I hate to tell you Abra, but he has shown you the true way. You ask and your prayers have been answered. I'm sure many people off the net through your life has told you about God, Jesus, and the Holy spirit. People on this site all day long tell you about God and show you the way. It's not that God hasn't told you, it is that you do not listen and or ignore what he has said.

what the bible says about prayer

Keep alert and pray. Otherwise temptation will overpower you. For though the spirit is willing enough, the body is weak(Matthew 26:41 )

Ephesians 6:18
And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the saints.



what I think about prayer...

it is a means to keep open communication with God, he is without limit to the blessings he can bestow, but I do not wish to just take for granted they will happen without aknowledging HE who makes them happen,,and aknowledging my love for him, in some way

Why should one try to help God? Is he in need of things to be done for Him? He is almighty, for crying out loud. If the almighty needs anyone or anything to help Him to accomplish anything, then it's a sad case of loss, partial or full, of His Almight.

I understand your agony.

I don't know why a praying person at the drive through prayer house (yes, don't tell me it's not like McDonalds. Drive-through prayer houses exist.) has to wait. God is not a processor, he is the Almighty. Why is he making His customers at the drive through wait? He has to grill the mad cow disease out of the answer-patties? I doubt that.

One more reason not to pray. God does whatever he thinks is the best to do. If He decides to make us wait, we can't argue against that through prayer. If he tells us he won't do it, in His way of saying it, which is no direct answer but letting us wait for an indeterminant amount of time, without giving us a hint whether to give up waiting or not, then we can't change his decision to do it.

Are we praying to make him happy? God has no emotion for happiness. Point a verse in the bible that God is happy or sad, and I believe you. I am not challenging here, because this is possible that God said in the bible somewhere "Oh, I am so happy" or "I am... under the weather. A bit depressed." Maybe He says those, please let me know where to look for it.

Are we praying to slow him down from helping our enemies who are also praying to HIm? This is an allusion to "we ought not to bother Him with our prayers unless the prayer is important, to relieve him of the burden of having to listen to insignificant prayers". I don't think you can slow down a guy like Him by praying to him. Remember, to us a thousand years is an eyeblick to Him. So a five-minute prayer is a picosecond. It is ridiculous to claim that he is bogged down with little prayers, so let's not do them.

But why do ANY praying, pray tell me? You won't influence His decision, you won't make Him happy, you won't get an answer.

What's the actual point, then, in doing it?

Luke 3:22 And the Holy Ghost descended in a bodily shape like a dove upon him, and a voice came from heaven, which said, Thou art my beloved Son; in thee I am well pleased.


to please: : to give pleasure to :


one definition of pleasure: : a source of delight or joy


I believe we can bring God pleasure

I dont pray to influence a decision, I pray to communicate and aknowledge

I dont pray to make God Happy, I pray to communicate and aknowledge God, and I hope that doesnt DISPLEASE him

I get answers all the time,,,

Keep alert and pray. Otherwise temptation will overpower you. For though the spirit is willing enough, the body is weak(Matthew 26:41 )

Ephesians 6:18
And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the saints.



Thanks, Ms Harmony.

Finally some concrete evidence, not just speculative arguing over whose opinion is superior to whose, over a matter that can't be decided by opinions.

Ephesian just says "do it", gives no reason. It is not helpful in my quest to find reasons to pray to god.

Matthew, however, Thank God, is concrete: you pray to avoid temptation.

That's simple. It's a modality for self-hypnosis, for distracting yourself.

Makes sense. And if you noticed it, my genteel friends here, there is not even a slight hint, and definitely no mention, that the prayer is to be done for God, to God, about God. You do it to get your mind off temptation.

There. As far as I am concerned, the debate has reached a conclusion. Prayer to God is nice, but 100 percent unnecessary, it won't accomplish any channels of communication to open between the praying person and God. Prayer has been established, instead, as a practical device, to stave off temptation.

Right on. We can give god pleasure. But can we make him happy?

I would like to find out if it is at all possible for God to feel happy.

Pleasure can manifest many ways: sex is one, hearing music is one, eating and drinking is yet another one.

Happiness is not any of these things.

Happiness is bringing you joy, pleasure, enjoyment. Parent/child analogy is really good here to explain. Does it bring pleasure to one's parent if that child is obedient? Does it bring enjoyment to one's parent if that child is obedient? And so forth. Happiness is brought to God through our obedience. This includes sacrifice at times. When one sacrifices something, it is that person giving up something they want to please another. Drinking, drugging, sex with multiple partners, lying to get your way, and so much more brings alot of different people happiness in one way or other. So in not doing this to bring God happiness would then be sacrificing these things as to be obedient. It's about putting God before you and doing his will before yours, making his will your will. And in knowing you bring God happiness should also then bring you happiness. So what exactly did one loose from sacrificing these things?

What you describe you do is nice, great, commendable, but it is not in the Bible that you ought to do any of this.

You ought to prey simply to stave off temptation.

The bible does not say your prayer will be heard (as far as I know, and I know only what you quoted, the two lines, one each from Matthew and Elceasian). So if you get answers from God to your prayers, then I admire you, and I no longer wonder why you don't listen to reason about the irrefutable self-contradictions in the bible.

I was in a group of friends one day, and a guy said, I quote him, "I am so not believing in Jesus that if he descended and showed me in real-life miracles that he is the One, then I would still not believe him."

I think this guy was a flaming idiot.

