Has God ever really answered your prayers ?

Originally posted by Zeer0
What makes your kids so special?

Oh, that is just wrong.

You have a hate, should i say "a dislike" in humankind? I can pick that up by your signature. You are angry with our Creator 'cos of how humankind is treating the world, so whom can we blame? God? Even though i do not call our Creator by that name.

I am from Africa. I will tell you that the millions whom you think prays to our Creator, does not. Their beliefs is not what you think, at all. They have so many beliefs, it is unbelievable.

Now you will ask, or say, but your God still kills the children that is suffering. Children that has not been taught, or so told about our Creator. The sad thing is many children die, be it that they are raised to believe in God, or to praise the ancestral side, or to trust in hoodoo, voodoo, hexes, vexes, spells, majik, incantations etc.

We do not know or so can't understand how He works, but, He did give us a message “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. I tell you the truth, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.”

reply to post by Unity_99

Its as if, everything is infinite fractals, but we're soul shards of our greater self in turn of a Greater Soul, to that Unification, or the Love connecting us all.

I agree, I would say more but not now.
Not yet.

reply to post by humphreysjim

God only seems to answers prayer requests for things that could have come to pass anyway,

Like my back being healed? Or the man Damon Thompson raised from the dead at a wedding reception? People forget that prayer must be coupled with faith. And not the Hellenistic version of faith which is basically wishing upon a star, but the Biblical model of faith.

reply to post by LastProphet527


I havnt prayed to a GOD but i have asked or hoped for things to happen and they have happened but this could just be because i'm making them/it happen myself....

I refer to them as the Ancient Ones.... The Greek Gods!!

i did ask for the rain to come because we had people saying we had no rain and there was a drought...... lo and behold.... the rain came down for a week but this could have just been co-incidence!!

reply to post by smyleegrl


when someone usually cries their eyes out, they tend to feel better afterward... that's just human psyche..

reply to post by NOTurTypical

People forget that prayer must be coupled with faith.

This is noetics. The power of BELIEVING it will come true makes your thoughts a reality.

The part that annoys me about you religious types is you treat science like the devil. God forbid we actually turn out to be responsible for making everything happen ourselves! No, we have to blame god for everything! Remove responsibility for fate and flaw! Satan is a horned beast that sleeps under my bed and tickles my toes whenever he gets lonely! Arrrggghhhh!

Originally posted by humphreysjim

Originally posted by worldwatcher
perhaps it's the method of praying or whom you pray to that makes the difference in these scientific test???

In all good science if the method is wrong, we change it, and test again.

What method do you suggest the scientists use for their next test? Or do you think these tests will always fail, even though prayer works? Why would that be so? Would God deliberately try to deceive us or to keep us from the truth?

When a belief stubbornly refuses to validate itself no matter how we put it to the test, we should consider rethinking that belief. And if a belief cannot be validated via a test of any kind, we have to wonder again, how the focus of that belief is distinguishable from something non-existent.

I could choose to believe that magical fairies dictate the way my coin falls when I toss it, but to believe such a crazy thing without being able to put the existence of those fairies to the test themselves, that's just absurd.

edit on 4-5-2012 by humphreysjim because: (no reason given)

Religious folk do not require proof of their God. It is not mere belief that their God exists, it is faith.
Faith is the key to deity-based religion. Proof-based belief is the key to science.

God answered my prayers in the form of my wonderful children. Because of them, my once sad and empty life is now full of meaning and joy. I give thanks to Him for blessing my life with them. I deny a God-less science that would tell me my children are results of a random series of accidents that have been occurring since that great big explosion of nothing billions of years ago.

Originally posted by NOTurTypical
reply to post by humphreysjim

 

God only seems to answers prayer requests for things that could have come to pass anyway,

Like my back being healed? Or the man Damon Thompson raised from the dead at a wedding reception? People forget that prayer must be coupled with faith. And not the Hellenistic version of faith which is basically wishing upon a star, but the Biblical model of faith.

I don't know the story of Damon Thompson, but yes, exactly like you suggest.

For every healed back, there is a broken one. For every person raised from the dead, there is one cruelly taken, be it by disease, freak accident, or natural disaster.

When a plane crashes and a survivor walks free, people shout "thank you, God", but they rarely say "screw you God, that freak lightning strike did not have to hit our plane, and that baby did not need to die, why?".

