In thinking about what this blog is for and how I can best make use of the tools it offers, I realized this morning that I could (and maybe I should) make a “Prayer Page.” The intent is to post prayer requests for myself, my family and friends, and anyone else who needs prayer, and that when I stop in here, I want to pray for them. I also want to post answers to prayer, too, for encouragement purposes in prayer but also as an evidentiary record of God’s answers.
It strikes me that we think of prayer as a last resort. Although I love Tom Selleck, one of the things he was quoted as saying about prayer some time ago both inspired and disturbed me: we should pray as if everything depends on God, and then act as if everything depends on us. [Please note: I think very highly of Mr. Selleck - what little I know of him, anyway - and I'm sure that he meant what he said in the best possible way.....]
I think the reason it inspired me was because it is a somewhat inspiring comment – to act as if everything depends on us. It disturbed me because it seems that the two seem inconsistent. Yes, we should act when we need to act; there is nothing worse than sitting around praying for God to do something when He has placed all of the tools to accomplish His will in your lap and you just need to do it. At the same time, though, God often acts best when we don’t get in the way trying to do it all ourselves. Trying to accomplish what we think is the right result can (and too often does) interfere with God’s answering our prayer in the first place.
Anyway, this is the dedication to the Prayer Page. I’m going to start with a request from one of my friends at work whose sister-in-law may have one of the more rapid-onset forms of Alzheimer’s Disease, and she is not that old. Her name is Sandy, and if you stop in and want to pray for her, please do. Please pray for her and her family, as well as the doctors, in the evaluation of her symptoms and the decisions on treatment that will have to be made.
Please feel free to send me prayer requests – as often as I stop in, I will pray for them. I want this to become a good habit for me and for anyone else who wants to visit.
Yes, fine, but if I want to pray for someone who is ill (say, me), which god should I pray to? The one who gave me the illness in the first place?
Tony: How do you know who “gave” you the illness – or if, in fact, anyone did so specifically? Perhaps the other question is why a “good” God would allow evil or bad things to happen in the world, and if He does, whether He can be trusted to answer prayer at all in any way that we would be happy about.
What I can say is that there really is not just “a god” but the God who created the universe, who sent a substitutionary sacrifice to pay for the sins of the world in His own Son, and who then resurrected His Son to prove that the sacrifice had accomplished its intended purpose – paying for sin and defeating death. That is definitely the God to pray to – and He can be trusted.
He answered a prayer I prayed when I was a kid and had to wear thick glasses – I prayed that He would heal my eyes, and as a 41-year-old bilateral cataract patient who (as a result of cataract lens implants in both eyes) can now see, I can say that no prayer is too small or insignificant.
You can say that that was medical science rather than God, but since most 41-year-olds don’t get cataracts in the first place, let alone have them progress to the point where surgery was required within 6 months of diagnosis, I believe that God used that situation to answer a little child’s prayer to see – so I can say, once I was (almost) blind, but now I see, and it is the result of God’s answer to prayer.
What I also know is that God draws people to Himself – maybe He is drawing you and is reaching out His hand to you and asking you to trust Him. It’s worth asking Him about – and that’s all prayer is: talking to God. If you’re troubled about proper identification, I would suggest praying to the God who made you, and asking Him to reveal Himself as who He is. I will pray for you, too, that as you seek Him, you will find Him.
Why, thank you, Lawyerchik1, but I expressed myself badly: I wasn’t actually asking for your prayers. If there is a god he (or she) has always been, and continues to be, absolutely sweet to me, and it would be frivolous to ask for my piffling problems (touch of rheumatism etc) to be put right; I am sorry I unintentionally misled you.
No, I was thinking more of the millions of innocents who die painful deaths after leading appalling lives. The fact that an allegedly omnipotent being allows this to happen led me at an early age to the view that your god is, as Damon Runyon would say, not such a guy as I am wishing to give the large hello to.
I should explain that I wrote to you mainly because you made a friendly comment on my blog on July 31st 2004; it’s always good to keep in touch.
Every good wish