hayleyv048 Posted August 31, 2018 Group: Seeker Followers: 1 Topic Count: 5 Topics Per Day: 0.00 Content Count: 12 Content Per Day: 0.01 Reputation: 4 Days Won: 0 Joined: 08/31/2018 Status: Offline Share Posted August 31, 2018 I have no idea how to pray or what it entails. Hayley 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
other one Posted August 31, 2018 Group: Worthy Ministers Followers: 29 Topic Count: 599 Topics Per Day: 0.08 Content Count: 56,260 Content Per Day: 7.56 Reputation: 27,988 Days Won: 271 Joined: 12/29/2003 Status: Offline Share Posted August 31, 2018 hi Hayley... welcome to worthy.... I think prayer is kind of an individual thing..... some people do it one way, and others another. Personally I just talk to him like I would if you and I were setting across the table drinking coffee. Some people get on their knees while some close their eyes and imagine that God is in front of them. Fortunately God is pretty much aware of what we are doing thinking and saying all the time anyway, so there really isn't some "way" it must be done... When I first got seriously into prayer I would just go off by myself and spoke out loud directing the speech to him.... you can trust that he will hear..... as things went along it got to where I would just talk to him all day long no matter what I was doing and by the time people got to thinking something was wrong with me for talking to myself all day it became obvious that I could direct my thoughts to him without the speech just as easy. Basically you focus your thoughts and somewhat mentally project them to him.... like purposely thinking you are interfacing with him. Others have a more formal way of addressing him...… Just remember that he loves you so much Jesus came and died in our place and sent the Holy Spirit to be with us.... it's that Holy Spirit that takes your thoughts and speech to God in Heaven..... and since he's with you all the time anyway just talk to him. 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
listener24 Posted August 31, 2018 Group: Senior Member Followers: 43 Topic Count: 43 Topics Per Day: 0.02 Content Count: 650 Content Per Day: 0.27 Reputation: 759 Days Won: 0 Joined: 11/23/2017 Status: Offline Share Posted August 31, 2018 (edited) That's a great question. The same question the disciples asked Jesus. (Luke 11:1-13) These are His suggestions: “And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. 6 But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. 7 And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. 8 Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. 9 “This, then, is how you should pray: “‘Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, 10 your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. 11 Give us today our daily bread. 12 And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. 13 And do NOT abandon us into temptation,[a] but deliver us from the evil one.[b]’ The prayer "thy Kingdom come" is primarily the prayer for Jesus Return. Is the same prayer in Revelation: The Spirit and the bride say, "Come!" And let the one who hears say, "Come!" (Revelation 22:17) and 20 He which testifieth these things saith, Surely I come quickly. Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus. (Revelation 22:20) With this prayer, we are taught that we are speeding up the Return of Jesus. (Luke 18:1-8, 2Peter 3:12) This prayer, when finally fulfilled, will fix at once all problems: poverty, illness, unjust governments etc. etc., because 4 ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’[a] or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.” (Revelation 21:4) Of course, keeping in mind this as the primary purpose of prayer, it is also great to talk to God about what you are going through. Not that God needs to know it from you, but it can be for your own self edification, and meanwhile you can go deeper into the Scripture while you try to understand the best thing to do in every situation. But when it comes to asking something to God, there's no more Biblical and sanctifying request than the one above from the Scriptures. If you seek the Kingdom of God and His justice first, everything else needed for the mission will be given to you without asking (Matthew 6:33) Edited September 1, 2018 by listener24 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hayleyv048 Posted August 31, 2018 Group: Seeker Followers: 1 Topic Count: 5 Topics Per Day: 0.00 Content Count: 12 Content Per Day: 0.01 Reputation: 4 Days Won: 0 Joined: 08/31/2018 Status: Offline Author Share Posted August 31, 2018 Thank you. I wish there was a starters guide to Christianity 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Neighbor Posted August 31, 2018 Group: Worthy Ministers Followers: 18 Topic Count: 962 Topics Per Day: 0.35 Content Count: 13,708 Content Per Day: 5.04 Reputation: 9,106 Days Won: 6 Joined: 12/04/2016 Status: Offline Birthday: 03/03/1885 Share Posted August 31, 2018 Hi, There are massively long studies on prayer the many types of prayer what to pray about even praying "wrongly". But first let's keep it pretty simple; do you want to pray? If so, do you have any idea of who it is you want to pray to and for what? What has you searching for how to pray today? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
