So I shall
talk about prayer under such headings as recognition, as resistance and submission, as community.
I am writing a post about this for tomorrow, when I start to focus on the positive things Scripture
says about prayer.
Then the crazy atheists started screaming
about prayer in the schools... on and on.
It's like doing card tricks on the radio, I think —
writing about prayer and spiritual experience to people who mostly think you're an idiot.
It's
not about prayer being taken out of schools but more that we don't have help for the mentally ill.
That's a lot of pages to sift through... I have some other posts on this blog
about prayer as well which you might find helpful.
You see, most people
learn about prayer by listening to others pray, and this often leads to some very bad prayer habits and practices.
There are a few things that must be noted
about prayer before continuing with this discussion that our friends at this website have neglected to factor into their test.
If you want to learn
more about prayer, or want to get another perspective on prayer, this book is a good place to start.
It says more about the power of the human mind over the human body than it
does about prayer itself.
Maybe if we could «test» the afterlife claims, they would be no more real than the
claims about prayer.
While there are many good things that happen in prayer meetings, it is also where we sometimes pick up some bad
habits about prayer.
You can learn a
lot about prayer, both how to pray and how not to pray, by studying the prayers of key people in Scripture.
And the moment I stopped
stressing about prayer and the moment I stopped stressing about the right or wrong things to say, that was the moment at which my prayer life drastically improved.
The church needs to be able to say, Yes, we do actually know a certain
amount about prayer and meditation — these are things deeply rooted within our tradition.
It does this by providing one key suggestion about how to pray, and then answers the various questions you might have
about prayer through the lens of this suggestion.
But the pastor ought to be as discreet in giving
advice about prayer as in advising about making love.
If such a being exists, i guarantee you, he / she / it doesn't care in the
least about prayers.
It is those who seem to know the
most about prayer who emphasize this most strongly, and now we can see why.
We have now looked at four aspects of contemporary
difficulty about prayer: practical, scientific, philosophical, and theological.
Most of the problems that have been
raised about prayer are shown to be based on a misunderstanding of what prayer really is.
There is actually nothing religious except in a conventional and formal
sense about prayers of petition as just described.
52 % — Patients receiving no prayers and not being told
anything about prayers taking place anywhere for anyone.
(Side note: my husband was already a Christian) The next morning I casually told my husband about the vivid dream, but
not about the prayer the night before.