my hope for those things every now and then. Such apparent issues are changing for the better. It is part of being human, and human is part of evolution. Do you believe these were coincidence or acts of god? No difference.

[NickKanieval]

Such apparent issues are changing for the better. It is part of being human, and human is part of evolution. No difference. Are you sure there's no difference? Unless you have a different translation of coincidence? Or, it's a clever way of saying there's no such thing as coincidence so everything that appears that way is an act of God?