listener24 Posted August 31, 2018 Group: Senior Member Followers: 43 Topic Count: 43 Topics Per Day: 0.02 Content Count: 650 Content Per Day: 0.27 Reputation: 759 Days Won: 0 Joined: 11/23/2017 Status: Offline Share Posted August 31, 2018 (edited) 19 minutes ago, hayleyv048 said: Thank you. I wish there was a starters guide to Christianity The best starter guide is called "The Gospel", from Matthew, Mark, Luke and John Other starters guides, even my own words, are filtered by men. First read the Gospel with sincere seeking heart and you will find a lot! Then read them again and again. Then you can also read some other books written by men, but you will be more ready to judge if they are actually drawing from Jesus' words or not. For instance, on prayer you will find a lot of human considerations, sometimes completely against of what I reported you above from the Gospel of Matthew. You will find a lot of "long prayers" not different at all from the pagans' ones Jesus was warning against. You will also find out that Jesus words and message are simple: At that time Jesus said, "I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children. Complications often arise from not accepting or not knowing what Jesus said, not from not understanding. God bless you and your research! Edited August 31, 2018 by listener24 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Willa Posted September 1, 2018 Group: Worthy Ministers Followers: 68 Topic Count: 186 Topics Per Day: 0.04 Content Count: 14,256 Content Per Day: 3.32 Reputation: 16,671 Days Won: 30 Joined: 08/14/2012 Status: Offline Share Posted September 1, 2018 6 hours ago, hayleyv048 said: I have no idea how to pray or what it entails. Hayley Your first prayer should be one of turning away from wicca and all sin and unrighteousness, and turning to God asking for forgiveness. Jesus died on the cross so that you can be forgiven and be seen as clean and pure in God's eyes. Witchcraft and all occult is punishable by death. But all sin is punishable by death, yours and mine. Jesus paid for your sin when he died on the cross. He died in your place. So thank Jesus for dying for you and making is possible to be in Father God's presence. It is because of Him that Father God hears your prayers. Just talk to God. It is that simple. He loves you. 1Co 15:1 Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, 1Co 15:2 and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you—unless you believed in vain. 1Co 15:3 For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, 1Co 15:4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, 1Co 15:5 and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. 1Co 15:6 Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. 1Co 15:7 Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Rom 6:23 For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. Rom 10:9 because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. Rom 10:10 For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved. Rom 5:6 For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. Rom 5:7 For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die— Rom 5:8 but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Rom 5:9 Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. Rom 5:10 For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. Eph 2:8 For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, Eph 2:9 not a result of works, so that no one may boast. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GandalfTheWise Posted September 1, 2018 Group: Royal Member Followers: 24 Topic Count: 40 Topics Per Day: 0.02 Content Count: 1,459 Content Per Day: 0.59 Reputation: 2,377 Days Won: 2 Joined: 08/23/2017 Status: Offline Share Posted September 1, 2018 12 hours ago, hayleyv048 said: Thank you. I wish there was a starters guide to Christianity FWIW, Here's the way I'd explain what being a Christian is about using everyday words off the top of my head. Being a Christian is about God making a fundamental and real change in our very nature that transforms us; it's not about having a series of rules to follow nor a list of things to agree with; nor is it trying hard to make ourselves into "good" (whatever that means) people. It is about God changing us into a person for whom such things as love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, faith, goodness, and self-control simply flow out naturally from us as a deep fundamental part of our character. It is not about embarking on a self-improvement course to change things we don't like about ourselves and sincerely trying. It is about being actually transformed from the inside out through God's power. It is not something we initiate and do; God reaches out to us and starts to draw us toward Himself to start doing this. The starting point to understand Christianity is that God created each of us as unique individuals. We are each intended to be works of art, treasures, uniquely special in our own way that each reflect the glory, majesty, beauty, and power of our Creator. However, something happened to thwart that. We look around the world and see pain, violence, unthinkable things. We look around and simply know deep within ourselves that such things shouldn't be. We often ask why God would allow such things and why God doesn't do something about it. The thing is, God is going to do something about it. God is going to eliminate all the crud, pain, violence, suffering, abuse, and everything else evil by tossing it onto the biggest bonfire the universe has seen to eliminate it all once and for all. However, the issue is this. Each of us is contaminated with it as well. We each individually carry within us the seeds and contamination to start it all again. The reality is that each of us (despite sincere intentions) have knowingly and unknowingly at times contributed to the current state of the world. When God finally clears the world of all that is wrong, each of us needs to be cleared out with the rest of the garbage to avoid contaminating a new perfect world with it. It