Why Pray "thy Will Be Done?"

[Teancum]

So true.

We do not pray to change God.  We pray for God to change us and our circumstances.

Really? So if your child is has a life threatening disease what do you pray for?

[Teancum]

Thank you, Mr. Spock.

I like Spock. So do you have an answer ?

[Kenngo1969]

Is it? Who says so? Jesus said ask and it shall be given. He said nothing about aligning our will with God's. He said ask.

Yet still is God omniscient? If yes he knows the end. If your child has cancer do you ask God first whether you should pray your child is healed so your will aligns? Or do your just beg God to heal your child. And if yes how can your payers or mine for your child change the outcome if God is omniscient?

I'm not going to try to convince you of my point of view, Teancum.  I'm reminded of that old saying about what happens when someone tries to wrestle with a pig: both parties get dirty, but the pig likes it.   Your mind clearly is made up on the matter, and I'm not going to try to change it.  Have a nice day.

[Kenngo1969]

I like Spock. So do you have an answer ?

Alas, if only all of us were Vulcan!   No.  Stamp your little foot and shake your little fist all you like; your mind clearly is made up, and I'm not going to try to change it. Have a nice day. 

 

P.S.: Have fun in your world where logic holds sway with a vice grip.  As for the rest of us, well, "The heart knows reasons that reason knows not of."  Me?  I prefer Data: even though he was very analytical, he still knew he was missing something without the ability to feel emotion.

Edited July 19, 2015 by Kenngo1969

[Kenngo1969]

Really? So if your child is has a life threatening disease what do you pray for?

God's will to be done, the faith to accept whatever outcome He wills, and if necessary, the fortitude to deal with the aftermath if the outcome isn't the one we hoped for: "The Lord giveth, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord," said Job.

[Kenngo1969]

If God knows the outcome our prayers have no influence. Logic dictates as such.

I lack the intellectual heft and the philosophical background to talk about this in detail, but some people posit a limited foreknowledge, whereby God knows everything that can be known, but not necessarily future events, at least, not all of them.

[Teancum]

I lack the intellectual heft and the philosophical background to talk about this in detail, but some people posit a limited foreknowledge, whereby God knows everything that can be known, but not necessarily future events, at least, not all of them.

Yes I understand this position. It is a reasonable idea but not one that resonates with Christians or even LDS orthodoxy and scripture.

[Avatar4321]

It seems to me that if you at saying thy will be done while giving blessings you aren't giving the blessings right. Blessings are to be given under the influence of the spirit. And if they are they are the will of God.

[Mars]

Yes I understand this position. It is a reasonable idea but not one that resonates with Christians or even LDS orthodoxy and scripture.

 

i'm fairy orthodox.  it resonates with me.

 

~shrugs~

 

we're meant to discover God's will and follow it.  in some measures we're allowed to act as His delegates in determining what His will would be.  He grants us space to figure it out, try it out, make mistakes, but ultimately get it right.

 

asking for a sick child to be healed, for an aged grandfather to be released from life, teaching a child to pray by asking God help the child be comforted...  these are great and small blessings that we are invited to ask for.

 

it's the non-believer's opinion, that i've encountered at least, that all this is just convenient belief.  if the sick child was healed, it was God's will.  if the sick child dies, then the death was God's will, too - we believers are sometimes demonstrated to be making it up to fit whatever we find in front of us.  (all of this is to say nothing of the disgust some non-believers express at the idea that God could be less concerned with starving children in Africa but be very interested in helping me find my keys.)

 

i admit it's fair critique.  it doesn't really make sense until you believe in God and believe that us discovering His will and trying to mimic it by obtaining God-like wisdom - which is to say, that we could predict what His will would be - is all done primarily through prayer.

 

that it opens relevatory channels, that it imbues a sense of awe, that it imbues a sense of comfort, that it communicates wisdom and unearthly concepts and the like...  i get that it sounds messed up.  but it doesn't to me.

 

remind me, teancum, are you no longer believing in God in any fashion at all?  or are you left without meaningful confidence in Deity's presence nor Deity's interaction with humans that despite your openness to the possibility that Deity is there, Deity may as well not be?