I'm all for positive, optimistic, glass-half-full thinking, but confirmation bias used to bolster belief, not so much.

reply to post by LastProphet527


YES! My mother had lung cancer, and one day it just vanished. If thats not God answering a prayer I don't know what is!!

Originally posted by primus2012

Originally posted by humphreysjim

Originally posted by worldwatcher
perhaps it's the method of praying or whom you pray to that makes the difference in these scientific test???

In all good science if the method is wrong, we change it, and test again.

What method do you suggest the scientists use for their next test? Or do you think these tests will always fail, even though prayer works? Why would that be so? Would God deliberately try to deceive us or to keep us from the truth?

When a belief stubbornly refuses to validate itself no matter how we put it to the test, we should consider rethinking that belief. And if a belief cannot be validated via a test of any kind, we have to wonder again, how the focus of that belief is distinguishable from something non-existent.

I could choose to believe that magical fairies dictate the way my coin falls when I toss it, but to believe such a crazy thing without being able to put the existence of those fairies to the test themselves, that's just absurd.

edit on 4-5-2012 by humphreysjim because: (no reason given)

Religious folk do not require proof of their God. It is not mere belief that their God exists, it is faith.
Faith is the key to deity-based religion.

You say that like it is a good thing, something to be proud of.

I see it more like willful ignorance, head-in the-sand denial of reality, and the choice of comfort over truth.

reply to post by primus2012

It is not mere belief that their God exists, it is faith.
Faith is the key to deity-based religion.

This is why I have a hard time conversing with hard-core Christians.

"What's the weather like tomorrow?"

"Sunny."

"How do you know?"

"A dream."

"And you believed it?"

"God told me. God doesn't lie to me. It was a vision."

"...you had a vision..."

"Would you like to pray with me?"

Christians show an astonishing propensity for believing any lies that promises they won't have to worry about their lives, which makes following anything they say a terrifying prospect. There isn't much difference between a Christian and a guy who drives off a cliff because he's convinced the car's name is Bumblebee.

Originally posted by LastProphet527
Has God ever answered just answered 1prayer in your entire life, in which you can actually say it was the good lord that answered it?

Oh yes indeed; many, many times. Sometimes I was convinced that he didn't answer, only to discover later that he answered it in a way I wasn't expecting. That's a lot of the problem with answered prayers, people go into it with a preconcieved notion of what the answer is, so when it's answered in a different way they don't even realize it and think God has abandoned them.

Originally posted by LastProphet527
So, what has this…conjured pretend God ever done for you ,besides throw you in a big pot of sin and wish you well on your journey in life in the flesh of rules that will always be broken.

Now you're getting God confused with religion. It's a manmade religious notion that God hates us and everything that we do and that he painted us into the corner of "unforgivable sin" and we're all destined for hell because of it. That's just fearmongering courtesy of mainstream religion. It's nothing more than a mechanism of control.

Originally posted by LastProphet527
What God are you really praying to?

The first and last, alpha and omega, beginning and end. He goes by many names, I call him "Father". I'll never understand him (at least not in this life), but I constantly feel his love. He blesses me and answers my prayers over and over again. I long to be with him and see him again, for I sense I've known him before but have forgotten him in my trip to this world. And I sense that he loves you too, even if you hate him or dismiss him as a fantasy. And unlike those who embrace religion, I don't think you're condemned to hell. You will know him at some point, either in life or after death, and you will choose whether to be with him or away from him.

reply to post by LastProphet527


Just as often as Santa Claus brought me gifts and the Easter Bunny brought me eggs and the Tooth Fairy ... well, you get the picture.

Originally posted by dthwraith
reply to post by LastProphet527

 

YES! My mother had lung cancer, and one day it just vanished. If thats not God answering a prayer I don't know what is!!

I suspect you mean it went into remission, rather than vanished, and I also suspect she was medically treated for her condition also. However, even assuming it did truly vanish, I do not find this sensational, or a miracle. There is so much we do not know about the human body, and, indeed, about cancer. If the body can create cancer, it is feasible it can also destroy it, naturally.

The body spontaneously figuring out how to eradicate the disease from itself seems quite possible, to me, in fact, some more modern treatments are moving towards training the body to recognize the cancer, so it can do just that.

