Has God ever really answered your prayers ?

Right now I am an ant and God is burning my ass with a magnifying glass like Bruce Almighty.

If karma exists, I should be winning a big fat lottery any time now.

Originally posted by MrUncreated
No. He has pretty much always ignored me. Unless you count the time when I swallowed over 100 pain pills to kill myself, then I heard a woman's voice telling me over and over again, "This is your last chance." But I didn't pray for help then. I was beyond help at that point.

I believe only in the Mother of all creation,the 'Mother of all Life'...glad she came to you just like she did me.its wonderful to understand that atleast one other person in this world has gotten a ear full from her.

reply to post by LastProphet527


While I do not believe in God per se, I believe there is more than meets the eye.

I used to have a really bad case of feet warts. One day I was having a beer with a very spiritual, not religious, friend, and while talking with him I felt a presence asking me if life would be better without my warts. 24 hours later I had brand new feets with skin like a baby...

I hope my story helps you answer your question.

Originally posted by smyleegrl
I've never heard the voice of God. I have no idea if He exists or if He answers prayers.

I do know that sometimes, when I pour my heart out in prayer....I feel peace. It could just be the peace of finally acknolwedging my feelings,,,,or maybe its an answered prayer.

I would imagine, if God exists, He is so far out of our understanding that an answered prayer might be completely unrecognizable.
'
Just my two cents worth.

Text He is so far out of our understanding

prayer might be completely unrecognizable.

Damn, thats a Godly analogy that has me thinking positive,thanks for your reply,this topic is personell to me,and i need all the positive responses i can get.thanks smyleegrl,i think i can see the light through the darkness now,you just woudnt understand how cold and heartless i am.from the bowls of my .....heart, i thank you.

Originally posted by worldwatcher
reply to post by humphreysjim

 

to prove or disprove, science would have to test every religion, every known prayer, every ritual ever known to man to figure that one out imo. Maybe God has silly rules before he/she answers prayers, maybe you had to take a shower, wear white and say the prayer X amount of times before he listens???

Maybe God has silly rules

Do you think the rules could be found in the bible ?

reply to post by LastProphet527


Good thread. Yes, he has answered my prayers, and has been very very nice to me, but my requests have not always come at the time I wanted and some have yet to be granted.

I think prayer can be explained through physics. It's been studied that when a group of people pray together an amount of energy is generated. Perhaps the thought or utterance of a prayer is registered in the cosmos and based on a person's right or karma a system will automatically decide whether the prayer will be granted or not. It also may relate to a previous discussion in the site where the universe has a code it follows to enable it to function in a logical and systematic manner. Perhaps we don't pray to a single God; he created a system which we have yet to figure out that enables us and the rest of existence to function in a controlled and patterned process.

Originally posted by humphreysjim
I think the most important question might be:

What kind of God only answers prayers when the person asking has absolute conviction, belief, and faith?

Is that supposed to be a display of morality, justice, what?

An even better question:

What kind of God knows what is good, and knows what a person wants, and yet requires them to make the request in person anyway, so he can alter the entire Universe around his single request?

If you pray and God answers your prayer, does that mean he deviates from his "Plan"?

HOLY...WOW,i dont even want to answer those questions,but your point is 100% valid.

reply to post by Zeer0


Well, first off, I think Buttercookie is a woman but I'm not sure, but the nature of these kind of experiences makes it impossible to prove to another person. I think that has been expressed throughout this thread. If you have the experience you know it is real, that is all I can say.

Originally posted by holywar666
Cmon.......did God really just say: "Let there be light" and that was it?

Does this not sound absolutely ridiculous?

You may find it hard to believe. But it is a harmonious perspective...

In other words I look at what Science reveals.. the tremendous amount of organized information present, even in just a single cell of the human body. There is the unmistakable mark of design every where we look. God provides a cohesive explanation as an ORIGIN source for the information and intricate systems present in nature. Again you can dis-believe it... but it is reasonable.

I'll tell you what I find unreasonable.... the socially accepted theory of Evolution claims that all that information sprang from "NOTHING" and that there was no Intelligent design behind what we perceive in the universe.

And then more equally implausible things happened... apparently if you just throw a bunch of chemicals in a big puddle and leave it there for millions of years it will just "SELF Organize" into more and more complex systems and random combinations which just happen to form perfectly balanced biological life forms....

uh-huh... and this is what "intelligent" people claim is accepted truth... hah...

If i took a bunch of sticks and threw them in a pile and left them there for billions of years... how long do you think it would take for those sticks to mutate themselves into all the letters of the alphabet and then how long do you think it would take all those letters to organize themselves into even one sentence of intelligent and useful information??

If you believe the nonsense of evolution as being the cause of the seemingly endless streams of complex information found in the universe... you have no grounds to be calling anyone elses beliefs ridiculous...

Soul

You prayed, and you got a new baseball, car, house, job.
Someone in Darfur prayed for food and got nothing.
Someone in Sudan prayed for peace and got nothing.
Someone in XXXX prayed for the bombs to stop falling and got nothing.
Someone in XXXX prayed that their stepfather would stop raping them and got nothing.
Someone in XXXX prayed that they could kick drugs and got nothing.
Someone in XXXX prayed that they could survive AIDS but got nothing.
Someone in XXXX prayed for a new limb but got nothing.
Someone in XXXX prayed for a drink of clean water and got nothing.
Someone in XXXX prayed for their priest to stop molesting them and got nothing.
Someone in XXXX prayed for a pain free death and got nothing.
Someone in XXXX prayed for rain and got nothing.
Someone in XXXX prayed for a stop to the rain and got nothing.
Should I go on?
These someones are all praying to the 'one and only god,' remember? There's only one, so it shouldn't matter what faith they are.