Edited July 19, 2015 by Mars

[bluebell]

If God knows the outcome our prayers have no influence. Logic dictates as such.

So not true, but I'll have to elaborate later.

Knowledge does not force a specific outcome though.

[JLHPROF]

Really? So if your child is has a life threatening disease what do you pray for?

 

Exactly what I said.  We pray for God to change those circumstances or to change us to deal with them.  We do not pray to change God.

Unless you are implying God is the source of disease, because that's an entirely different issue and false doctrine according to Christ.

Edited July 20, 2015 by JLHPROF

[Mars]

lol "fairy orthodox"

 

i meant fairly but you probably guessed that...

[bluebell]

If God knows the outcome our prayers have no influence. Logic dictates as such.

 

Think of it this way.  If you know someone REALLY well, you probably know what they are going to do in any given circumstance, right?  (Obviously, you won't know it with 100% outcome, but then you can never really know someone 100% here in mortality so it all even's out).

 

I don't remember if you have kids.  I do.  I know them really really well, like most parents.  I can predict with really good accuracy how they are going to respond in certain circumstances.  In some cases i would say that my predictions are accurate up to 95% of the time (depending on the subject).  

 

So, when i tell my middle son to do something that i know he doesn't want to do, and he responds exactly how i believed he would respond, does that mean, because i knew the outcome of his actions, that his desires and will had no influence?  Did my knowledge some how force him to behave in a specific way.  No and no.

 

Now, imagine how good I would be at predicting his actions and reactions if i actually did know every single thing about him, including his thought processes and every experience he'd ever had, his mood, his memories, his goals,-all of it.  I would likely be omniscient as far as he was concerned.  But even that level of knowledge would not negate his agency in any way.  

 

Neither would it mean that I would no longer parent him. I would still give him rules, i would still require him to speak to me in a certain way, to ask for things he needs, to perform tasks that i knew he didn't want to do, etc.  It's by doing all those things that he grows and matures.   

 

In short, to use another analogy, knowing how a movie is going to end has no affect on how the movie actual ends.  The screen writers, director, and actors maintain full and complete influence, regardless of my knowledge.  

[strappinglad]

Yup, the Titanic sinks. End of story !!

[Kenngo1969]

lol "fairy orthodox"

 

i meant fairly but you probably guessed that...

I dunno.    I've known some fairly orthodox fairies.

[Kenngo1969]

Think of it this way.  If you know someone REALLY well, you probably know what they are going to do in any given circumstance, right?  (Obviously, you won't know it with 100% outcome, but then you can never really know someone 100% here in mortality so it all even's out).

 

I don't remember if you have kids.  I do.  I know them really really well, like most parents.  I can predict with really good accuracy how they are going to respond in certain circumstances.  In some cases i would say that my predictions are accurate up to 95% of the time (depending on the subject).  

 

 

 

Bluebell, you're a horrible mother ... forcing your children to behave in certain ways so you can feign omniscience and claim that you could predict what they're going to do!  It's shocking!

[Meadowchik]

I suppose, for me, it's more like saying to God that I know I'm to call for help in faith and ask for needed blessings, but I know that even I don't know all, and thus I don't know all that is needed.  So, first, any prayer is really about asking for help to align myself with God's will.  Yet I won't hesitate to ask for something miraculous when I feel so moved.  Saying "according to Thy will" helps keep me humble.

[HappyJackWagon]

Exactly what I said.  We pray for God to change those circumstances or to change us to deal with them.  We do not pray to change God.

Unless you are implying God is the source of disease, because that's an entirely different issue and false doctrine according to Christ.

This is my point. We pray for God to change the circumstances we find undesireable and replace them with better circumstances. The point is God does not change our circumstances because we ask for them. His will must be done and we're NOT going to change him so why bother with the prayer to begin with? His will WILL be done either way.

[Vanguard]

This is my point. We pray for God to change the circumstances we find undesireable and replace them with better circumstances. The point is God does not change our circumstances because we ask for them. His will must be done and we're NOT going to change him so why bother with the prayer to begin with? His will WILL be done either way.