Originally posted by BrianOrion
I would say that God has answered my prayers on many occasions...

This thread, by definition, is quite interesting...

I live in the UK and there was an incident in a football (Soccer) match recently. On 17th March 2012, Fabrice Muamba (a Bolton Wanderer's player) suffered a cardiac arrest and collapsed during the first half of an FA Cup quarter-final match between Bolton and Tottenham Hotspur at White Hart Lane. After receiving lengthy attention on the pitch from medical personnel including a consultant cardiologist who was at the game as a fan, Muamba was taken to the specialist coronary care unit at the London Chest Hospital. Bolton's club doctor later confirmed that Muamba had received numerous defibrillator shocks both on the pitch and in the ambulance, but his heart had stopped for 78 minutes. The player was initially kept under anesthetic in intensive care.

While Mwamba was receiving defibrillator shocks, an eerie silence descended upon the crowd. People were visibly shaken and many were crying. Then, from the Bolton fans came a chant of "Fabrice Mwamba!!!" which went on for some 5 minutes or so. There was an appeal to "Pray for Mwamba" and thousands, if not millions of people worldwide prayed for him...

Two weeks after the incident, a photograph was released of Muamba sitting up in his hospital bed and smiling. On 16th April, he was discharged from hospital. Muamba attended Bolton's home match against Tottenham Hotspur on 2nd May, where he expressed his gratitude for the support he had received.

Some people said this was a miracle and an example of prayer in action... I would agree... but others would say it was the efforts of the medical staff alone that brought him back...

My question is hyperthetical... if YOU were this man, would you believe in prayer?

Interestingly, and perhaps as a refutation of God being involved in this in any way, there was a young woman (in her thirties) who was in church praying for Muamba's safe recovery. Suddenly, she had a heart attack and died, right there, mid-prayer.

That seems to me God doesn't exist, or he has one sick and twisted sense of humour, wouldn't you agree?

How do believers make sense of true stories like that?

But I also know that miracles are not just for the faithful, and Family doesnt just work with our conscious attempts to reach our hand up to Them while They reach their hands into the pits, They also reach people at the worst moments of their lives, in the most dispair, even torn with guilt moments, for Their undertsanding of everything, and the psychology of every moment is vastly beyond what we can imagine, and are there for One and All.

i had a very interesting prayer experience many years ago. i was a very poor post grad student who had just scored a very major internship overseas. like an idiot, i waited to get my passport until it was too late. i borrow my best friend's car and i travel 250 miles to the nearest federal agency that would expedite the passport application process. the tire blows out about 50 miles from this agency building. (this was before cellphones). i'm in median of a major highway, with the tire blown. i have no idea how to fix a flat, and i only have a donut, no tools or jack in the trunk. i'm freaking out, and its pouring rain; and i remember what my father taught me. i started praying hoping God would listen and help. at this point, i don't even know what i'm hoping for. but i was desperate, and didn't know what to do. as soon as i say amen, a black van pulls behind me. this guy comes out, apparently, he's the coach of a women's college track team. the team is in the van still in uniform. he takes out his jack, replaces the busted tire and puts the donut on. i pull out my wallet hoping to at least give him something. he smiles and gets back in his van and drives off. and yeah, i got my passport and my career today exists because i was able to get this internship. you can say what you want, i know what happened. does my God answer prayers. absolutely. does God always answer every prayer, of course not. i deeply believe that we as humans have a deep yearning to know God and want to hear and know what God has to say to us. it seems the only time we want his help is when we are in dire straits.

reply to post by LastProphet527


I'm curious why you would want the opinions of others on a subject you obviously see as a joke and non existent? Why does it matter to you what others feel or think? It's kind of like an adult asking a kid what Santa brought them for Christmas.

reply to post by Unity_99


Our present psychological state is in no condition to accept the vast truth of the universe, thanks to generations of conditioning by a materialistic government and a protective church.

First it was the Church preventing us from hurting ourselves with metaphysical power, then it was the government deciding that while we were waiting to mature, it might as well make some profit off of us. And in order to make the most of it, it trained and programmed us to become reliant on the system. Bad move. Now we're addicted, just when we're coming close to the needed maturity to spiritually advance.

What a mess, eh?