Board index ‹ Specific Bible verses, texts, and passages ‹ Luke

[Seraphim]

Thanks for taking the time out to write. I pretty much am in agreement with the context of the passage but feel the point still stands.
I am not interested in "health and wealth" but the relationship aspect of this.

The bible is clear on its teaching about suffering, there are enough of them. What is unclear is a believer who has been and keeps asking from God the things off God which are in Gods will.

Jesus desires we make disciples... why then do the doors close for this? He wants us to evangelise, yet when we are in dire need, without food or money ourselves how can we meet the needs of others. Folks look at a pitiful life and hear the person claim "Follow Jesus, worship God...he will change your life!" and they say "Yea! Change for the worse! You are in need! Why won't you flirt with this woman, or try and earn more money? Or help build what we are building here!" Babel Babel Babel...a tower of this world.

Jesus kingdom is NOT of this world... yet I am in the world. He does not speak to me. Do you hear Gods audible voice? He won't speak to me face to face like a man, the same as Moses... does he for you? The visions of John, the angel comforting Daniel, the men in white who came to the women first... do you see them?

Go the other way... the occult... why bother with it. Just ask the other side... do they speak to you? The demons...

I find it staggering that as a Christian who has grown up loving Christ and seeking him.. spending my teens and twenties bible studies, small groups, outreach, mission... yet temptation grew and grew...prayed about it... but it grew. Told my brothers about it...it grew. To be tempted is not a sin; but when you only feel this ALL the time, how can you fight this? No one can, only Christ. Many left...many for this reason, many because they sin and now many do not believe; I still do. I hear the voices of ideas which are not necessarily bad but are off this world... "You are smart, not greedy, you can help others, people should like you... " but God isn't there, in the good things... the thorns of the world that choke.

I only hope I have placed my trust in the truth. God does not respond to me, or to others I know. Some tell me stories like what you have written; I notice the atheist has pointed out to you about science and evidence with prayer... his arguments at their core and source are very powerful. Surely, there would be evidence for prayer. The bible is evidence for God, it claims to be; yet history is becoming history as we sleepwalk into a transhumanist virtual age; 'humanity must evolve or doom!'; the world has already exclaimed this. The gospel of John was written so that we may believe...John was using science, he is writing down an account of the evidence... we need evidence to believe. "But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name."

The bible is not the Truth. It claims to be the truth about the Truth. A relationship is living, I speak to Jesus... I listen, I speak to others, I ask them, try to follow yet year after year having the blank screen... no response. It has shattered my faith. I am not looking for evidence...a voice or an angel, but to day after day have no certainy at all now... nothing to place my faith on except the fact that some faith exists. God has sent his delusion on the world I fear.

Bullshit aside...wishes and waffly stories aside. Does God relate back to us... it is one thing to base faith on works, or demand or manipulate...or ask for things we want...

What I have been doing is trying to relate to God... the relationship has been one sided for twenty years I suppose...unless he answers. I fear he isn't taking action until he returns to rule someday.

[jimwalton]

Wow. Thanks for your honesty. I know that prayer is a huge burden for people, when we keep thinking it should be a happy thing and a good thing. I know that people get very frustrated about unanswered prayer, and many turn away from the faith because of it. I know, because my experience with prayer is the same way. For most of my life, I would say, jokingly (but not really), that my prayers were the kiss of death. If I prayed for something, that would guarantee it would never happen. God just didn't answer my prayers. For lots of years I dealt with that frustration, and for lots of years I just stopped praying altogether. Why bother? God never did anything about it, so why should I waste my time and end up so frustrated. It made more sense just to be a Christian, read the Bible and live by it, enjoy church, and just ignore the prayer part. That's where I was, and what my experiences were, presumably just like yours. It was a compromise or a disequilibrium I was willing to live with, as much as I didn't like it.

About a dozen years ago I fell into a terrible depression—a situation that threw me into very dark and deep holes where there was no light. Since I was a Christian, I started to pray like a madman for help. Things got worse, and I got even more depressed, and quite angry at God. I spent hours screaming at him, crying, begging, and things got even worse. I talked to him about how stupid prayer is, and if he really loved me, or even was really there, this was the time to show up because I was SO desperate. I remember one night in particular, in a very dark place, ready to give up my faith and to take my own life. It turns out I didn't have the guts to take my own life, and I couldn't get around the truth of the resurrection, no matter how I felt about prayer and everything else that was going on, so I couldn't give up my faith either. I struggled on, but nothing improved. My life, it's fair to say, was really in the toilet.

But since I was unable to give up my Christianity on rational grounds, I kept reading the Bible, attending church, praying (what a joke!), and seeking God. Something was going on, and I was going to work it through. I was at my wits' end, and decided to really read the Bible with different eyes, especially about prayer. I found out, particularly in the New Testament, that it's almost always (higher than 95%) about inner things, not outer circumstances—about strength, peace, understanding rather than about health, choices, and what was going on around me. Hm. Answers to prayer about circumstances were almost nonexistent. Hm. I read more with different eyes, and it seemed that prayer was not a way to get stuff or to make specific things happen, but a way of expressing my relationship with God. Then another understanding came to me: when I had a good relationship with God, and used prayer to express my relationship to Him, I could see His work around me even when I wasn't praying for stuff to happen. In other words, when I just sought to have the best relationship with God and not care about anything else, He was both creating and answering prayers in my life. Weird, but true. It made me think of Matthew 6.33: Seek first the kingdom of God, and all these things will be added to you. I didn't keep a book of my prayers and their answers, but I sure could have kept a book of what God was doing around me.

Now I pray. I ask for stuff, but I'm cool with it if he doesn't grant it. I understand it all better. I just want to know Him, and leave His work to Him. I see him answering some prayers and not others. That's OK. But then I also see him doing stuff that I didn't even ask for, and that's cool, too. I certainly wouldn't say that God responds to me, but I would say that he is really there and active. In that sense it's a relationship, not a Santa Claus situation (I ask, you give).

The Bible is truth. God talks to me more through His word than in any other way (especially prayer; I would say he doesn't talk to me at all during prayer). His word is true and powerful. Prayer is how I talk to Him; the Bible is how He talks to me.

That's my story. Let's keep talking.