These things happen every day. Every minute.
If your god is loving, he only answers the prayer of the few.
The lucky.
The living-in-a-first-world-country lucky.
The living-in-a-first-world-country-so-I-have-the-opportunity-to-pick-myself-up-and-do-something-for-myself lucky.

He works in mysterious ways?
The mystery is why you pray to him in the first place.
If I met him/her/it/3.14, I'd avoid him/her/it/3.14.
Not a nice god at all. I've read the book he/she/it/3.14 was supposed to have written, and every step of the way this god is a complete b******d.
If you had a 'friend' or 'acquaintance' who acted even remotely like your god, you'd have very little to do with them.

reply to post by LastProphet527


Not to point out the obvious, but what kind of narcissistic person would pray to the divine for material gain? The problem with us mortals is that we ask for the things we want and often neglect the things we need.

Originally posted by LastProphet527

Originally posted by humphreysjim
I think the most important question might be:

What kind of God only answers prayers when the person asking has absolute conviction, belief, and faith?

Is that supposed to be a display of morality, justice, what?

An even better question:

What kind of God knows what is good, and knows what a person wants, and yet requires them to make the request in person anyway, so he can alter the entire Universe around his single request?

If you pray and God answers your prayer, does that mean he deviates from his "Plan"?

HOLY...WOW,i dont even want to answer those questions,but your point is 100% valid.

Prayers are only answered when they are according to his "plan" or better when the prayers are according to his will. As such there is no need for him to deviate from his plan as the Prayer itself is within his plan. see my post here

reply to post by SoulReaper


Soul

Yepp
Much appreciated that he did!

Originally posted by humphreysjim

Once you define God, as the mainstream religions like Christianity have done, he is open to rational scientific investigation. You say prayer works, and the Bible is very clear that prayer works, to the effect that anything prayed for sincerely will be given. This is simply and demonstrably not so, and every believer knows it full well - yet they rationalize.

That only proves God, as defined by Christianity, isn't true.

The bible has been manipulated so much over the ages. It could've been completely true at one point, but it's been changed purposefully over the past 2000 years.

reply to post by Badgered1


This maybe unpopular but... how do you know what people pray for, what they are really praying for. Beyond that how do you know that what they prayer for on the shallowest levels aligns with what is best for them on the deepest levels, not the ones that are here and now but the ones that span their entire being, their existence? I am not talking as one who has had a perfect life either and have gone through "hell", a hell where I believed in only pain and suffering and wished I did not exist. That was the exact existence that lead me to an understanding that is diametrically opposed to how I was then. Things aren't perfect but I accept them as they are and make the best of everything. From the prism of life that you have created you are %100 right but from the prism I have created you are %100 wrong. From our individual little bubbles we have no idea of what is going on in the big picture and the worst thing now may become infinitely great later on, if we give it the chance, that is, and don't guarantee it only gets worse by perpetuating suffering and pain.

Yes, I've had prayers answered, and not possibly coincidental ones. Most haven't been because they're selfish.

There's been too many miracles in my life for there to be any doubt in my mind that there's a god. some unbelievable stuff that I'm not going to explain because it'll take too long, and you won't believe me. Plus I don't want greedy ATS to have copyrights on them.
There's a god alright, probably not the christian god persay.

Just to say but I use to be a pos and I began to pray and try and do good and a lot of good things have been happening so he he does answer them...just gota ask.

reply to post by humphreysjim

Exactly.
People claiming otherwise are confused because they typically "pray" when they are worried about something that will pass anyway.

I'm not a member of any Judeo-Christian faith (or any faith at all really, although this does not speak of a disbelief in my case. It's complicated, although Agnostic is not the right term) but from a... I don't want to say scientific because of the rules of that term, so I'll say logical standpoint, there may be a flaw in the point you seem to be trying to make (which seems to be that there is no god. If you were simply asking a question, please forgive my presumption!), and that's what the definition of an "answer" is.

An answer does not have to be a yes or a no or the cause or lack of cause of something happening. An answer could simply be "I hear you and am there for you". An answer can be the form of a reply rather than an action. If this is the case of all prayers being answered, the feeling that someone is listening by itself could be an answer.

That being said, it would become impossible to prove. That feeling could be imagined as likely as not, as its a purely emotional one and the most the most advanced tests could do (at least at the moment) is pick up on the feeling of being answered by the person who gave the prayer.

If a coin is flipped one hundred times and you pray for one or the other, someone telling you that prayer has been heard would be an answer, even if the person hearing the prayer had no impact on the flipping of the coin. If you feel your prayer had been heard and listened to, you have received an answer.

I hope that makes some sort of sense, I am not sure I put my thoughts together well enough.

Yes - on more times that I can count. I never asked for extreme wealth or a fancy car or the like.

To those of you who have grief and sorrow:
If you give into sorrow and grief and blame God for it - then you give into the devil and his ways. The devil will use old memories to keep you in grief and to solidify sorrow. A person who gives their life to God will put those things behind him/her and move on. Sorrow and grief are a natural emotions - to blame God for them is not. You should resist being overcome with excess grief and sorrow and ask God for peace and comfort in your time of need.

You have to submit yourself to God to overcome the evil in your life. Accept God and devil's influence will be lessened significantly.