Repetitive Prayer?

[For Him Alone]

Wordsower, that is how I pray as well. I have never said "Thee" in a prayer. I talk to my Father just as I would if He was sitting here beside me, because He is!

My prayers are different every day, as every day life changes and I pray really all the time. I don't say "our Father who art" etc...But I do constantly praise Him for His holiness and mercy he continues to show us, and instead of asking for thing or situations etc to go my way, I try to instead ask Him to move me out of His way so that His will may be done.

I'm still trying to learn to pray for my enemies, which I have ONE of. An enemy of my child and myself and my family--my child's father/abuser. How can I pray for him? I have even (long ago) prayed for his death. That is hard to admit now; I am beyond THAT pitiful level, but when I try to pray for him I get sidetracked and my mind does wander!

Any keys as to how to really pray for one who has done so much damage to your child and your life and really has NO redeeming qualities about him?  

munari, I picture God sitting on His throne as you recite those repetitive prayers going "blahblahblah, get to it, will you?" and then perking up when you REALLY pray your own words from your heart. I of course do not KNOW this, but I picture His big hand going in circles like "yeah, yeah, I'm great and all that--TALK to me, son!" :inlove:  

[munari]

FHA,

You can picture Him like that... but you're projecting your own human impatience upon God. Remember, God hears all of our prayers at the same time for He is ever-present. Meaning, to God, all of the prayers we say in our whole life are present to Him at one time. All the prayers of the whole world for all of time reach Him at the same time! That's amazing! So, God isn't sitting up there bored to hear something different, He hears all at the same time, for all time. All of the prayers we say in our life are woven into one beautiful symphony of prayer for God. Like a good piece of classical music, it includes our highs and lows, our times of excitement, and times of boredom, times of hecticness and times of docileness. It is mixed with the songs and prayers of heaven, adding to the symphony of the angels who sing, with us, forever, "Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord".

I think maybe a good way (albeit far from perfect) to conceptualize this would be to imagine yourself being frozen in time, but everything around you continues to progress. Of course God is not frozen in time, but that's the image WE would need in order to imagine it for ourselves.

Let's look at "The Our Father"

Our Father (address), who art in Heaven (where he is),

Hallowed by thy name (His name is Holy)

Thy Kingdom come (asking Christ's return to be known to us)

Thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven (asking that God will become the will of the entire earth).

Give us this day our daily bread (Asking God to provide for us)

And forgive us our tresspasses (asking God to forgive our sins...)

As we forgive those who trespass against us (but only as much as we forgive others).

And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil (asking God to watch out for us and to keep us from the evil one).

Its the perfect prayer. It calls God Holy, its professing belief in Christ's return and that His will be done throughout the earth. Its showing our dependence on God by asking Him to provide for us. Its asking for the forgiveness of sins, but also asking that we can receive the grace to forgive those who have sinned against us. Its asking to keep us from evil.

FHA, if I were you, I would start with the Our Father when praying for your child's father. It is perfect for you because you need to want God's will to be done, you need to depend on Him for any improvement in the situation, you need the grace to forgive him, and the grace to not have those sinful thoughts of wanting him dead. Also,I pray for him in that he turns from his evil ways first. I Pray that's God's love will touch his heart and soften it. I Pray that he will realize the damage he has caused you and the rest of your family. And, after this has been done, I pray that he shall share in the super abundance of Christ's love and come to strive for perfection in his own love and life. Amen.

[Guest suzie]

I have never quite heard that God hears all our prayers at one time.  Tell me, where did you get the basis for this?  Yes God is omnipresent--present everywhere as in Psalm 139:7-12--no matter what we do or where we go, we can never be far from His presence.

The Our Father in Matthew 6:9-15 is called the Lord's prayer because Jesus gave it to his disciples. This is a pattern for our prayers.....it isnt meant to replace our own prayers, but to give a model to pray.

For Him Alone, it is quite difficult to pray for those who have intentionally harmed or caused us pain...those who do not seek out God and His goodness, but live for themselves.  That is why God provides us with agape love. That is the love that surpasses our human efforts. The Holy Spirit helps us show love to those who we may not feel love for. It sounds as though you are earnestly attempting to pray for your "enemy" and allow God to work you through this.  Sometimes God will open our eyes to see the pain and the powerlessness our enemies truly have. Remember, they have to live with themselves and while we are in Christ....we have already won!

Read my previous post Godman---that is how the pagans prayed, by repeating words over and over, the names of their gods.....the meaning of this message is that we are not to pray shallow prayers, but sincere.....it is not what is coming out of your mouth as much as what is in your hearts.