If I had irrefutable evidence that God is real, I would accept him as believable. If I just got as much as a presence, a showing by Jesus, in no magical but in miraculous presentation, I would believe He is the god.

But you do get that, MsHarmony. God listens to you and answers you when you pray.

That is a veritable miracle, and you ought to be canonized. It does not happen just to anyone, only to the saints. And that you accomplish this through prayer is not a part of the miracle -- the bible gives no indication, as per the quotes you cited, that this is an acceptable, usual and customary way to elicit god to talk to a human being personally in a one-on-one conversation.

You are a saint, MsHarmony. If you believe in god, that is.

it does not state avoiding temptation is the ONLY reason,,,,

my doctor says, eating fruits and vegetables will be good for my health

and when I eat fruits and vegetables, it is indeed good for my health
but I also eat fruits and vegetables to satiate my hunger
I also eat them because I enjoy how they taste,,,

I hope it would not DISPLEASE God for me to communicate to him out loud or in my heart,,,which to me is what prayer IS

and anything I do thats productive, staves off temptation
hard to think about sinning, for instance, while Im trying to get my home clean, or reading my child a book,,,etc,,,

but certainly, noone would suggest that I do these things JUST to stave off temptation, although they might point out that staving off temptation in a certain BENEFIT of keeping busy with these things

Matthew 7:7

7Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you:

God and his son Jesus is there for us in all our needs. Not just straying away from temptation. That should be your greatest prayer yes, for you to not be tempted and others not to be. But that's not the only thing God answers. God offers anything we need he will take care of, he does not wish for his children to go without. He wishes to provide that child with all the necessities that person could need. And to bring happiness to that child, he gives gifts to us, even though we do not deserve the gift(s) given to us, he gives them to bring happiness to our lives.

You are absolutely right, Cowboy, in your own way. You are absolutely right in the sense that in your own mind you are always and without failure you are absolutely right.

You state reasons to tell us your resoning. I and others tried to talk to you and we retorted with sensible things, and you keep citing completely irrelevant ideation, and claim victory in the debate.

This has been going on so long, that now I am decided, to answer fire with fire.

So you say that joy and pleasure brings happiness to God?

That is not true. Jesus suffered on the cross; it was displeasure. Yet without that Christianity would not have been established. True, or false? Was God joyful or displeased to see His only begotten son suffer so terribly on the cross?

---

I failed to deliver my promise, Cowboy. There are elements of senses and logic in my retort here above.

So please scratch that, and replace my retort with this, and reply to this, instead, and disregard completely what I said about the crucifiction of christ just here above.

---

My retort, redesigned from scratch:

What? You say god is joyful? But it says in the Calculus textbooks, "the shortest distance between two distances is a third distance."

So there. Your statement was hereby proved completely wrong.

Prove me wrong, Cowboy.

oh no.. a saint is blameless, that is not me

nor does it take someone BLAMELESS to have their prayers answered

This was a goofy answer, MsHarmony.

The quotes also don't say "some lovers must jump off a cliff if their parents don't allow them to marry."

And since some lovers do jump off a cliff, for the reason they are not allowed to marry each other, the quotes in the bible about prayer mean not only that you must pray to avoid temptation, but it means also that unmarriable lovers must jump off a cliff.

If you keep this sort of inferencing up, I'll look for other things to do right now and come back when I think you've chilled out.

except that I have never claimed anyone else MUST pray for any reason
I simply stated, that one scripture about prayer in the bible is not some evidence of the ONLY reasons for prayer

The displeasure and pain Jesus suffered on that cross was not what brought happiness to God. The fact that Jesus was willing to go through the pain of such an incident, would sacrifice his life spreading the word of God, that is what brought God pleasure. That Jesus was willing to go through all this for another. Not for his own sake, not for anything of himself. But he did it for YOU.

Matthew 7:7 is an outright lie, a deceitful statement.

The majority of this thread discussed why we don't get our prayers answered.

This is in direct contradiction to "get what you ask for."

If qualifiers apply, then they ought to have been included.

But no qualifiers have been included.

To assume that qualifiers that have not been included but ought to have been included are to be understood to have been included, is an outright devious deviance in logic, in reasoning, in reason, in sensibility.

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Your version, the retort to your statement, about Matthew 7:7, personally just for you, Cowboy, is as follows:

The sky is full of stars. When you look at the sky at night, you see it is full of stars, on a clear night.

But Lo! you see dark spaces between stars.

If the dark spaces exist, then there are spots in the sky which are not stars.

And the dark spaces do exist.

It gives one reason to think but the sky is not full of macaroni sandwiches.

Therefore either the sky is not full of stars, or else the legend of the Minotaur vs. The Motion Picture in the Labyrinths of Crete is ridiculously yellow.

How do you know it's a lie? What grounds do you stand on to make such an accusation?

You are wringling it, MsHarmony, and you are getting goofier and goofier.

You stated somehting but your claim was not the topic. The topic was that the bible said what prayer is for; it said one thing only, and you keep saying what you believe what else it is for, but none of those are in the bible, so that's wringling, and the more you wringle, the goofier your statements become.

I have to sign off. If I want to handle goofy, I can go to McDonalds and pray in the drive-through window for a Big Mac.

But I don't want to handle goofy, so I am signing out.

'Till later.

simple answer is we dont always get what we want, I think rolling stones said it...


we also dont always get the answer we WANT and we construe that as not getting an answer

we sometimes get the answer NO

which we refuse to accept because we believe by 'getting an answer' that we will receive an 'acceptable' one by our standards