is not a matter of trying to be less bad. We each have hidden darkness, addictions or compulsive things we cannot control in spite of our best efforts, and at times we simply don't act in complete accordance with how we know we should. In spite of our best efforts, there are things within us that are out of our control. So to summarize, we are in this contradictory position of both being a beautiful individual made in God's image meant to reflect God's perfection, beauty, power, and majesty; and at the same time, we are contaminated and corrupted by all that is wrong in the world and are doomed to share it's fate when God finally has enough of the violence, pain, suffering, and death in the world. The Good News (which is what the word Gospel means) is that God wants to redeem each of us as those unique works of art and treasures that He intends us to be. We are each a unique individual made in God's image that is now trapped in a corrupted and contaminated nature. God's solution (to avoid having to chuck us out on the bonfire with the rest of the garbage from the world) is to recreate that unique person with a new nature. The Bible describes us as "new creations" in Christ. God does two things for us. He overlooks our contribution to evil in the world and that we are contaminated with it ourselves. He forgives it all and gives us a clean slate with Him. The second thing is that He gives us a new spiritual nature. He takes the parts of our personality and our uniqueness that He intended for us and creates it again with a new nature whose very life flows from God Himself. The very life and being of this new nature are empowered by God. It is *not* that we become mini-gods or anything like that. It is that the source of life and existence of this new nature continually flows from God and will continue to flow into it forever. It is through Jesus (God coming to earth to become a finite human being) that this was done. In Jesus' death and rising from the dead, God created something new. He created a new nature that was perfect. God wants to impart that new nature to us. Jesus was more than just a good man. He was God Himself taking on humanity's limitations and becoming fully human to create a new nature that God uses to make us new creations in Christ. Two things result from this new creation and new nature we have. The first is that we can for the first time start to walk with God Himself, our Creator, the One who made us to walk with Him, who created a vast world around us to explore and enjoy. We can feel His presence inside of us, and we can start to see the world around us once again through innocent eyes of wonder. We start to react with natural heartfelt emotions of awe, wonder, and love. We start to know God more and more on a personal level than an impersonal formal level. The second is that we can start to reflect His life, love, glory, and majesty as the unique individual He made us to be. Those things in our contaminated corrupt nature that masked and damaged the real person God made us to be are slowly shed and overcome by the new nature. We start to share life in a deeper and more meaningful way with others in whom God has placed this new nature. So anyway, that's my take on being a Christian. I've been a Christian for quite awhile now. An observation I've made about Christians is that we all pretty much agree on the actual things God has done; it's that we disagree about explaining how or why He did it. For my first few decades as a Christian, it was quite important to me to have the explanation down correctly, and sadly, I spent too much time and effort arguing and debating the explanation rather than just enjoying, relishing, and growing in the new nature God gave me. We put special words onto many of the things I mentioned above. Feeling awe and wonder and other emotions when reacting God and what He has done is basically what "worship" is about. Sharing life with others with a new nature is "fellowship". Seeing the new nature overcome and reduce the effect of the old nature is "sanctification". Rather than use those words, I tried to use everyday language. When God reaches out to us, we start to become aware of His drawing us. We start to have questions. We start to wonder what life is about. We start to wonder how we can approach or have anything to do with God or somehow try to reach out in a spiritual world beyond our physical one. At some point, God brings enough light into our life that we can start to see our standing before Him. We realize that we have something deep and fundamentally wrong that we cannot fix ourselves despite our best and most sincere efforts and desire to be as good a person as possible. We realize we've hurt other people; we've fallen way short of being who God intended us to be; and most fundamentally, we realize that we cannot completely stop ourselves from doing this. We realize that any intentions we've had of being a good person cannot make up for the fact we fall short of it. At some point, we become aware that we're in danger of being junked with the rest of the garbage in the world. We realize we need God to give us a clean slate to start over as well as the capability of being the person He made us to be. When we reached this point (or perhaps I should say when God shined enough light into our lives to get us to this point), we Christians responded to God. We freely and honestly and shamefully admit we've fallen short of what God wanted from us; we've hurt others; we're simply incapable on our own of living as the person God created us to be; and then we invite God into our lives to change us into the person He meant us to be. For many Christians