[For Him Alone]

from munari: FHA, if I were you, I would start with the Our Father when praying for your child's father. It is perfect for you because you need to want God's will to be done, you need to depend on Him for any improvement in the situation, you need the grace to forgive him, and the grace to not have those sinful thoughts of wanting him dead. Also,I pray for him in that he turns from his evil ways first. I Pray that's God's love will touch his heart and soften it. I Pray that he will realize the damage he has caused you and the rest of your family. And, after this has been done, I pray that he shall share in the super abundance of Christ's love and come to strive for perfection in his own love and life. Amen.

Thank you, brother. as always my shallow heart is revealed.

I thank you for your prayers and your insight--God bless you.

(Check out my praise, ok? It's a really good one today!!)

Suzie, thank you too! I do try to pray for him but I just don't have that grace as yet. I pray that Christ will help me! I surely cannot do it with this human's hateful heart.

It's not his sins against ME that I hold against him. It's that he hurt my CHILD! He possibly ruined his life! He did ruin 3 years of it. I cannot find the grace to get past that.

[munari]

I have never quite heard that God hears all our prayers at one time.  Tell me, where did you get the basis for this?

Suzie,

No one told me this, but I got it from my own reason.

God exists outside of time, God is omnipresent, meaning that he only exists in the Present. And, for God, all the history of the universe is Present to Him. To try and humanize it is bringing it out of its true state, but I think the best way we can conceptualize this is by imagining for ourselves that all of history occurs in one second.

To God, we are all just now being born, yet we have all already died. To God, He is seeing His Son being crucified RIGHT NOW, but He is also witnessing the Resurrection. All of time is Present to God right now, in the Present, and forever in the Present. There is not past or future for God, only the Present. Therefore, I can reason that all we do, including our prayer are always Present (in that He exists in the Present and that they are always presented) to Him.

We humans screw things up by trying to put God within the confines of Time. But, what confuses things even more is that a Person of God, God the Son, was present in our time. He did experience a past and a present. But, God the Father Himself has only experienced His eternal Present, except in however He experienced time through His son.

It is quite a mystery, and all I have written does not make perfect sense to me, and of course, I can be wrong, but I think this is pretty accurate to how God does see things. After all, we do believe He is omnipresent, and this is where my reason takes me given this fact of God's presence.

[Guest suzie]

Munari-

I would suggest if this is your opinion then you really should state that instead of making your opinion appear as though fact.  I was looking for biblical basis to your notion that  God hears all our prayers future, present and past and is present in these three dimensions at one time.  While we do not know how God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent, because we are none of these things and can only imagine how this could be, what we do have is God's nature and being revealed to us through His Word.  When we as humans "screw things up" it is because we deviate from what God has revealed to us.  

What Scripture does say is :

Psalm 139:7-8; Jeremiah 23:23-24; Isaiah 57:15; Acts 17:24-28 for a few verses on omnipresence. BUt this would be another discussion

[munari]

Ok Suzie...

You agree that God is omnipresent. Defined, that means that He is always present and that He exists in the Present. That means He has no past or future.

Now, if God is ever in the Present, when else could He hear our prayers other than in the Present? And, if He is ever-Present, that's a singularity, the Present is Now, and only Now forever.

The prayers that you are going to say tomorrow can effect you today because God knows what you are going to pray for tomorrow even though it has not happened yet.

[wordsower]

FHA,

I am so sorry for your situation.  I had a similar situation with my step-daughter being molested by her then, step-dad.  I wanted to kill that guy and my husband would have if he had gotten the chance.  She was 7.  He went to jail for 17, well, got sentenced for that, don't know if anyone knows if he ever got out, that was 10 years ago.

God understands that you are human.  I wasn't a christian then but now when I see people that low and sorry and horrible I try to think about how God sees them.  He knows everything disfunctional thing that happened in their life to bring them to that point of such disregard for another life. He didn't create them to be that way but, sin and a lot of circumstances probably snowballed and there you have it, a lost soul.  I would probably have to pray to forgive the person and for God to take away my anger before I could pray for the person.Remember, you're not called to love the sin, just the sinner. God can heal all wounds and one day this temporary life will be vindicated by God for good.  May the Lord bless you extra today!

[Guest suzie]

Munari-

God is omniscient meaning he has total knowledge. He has foreknowledge of all we will do. God is the Alpha and the Omega--He was from the beginning and has no end. This is really getting off the track.  I would advise you to begin a thread on omnipresent .....

[johnjackofmn]

Munari

I was just wondering. Couldn't you just pray to God the way Jesus, Moses, and a host of other saints and Christians do? Just say what's on your mind, and talk to Him as a person? I find that I can really keep my mind on my prayers if I do that. I even speak out loud when I am alone, that really keeps my mind on my prayers.

Jesus gave the Our Father as an example of what prayer should be like, not what to exactly say. Look at the Our Father, it contains everything a prayer should: Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, Supplication.

Just had to say this.