Do prayers play a part on god's will?

Philosophy Forums Religion and Spirituality
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I recently got a prayer request from my family, a friend is going through a lung infection and some other serious issues related to his battle with cancer. It got me to thinking.

Under my upbringing and the things I learned while being a christian, I came to believe that god hears your prayers and will answer them how he sees fit. Divine wisdom, greater goods, mysterious ways, all of those play into account. But in general I was under the belief that if you pray hard enough and long enough, god will in essence answer some of your prayers.

For now lets please avoid the obvious scenario of “Maybe god did answer your prayers, just not in the way you wanted” response and pay attention to the mechanics I began to ponder as I got the prayer request across my phone. I’m not concerned on the IF god answers prayers, I’m calling into question if prayer matters or is it an illusion that god allows us to use for ourselves.

The way I see it god’s will is the ultimate will. So the will of god overwrites the will of man. However, god being all knowing, he also knows and understands our will/desires and possibly incorporates that into his actions.

I guess my question is, does prayer actually matter?

The will of god will be done as he/it sees fit. The will of man is known by god. So god already knows that my family wants this friend to survive, god knows we’re going to pray for it before prayer even happens. And ultimately the will of god will be done as god sees fit.

Does inscreased prayer sway the actions of god? If yes, does that imply that god’s will is somehow questionable or able to be altered from what god originally intended? If no, why does god call upon christians to pray? Mental excerises to release and accept that which man has no control of?

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Matthew 6:7:

Or, the more standard version:

(But I think this version, personally, is warped by it’s injection of “pagans” in where the word simply refers to other cultures)

Either way, repetition is shown to be worthless in the Bible on it’s basis.

According to the Bible, yes, it does matter.
And there’s a guide to to this in Luke 11, which the NIV more or less grasps well enough:

English is sometimes lacking in clarity though.
The word “BOLDNESS” isn’t quite the way we think of that word.
It’s a Greek compound of the words for WITHOUT YOUR/ONE’S WILL and HONOR/REVERENCE.

Basically, the idea is that one is to pray without one’s own will for their self at interest, but with sincerity and reverence for what they are asking; deep emotion; not, instead, with simply words empty of this.

And no, it’s not really for God; nor is it (in your case) for you.
It’s ultimately for your families friend.

Which makes sense.
A person all alone with only people offering their condolences and good wishes by force of habit or wrote isn’t going to feel their emotion or their sincerity, so they will not feel the compassion; they will not have strength as a result, but be more prone to emptiness and solitude; isolation, even among friends.

However, if everyone is sincere, even if brief or few in words, or perhaps only offering in looks or touch, then this same person will have much more strength emotionally for their hardship.

The purpose of such prayer isn’t to command God, so to speak, but to strengthen the afflicted with the compassion of their fellow “kin”.

It is for this reason that I always encourage people to pray as their hearts cry or rejoice, or do not pray at all.
Even if they do not believe in God; in times such as your families friend, pray regardless at least in the confidence of the human spirit of compassion and sincerity.
If indeed you feel this way.

Otherwise, do not.

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If, as appears to be the case, God does not intervene in the natural laws of the universe so as to protect the rational foundations that He established for our free will, prayer would be irrelevant. Prayer was the first thing I gave up when I left Christianity and became a deist. Of course there are two kinds of prayer, requests for intervention (that ain’t happen’in), or meditation, which is fine if it works to make you more at peace with yourself. But meditation has a broad meaning. In fact, I could say that I’m meditating right now, since basically it just means to think.

Another metaphysical problem with prayer, it assumes that we can plead with God to take sides for us against others. Even if God did intervene, would He do that?

Continuing that thought, this anonymous message was found written on the walls of a cellar in Cologne Germany where Jews hid during the Holocaust:

I believe in the sun even when it is not shining.
I believe in love, even when feeling it not.
I believe in God even when He is silent.

It is a fitting inspiration for the following truly profound version that apparently sprang up on the Internet around 2000, and that preserves the anonymous/universal nature of its source. Note the crucial one word change in the final line which I think reflects a major change in our general overall religious psyche concerning our belief in God’s intervention:

I believe in the sun even though it is slow in rising.
I believe in you without realizing.
I believe in rain though there are no clouds in the sky.
I believe in truth even though people lie.
I believe in peace though sometimes I am violent.
I believe in God even though he is silent.

BTW, I find the idea of prayer requests to be shallow, rote and even silly in the apparent belief that the more people that ask for something is what, more likely to get God’s attention or sway Him to action?

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Yeah, that’s kind of what got this whole thing going. My wife and I started talking about prayer requests and she said that she didn’t like them, half for the reasons you say here and half because people seem to use them as gossip tools to find out the drama of other people’s lives. I’ve always thought that if prayer is important then it should be done at all times for all people for all reasons in one sweeping blanket statement. The idea that we should only ask for help when someone needs it seems a bit absurd to me when we live in such random and chaotic lives.