I know (and myself), it was a simple prayer (using more religious terms), something like, "God please forgive me for my sins and being a sinner; Please come into my heart." It's not the actual words, but the attitude and that it is in response to God's drawing us. I'd said words like that many times in liturgies or congregational readings in church and nothing really happened (at least that I was aware of). But one night in a small church at a Lent service, I felt drawn by God toward Him, prayed a few simple words like that, and I suddenly felt changed and felt God's presence. That was over 40 years ago now. In the 40 some years since, it has been a spiritual journey of walking with God. I started off thinking it was all about how hard I had to work at being a "good Christian", but then slowly I realized that it wasn't about trying, it was about becoming. The bible calls love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, and similar things fruit that grows in our lives. I realized being patient wasn't about learning anger management techniques of counting to 10 or thinking of pleasant things or whatever, it was about being changed so I simply didn't get angry very often. Peace isn't about learning mental and emotional techniques for calming down or thinking about a happy place, it is about being changed so that I am simply peaceful most of the time. I found that prayer, bible reading and study, meditation, just relaxing being alone with God, being with other Christians, were things that helped me spiritually grow and indeed just seemed to be things that flowed naturally out of my new nature. I also started to learn more and more about who God created me to be. I find God's presence is a constant part of my life. I've found that my trust and confidence (i.e. "faith") has simply grown over months, years, and decades as I've seen Him do tangible things in my life and others' lives. I've seen a new nature in Christ just slowly emerge over time and the old contaminated corrupted nature start to wither away. Today, I am much more the person God intended me to be that I ever was many years ago, and am enjoying life walking with Him. Anyway, that's my take on Christianity trying to not to use the standard jargon Christians usually use. I'm happy to answer any questions about stuff that's not clear. One of the challenges of explaining things in your own words instead of the standard terms is that you can sometimes be ambiguous or not clear. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hayleyv048 Posted September 1, 2018 Group: Seeker Followers: 1 Topic Count: 5 Topics Per Day: 0.00 Content Count: 12 Content Per Day: 0.01 Reputation: 4 Days Won: 0 Joined: 08/31/2018 Status: Offline Author Share Posted September 1, 2018 Wow I have no words other than thank you. Hayley Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alan Hales Posted September 1, 2018 Group: Advanced Member Followers: 3 Topic Count: 9 Topics Per Day: 0.00 Content Count: 406 Content Per Day: 0.13 Reputation: 102 Days Won: 0 Joined: 12/14/2015 Status: Offline Share Posted September 1, 2018 16 hours ago, listener24 said: That's a great question. The same question the disciples asked Jesus. (Luke 11:1-13) These are His suggestions: “And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. 6 But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. 7 And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. 8 Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. 9 “This, then, is how you should pray: “‘Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, 10 your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. 11 Give us today our daily bread. 12 And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. 13 And lead us not into temptation,[a] but deliver us from the evil one.[b]’ The prayer "thy Kingdom come" is primarily the prayer for Jesus Return. Is the same prayer in Revelation: The Spirit and the bride say, "Come!" And let the one who hears say, "Come!" (Revelation 22:17) and 20 He which testifieth these things saith, Surely I come quickly. Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus. (Revelation 22:20) With this prayer, we are taught that we are speeding up the Return of Jesus. (Luke 18:1-8, 2Peter 3:12) This prayer, when finally fulfilled, will fix at once all problems: poverty, illness, unjust governments etc. etc., because 4 ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’[a] or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.” (Revelation 21:4) Of course, keeping in mind this as the primary purpose of prayer, it is also great to talk to God about what you are going through. Not that God needs to know it from you, but it can be for your own self edification, and meanwhile you can go deeper into the Scripture while you try to understand the best thing to do in every situation. But when it comes to asking something to God, there's no more Biblical and sanctifying request than the one above from the Scriptures. If you seek the Kingdom of God and His justice first, everything else needed for the mission will be given to you without asking (Matthew 6:33) 17 hours ago, hayleyv048 said: I have no idea how to pray or what it entails. Hayley I pray with my understanding, [My own native language] I pray to God just like I would ask anyone for something. And I pray in the Spirit with my Spiritually prayer language. 1 Cor 14: 14--15. The prayer of faith, should only be prayed once, because a second time means you think God didn't answer the first prayer, whereas Faith says I have it. Thank you Lord. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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