Did/Does God answer your prayers? (page 2)

arwen

Yes, God has answered my prayers. He brought me out of the Watchtower when I prayed for direction. He wrapped me with love when I was beyond repair mentally. I think it is having faith that He will answer my prayers and accepting the times He doesn't that keeps me sane. I am grateful for this blessing.

fjtoth

Years before I left JWs I prayed often for God to open my eyes because there just had to be something better than this organization I was part of that had so much good in it but also so much that is evil. I'm inclined to think that my prayers were not answered immediately because I wasn't ready. I might have lost all faith due to so much disappointment and hurt that I and others had been experiencing. Today I'm confident that I was led to leave at the right time and with the right frame of mind. Those years of asking and begging were years in which I learned how to enter into an in-depth study that prepared me for the genuine Christianity that awaited me outside the JW organization. And I was better able to appreciate the welcome I received into wholesome and encouraging companionships with other former JWs that might not have been available to me in earlier years.

I know several persons who almost daily experience answered prayers. Doubters may deny this and attribute it to psychological wishful thinking, but there is far more to it than that. Sometimes answers come in unexpected ways, often at the last minute but always absolutely on time and in a manner entirely fitting to the need.

There's no point in believing in God's existence if we don't believe he answers prayers. The Bible distinguishes him from all other persons and things that are worshipped by calling him "THE hearer of prayer." To get answers, we have to have a relationship with God first, through his Son and our Savior Jesus Christ. Of course, if he so chooses, God also answers the prayers of persons who have only a little faith.

According to Romans 8:26, God even hears a Christian's "groanings too deep for words." I tend to doubt that's going to happen for a person who isn't day by day "walking" with God. A husband and wife living together for several years get to know each other's thoughts and feelings even when they're not spoken. The same is true when a person goes through life with God by his or her side as a constant companion.

But God is not some sort of genie who grants a Christian's every wish, regardless of what the full consequences might be. The Bible says he's testing hearts and even kidneys, so he's interested in how we react when he holds back from giving what we want. Like a devoted parent, he knows us better than we know ourselves, and he isn't likely to answer prayers that are not in our best interest.

A lot depends upon our motives too. If we never thank him for answers he gives, answers we often get even before asking, it isn't likely we'll continue to get a hearing ear much of the time. How often we pray also matters. We're told to "pray without ceasing," so apparently God wants to know how badly we want what we ask for.

jaguarbass

Gods not answering crucial prayers has led to my long slide to agnostism and dissbelief.

It started to seem like I was just talking to myself.

The bible says whatsoever you ask, you shall recieve.

Somehow that scripture did not work for me.

I guess you could say God answers everyones prayers, one of 3 ways, Yes, no, and latter.

If you mean does God give us what we want when we want it? My answer is no.

Witness 007

The question is has God answered anyones prayer ever in human history...or is everything "time and un-forseen occurence." If you don't have money and apply for a job and get it...do you thank Jehovah, or yourself? Did he get you the job...or was it your nice shoes, suite and resume?

CyrusThePersian

What a lot of people don't realize is that the efficacy of prayer can be physically measured. Simply put, people who pray should be better off than those who don't. Admittedly some of the things people pray for -like happiness and wisdom and stuff like that are hard to measure- but other things can be, like health and prosperity.

The question is: Is the person who prays better off measurably than the person who doesn't? The believer prays for good heath. Is he really healthier than the athiest who lives down the street?

A person prays that his crops will prosper. Do his crops grow strong and tall while his unbelieving neighbor's crops wilt?

People all over the world lie horribly ill in hospitals. Do those who have people praying over them have a better chance of suviving their ordeal than those whose friends are simply hopeful that the doctors can help the patient?

Six million Jews prayed like hell that God would just simply spare their lives in Nazi concentration camps. Did he listen?

The answer to all these questions is no. The reality is that life is a crapshoot. Some things turn out well, and some things don't. People often say they feel better, like a load lifted off their shoulders, when they pray to God. More power to them. But really, it's no different than the solace a child feels when confiding with his imaginary friend.

CyrusThePersian

fjtoth

Doubters may question the value of prayer, but persons wiser than most of us believed in it and didn't hesitate to say they practiced it and got answers. To name a few:

Francis Bacon, science philosopher
Robert Boyle, chemist and physicist
George Washington Carver, agricultural scientist
Christopher Columbus, discoverer
Nicholas Copernicus, astronomer
Michael Faraday, chemist and physicist
Galileo Galilei, astronomer
George Frideric Handel, composer
Abraham Lincoln, US president
James Clerk Maxwell, mathematician and physicist
Samuel Morse, artist and inventor
Isaac Newton, scientist and inventor
Louis Pasteur, chemist and microbiologist
Hugh Ross, physicist
George Washington, US president
Orville and Wilbur Wright, inventors

And many, many more. Perhaps the deepest human defeat is failure to recognize how great life can be by the power of prayer.

CyrusThePersian

Doubters may question the value of prayer, but persons wiser than most of us believed in it and didn't hesitate to say they practiced it and got answers. To name a few:

...and I could come up with a list, from Voltaire to Einstein, from Mark Twain to Carl Sagan, who thought that prayer was a load of bollocks, but it wouldn't mean a thing. What counts are the facts, the REALITY of the situation, and that is that life can sometimes be good, and it can sometimes be bad, and prayer ain't gonna change a damn thing, (except maybe make you feel a little better, if you're so inclined.)

CyrusThePersian

P.S. You better take a closer look at old Honest Abe Lincoln, he may not be as much a believer as you think!

fjtoth

You better take a closer look at old Honest Abe Lincoln, he may not be as much a believer as you think!

Lincoln said, "I had a good Christian mother, and her prayers have followed me thus far through life."

He himself prayed but also called upon the entire nation to pray. Some reported that they heard him praying aloud in the White House, and he regularly attended the weekly prayer meeting at the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church in Washington. He told the pastor, Dr. Phineas D. Gurley, that he received important help more from the prayers at church than from the sermons. He said he felt it was more important to talk with God than to talk about him. A lot more could be said about Lincoln's prayer life. The evidence of his practice of personal prayer is so abundant that no thoughtful person can deny it. It's obvious that doubters, sadly like many believers, will accept only what they want to believe even about well-established and recorded history.

WTWizard

No. And I am not waiting on that Almighty Cockroach.

Junction-Guy

My prayer life has faltered over the past few years, I found myself not praying as much, because I believed he wasn't answering them, Well later on, I realized that he was protecting me. I am going to start praying more. I need to build my faith up to where it was before my marriage really soured. Actually my faith was much stronger when I was in the "in between years" after leaving the JW's but before I started communicating with the EX-JW world.

Did/Does God answer your prayers?

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