 

Again, IMO it's not about changing our circumstances but rather what I conclude about them once those circumstances roll out before my eyes. Had I been praying to my Father to accept his will I may well conclude things that will enliven me to seek a more intimate relationship with Him and had I not been praying, I may well conclude it was simply dumb luck or the actions of a malevolent God seeking to punish me or some such. And that HJW, makes a BIG practical difference when those myriad experiences are compounded out over many decades.  

[Vanguard]

It seems to me that if you at saying thy will be done while giving blessings you aren't giving the blessings right. Blessings are to be given under the influence of the spirit. And if they are they are the will of God.

 

I don't agree with this at all. Blessings are given regardless of the whether the individual is under the influence of the spirit. The individual's spirituality has nothing to do with it. Those who we might consider to be detestable morally are blessed on a daily basis from their God and many times in ways far greater than those who we might consider spiritually upright. The difference is that the "detestables" are more likely not to conclude that indeed these blessing came from a loving God thereby denying themselves the opportunity to grow closer to him. 

[Maedros]

Is it? Who says so? Jesus said ask and it shall be given. He said nothing about aligning our will with God's. He said ask.

Yet still is God omniscient? If yes he knows the end. If your child has cancer do you ask God first whether you should pray your child is healed so your will aligns? Or do your just beg God to heal your child. And if yes how can your payers or mine for your child change the outcome if God is omniscient?

Indeed: ask and it shall be given but does he always give, do we always receive what we ask for and exercise faith in? NO we don't - and what we learn from that is humility; we get a taste of the bitter cup that we must drink despite our faith and good works. Because of these experiences we learn that God does not answer all our prayers; and because of those experiences of prayers not being answered and having to deal with the disappointment of it we learn to pray with "Thy Will and not mine be done" or if I don't get what I desire then its okay: Thy Will be done and the glory be thine because of all the other times when we didn't get what we wanted. I would say that its a way of safeguarding ourselves. The Saviour prayed for the bitter cup to be removed although he knew that it couldn't be removed unless he drank it then he said: Thy Will be done. So truly he never instructed us to pray like that, we learned that from the experience of not getting what we want.

[HappyJackWagon]

It seems to me that if you at saying thy will be done while giving blessings you aren't giving the blessings right. Blessings are to be given under the influence of the spirit. And if they are they are the will of God.

 

So any blessing that does not come to pass is because 1- the giver didn't have enough faith 2- the receiver didn't have enough faith 3- The giver wasn't in tune with the will of God.

 

Lots of good non-verifiable excuses for why a blessing won't work. We would also need to accept that even prophets were not in tune with the will of God when their blessings were not realized as stated. If we accept that then we must also accept that there are other times when a prophet speaks that he is not in tune with the will of God. See the problem?

[Mars]

So any blessing that does not come to pass is because 1- the giver didn't have enough faith 2- the receiver didn't have enough faith 3- The giver wasn't in tune with the will of God.

 

Lots of good non-verifiable excuses for why a blessing won't work. We would also need to accept that even prophets were not in tune with the will of God when their blessings were not realized as stated. If we accept that then we must also accept that there are other times when a prophet speaks that he is not in tune with the will of God. See the problem?

 

it is difficult to sort out what is of God and isn't.  i don't agree that it's problematic.

[Kenngo1969]

I once heard a high councilor (he's now a counselor in my former Stake Presidency) give a talk on prayer in which he posited one of four possible answers to prayer: (1) Yes, (2) No, (3) Not yet, and (4) What do you think?  Perhaps we recieve the third and fourth answers to our prayers more often than we realize.

Edited July 20, 2015 by Kenngo1969

[HappyJackWagon]

I once heard a high councilor (he's now a counselor in my Stake Presidency) give a talk on prayer in which he posited one of four possible answers to prayer: (1) Yes, (2) No, (3) Not yet, and (4) What do you think?  Perhaps we recieve the third and fourth answers to our prayers more often than we realize.

I think 3 and 4 would be the most common by far. It seems God wants us to work things out and make our own decisions instead of being told what to do. To me this also means that he is accepting of wide variability in action and belief.