Going back though, good finds Stumps, much appreciated. I think your statements blur the line just slightly though in terms of what I was asking.

Even though I currently do not believe in the existence of god I certainly believe in the power of prayer, for the reasons you (Stumps) gave. Regardless of it’s… realness, it is very difficult to lay claim that prayer has no effect. Be it god, the power of the mind, a mental exercise, a transfer of energy from one being to another, I have no doubt that it works. I was curious solely on its effects on god.

That says it all, really. But it is curious to me that it can sway god, according to the biblical references you found. I’ve always seen god as a finite position. So to say that if our life is a movie, he was the producer and director and knows exactly how everything is going to happen. So while the film is new to all of us, it’s been complete for him for quite some time. To me that creates a conflict, albeit small, between the power of prayer and being “all knowing.” It seems to me that one cancels the other out. You either know that they will pray, therefore rendering prayer ineffective since you were going to do it anyway, or the prayer has changed your position, implying that your position was not entirely correct to begin with.

And yes,

subtle yet massive differences.

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Praying is like a simple conversation that happen between two or more people. The difference in Praying is that your opposition is not a limited Human but God, the owner of everything. So in any case that you go for praying, GOd is already aware of everything yo do and everything you are and everything that is behind your praying. In the case of a third party his or her part is counted as well in the way of God. Me, as I am a human myself and not God can just say that God does what is needed to be done. It’s a very hard thing to admit because everything that happens in this world doesn’t happen for one single thing. It happens for infinite reasons. The existance of one person whether if s/he is a robber or a president is tied to many reasons to happen. If human understand such a thing s/he will respect death and doesn’t blame or mourn it.

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Prayer in my estimation is a point of validation of reverance to God to acknowlege His Righteousness in all things of the Spirit even in this world. Prayer in concert somehow manifests a concordance of thought which might acquiesce to God’s Will. This act provides a link of showing we appreciate this life and how our selflessness connects with His Spirit. While it is possible it could be influencial on how God reacts to our prayers, the derivative in my estimation is to help promote solace and confort during trying times.

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From my vantage point, that never occurred to me. Learn something new everyday. It borders on being sinister.

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While I agree with a bluk of what you’re saying, I think that it does make prayer sound misleading in what it actually does.

For me, it was a very common and accepted belief that when you pray god hears and listens to you. To me that implies that we have a say (although only slight) in what may or may not happen in our lives based on prayer. That if we pray enough, true enough, that god will grant our requests should he see it fit.

Again, this isn’t about questioning his judgement or even creating our own destiny. This is in regards to can prayer change what god will or will not allow. Can prayer change god from taking a friend tomorrow and instead convince god to take him in 6 months time or whenever else he should decide?

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Praying is like a communication. When you go to someone you know, s/he has a knowledge about you too. Whether if it’s alittle bit or vice versa. So base on what they know of you they will behave you. In the case of Praying and God he’s already know everything about you, everything about your third party and even know you’re gonna pray to him for something. So we can’t say that human can CHANGE God’s will because human is not in full control but God. Let’s just say, someone that prays show this as a part of his/her behaviour. Like when someone has violent behaviours or caring. God knows that this man or that woman prays in some cases. That’s among his/her domain of behaviours. The answer to the prays will completely depends on the individual and his/her ask and its consequence on many other consequences. That’s why prayings have always had different answers. The reasons is this. If you relaly love someone and you see s/he is gone then believe that it was the time for him/her to go. Death is only a bad chapter when they only see the whole joy in the earth.

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So strictly in the sense of praying for someone to survive an operation, the power of prayer has no weight since god ultimately decides the outcome? Would you say that outcome was previously decided by god and is in a way destined to happen or that the outcome god has in mind is the best that the circumstance has to offer?

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You may not gonna believe this but praying has been given to humans to play a part IN the humans’ history’s script. This script contends everything that has happened in the human’s history. All kind of beliefs, motivations and thoughts that human claims is inside the ‘domain of human being’. Praying is another part of it as well. Why sucha thing exist?! Because as I told you praying is like a simple conversation that happens among the people. Then if someone believes in a higher power, then s/he is gonna communicate with that one too. And that easily makes something like ‘Praying’. It’s like you need help on a manner and you think of someone that has can help you on that manner, so you go to him/her and ask him/her if s/he can help you on that one. S/he, base on his/her own rights decide that if s/he can help you or how much s/he can help you. Then think, in the case of God that is the owner of everything and decider, how much you have the authority to CHANGE his plans.

Sometimes it happens to you that when you have wished for something in your life you were not aware that the same thing may cause a huge disaster for you that you could wish it never had happened to you. I think that’s a huge hint to the God’s plans. Many times we blast many things including God for the things that have happened. But maybe it is because of our own border of understanding of the world and not the God’s mistake. Remember the weaker has always make more mistakes than the stronger. You can see that in all levels of human’s life.