Personal Prayer Blessings

[thatjimguy]

First off, I don't doubt there is a God, I have a particle of faith that one exists and a desire to live after i die keeps my faith, or rather hope, that there is one alive. I just want to eliminate the idea that I've gone all atheist or whatever.

But I have lost any hope that praying for ones self is anything more than a spiritual placebo. Sure, I get the idea of the power of positive thinking (we just went over this idea in art/propaganda class with a book called "Night", a holocaust novel where someone loses their faith), but I think that hoping too much that things will happen for you can be destructive.

I don't want to lose my testimony for the church or the gospel. However, I cannot think of any reason I should keep being so, dare I say, superstitious about it. You know, hit the Temple, go to every meeting or whatever. Pray like crazy. Try to pray as much as I can for others when I know deep inside I want to pray for myself. (and succeed and fail at different levels).

And still nothing...if anything...the situations just get worse for me and my misery sinks deeper. I just want to give up trying. That way, I may never achieve what I wish for, but then it would only hurt when I think about it.

In the end, I just end up blaming prayer. I do like the idea of prayer, since it gives me a feeling that I am doing something for someone else when I have no power to help out. My friend is dying of brain cancer...they got one tumor, but not the other, not expected to live through summer...she is a nurse, so her belief in any miracle is low to none. I can;t help her, so prayer is a nice gesture for her. It's all I can do. As pointless as I feel that can be, it does feel good to try and I know she appreciates the idea as well.

But I am sick of praying. I know that there is a guy in the Bible that waited 40 years to have a kid or so, and you could say, "just keep truckin!", but that runs old after awhile. I don't have a perfect knowledge, as none of us really do or expected to have (Alma 32), so a good part of me is saying I am halfway dead and wasting my time with prayer where I should just accept the worlds view and go with it. I just keep feeling like a fool. The reason I don't want to pray for myself is so I don't throw out the baby with the bathwater. You understand?

If it sounds like I am fishing for someone to tell me something to change my mind...well of course I am! I know you are all busy for stake conferences and such, but I can't say I want to wait. And I will appreciate your comments. But don't expect this to be easy either. I'm a little over 40 and typical textbook answers and platitudes probably wont do very well. I'm not saying this to be difficult, I'm saying this to make your life easier for those who are willing to try to help because I do appreciate that you are trying to.

[Garden Girl]

Gosh jimguy...

I'm sitting here thinking... what can I do to help you but offer the "same old platitudes" that you have dismissed among other things... you've closed the door on numerous things I might have suggested. So, what can I say... well for one thing, I do have great faith in prayer from personal experience, so I'm sitting here saying a prayer for you right now, and I have no doubt that it is heard and noted.

I can only ask that you not give up... but continue to pray, on your knees if possible. Talk to Heavenly Father, pour your heart out to him, tell him of your doubts, ask for strength and faith. When you have opened your heart to him, then just be silent and "feel" the comfort of the Spirit. One of my favorite scriptures is: Psalms 46:10..."Be still, and know that I am God..."

I encourage you jimguy...

GG

[Garden Girl]

Double post... sorry

Edited November 13, 2011 by Garden Girl

[Calm]

What about just looking onprayer as a time to take your troubles to the Lord. Forget about asking for anything, just talk?

[bluebell]

Prayer should be about worship, gratitude, and seeking to make our will the same as God's. We ask for blessings when we pray as a part of doing each of those things, it's not separate from them.

If we are reading our scriptures, praying, going to church, going to the temple just so we can make sure that we've following all the protocal so that God will answer us, then we don't understand prayer. God is not a vending machine who produces the product when all the gears line up correctly. No amount of faith can produce a result that is contrary to the will of Him who we are to have faith in.

When answers don't come, it's easy to believe that the problem is prayer itself. When that happens to me, i try to change how i pray,when i pray, and the focus of my prayers. And i also pray that i'll be able to see the answers that are coming. Sometimes i'm so focused on what i think the answers should be, that when they come in different forms i don't even see them.

In the end though, prayer is about a personal relationship with God. There's really no other way to have one with Him. Don't give up on it.

Edited November 13, 2011 by bluebell

[CV75]

If it sounds like I am fishing for someone to tell me something to change my mind...

Hopefully this isn’t a sort of request for counseling (I would think you would be talking with someone in person for that) ; if it isn’t, here are some ideas of what you may want to discuss:

Leverage the particle of faith.—ask God why you have it.

Regarding hope: figure out the difference between wishing and expecting.

Regarding faith: figure out the differences between superstition, habit, belief and assurance.

Regarding misery: figure out the differences between wickedness, remorse and depression.

Why do you blame prayer, and what do you blame it for?

How might 2 Nephi 32:8 apply to you?

[Deborah]

Prayers often become rote, wherein we basically say the same things each time. I've found myself doing that and try to think more deeply about what I am doing. I am talking to my Father in Heaven. Sometimes the point is to just have a listening ear to the heartache you are feeling and can't share with anyone else. I think if we focus on our blessings and thanking Him for those and then tell him our concerns about our own lives and those we love without even asking anything but to help us bear our burdens we can receive that comfort that gives us strength to continue.

All my children are grown but sometimes they just need to call and talk and lay out their concerns. They don't really expect me to do anything, and often I'm not in a position to do anything, but they just need to talk. I think our Heavenly Father likes it when we just talk to him and lay our burdens out before him. One of my daughters often will go on without a breath and I can't get a word in if I wanted to. I think we sometimes do that with God. We pour everything out but don't really take time to listen for a response.

Sometimes I think we get an answer but because it's not what we were expecting it's as BB said we don't recognize it and overlook it.

I do know how you feel in wanting to just give up on prayer. It sometimes feels like it is hopeless. But often when I get to that place the tiniest thing happens that shows me he's still there, but this is one I've got to get through on my own and somehow I find the strength to do so.

[supersnail]

I know that God has given the criteria by which prayerful requests will be granted. We have to pray to the Father. We have to pray in Jesus' name. We have to believe we will receive what we ask, and we have to believe it is right.

I used to struggle with this and to an extent I still do. Not long ago I was out of a job like many are. A friend encouraged me to pray. I wanted badly for my situation to improve. My situation really wasn't that dire, though, and I knew many people were worse off by far. I was skeptical of prayer in that context. It got to the point where I doubted prayer altogether and my ability to have a personal relationship with God. I was listening to Satan, who told me God did not care to listen to me at all. It was twisted.

My difficulty was with the "which is right" part. In my heart of hearts, I didn't actually know that it would have been right to receive what I wanted when so many others would remain in truly horrible situations. Maybe it would have been right, maybe it wouldn't have been--I just didn't know without a shadow of doubt. How could God grant my request when I myself don't even know if it is right?

Instead of asking for things or for God to do things for me, I have found myself desiring guidance, understanding of something I read, a sense that it is true, guidance as to what the right thing or what the right thing to do is, and for myself and others to be able to bear difficulties. It is less about what can God or this church do for me that will make my own quality of life better.

I believe God listens even though overall God's intervention in the laws of nature to grant a request at a particular time might not be concordant with the plan of salvation and so He does not do it. We ourselves realize on some level why God cannot give what everyone wants or even needs on this earth.

[thatjimguy]

I want to thank all of you for your thoughts.