Rip Rokken wrote:I've heard the advice directly from a few people, so someone must be out there teaching it. I'm guessing it comes from the concept that people in the Bible often had to plead with God (and sometimes Jesus directly) to get him to listen and help them. Not much time to look into it now so I'm not sure how relevant these are, but here are a few quick references I found from a Google search:
http://ilifejourney.wordpress.com/2010/ ... st-to-god/Or consider that 60% of the Psalms are laments with people screaming out, “God, where are You?” As Lynn Anderson observes, “Normal faith is allowed to beat on God’s chest and complain.”http://choicesthatmatter.blogspot.com/2 ... stian.htmlA good friend said to me once, “God’s chest is big enough to handle your fists pounding on it.”http://www.brigittestraub.com/?p=364"We ALL go through things in this life…and we all have to work them out. Let’s just beat on the chest of God together! Do it! I dare you! It will feel so good…Let’s go to God with all of it! Believe me…He can handle anything. No sense in hiding or feeling all alone. I wish someone would have helped me with that years ago. Even though I was in the company of many, I somehow still felt all alone. That really needn’t be so! Oh…let’s share our stuff, let others help carry our burden’s and then enjoy the arms of the many that long to come around us and hold us up…and if, by any chance, you feel like you don’t have anyone…absolutely no one…God WILL provide! He always does! He is constant, doesn’t change and is absolutely faithful!"
I will definitely have to pay attention to this expression a bit more and see if I can learn more to understand this concept of "beating God up" to get Him to answer our prayers. For my personal belief, I have always pretty much felt God is going to hear my plea, no matter how it comes across. I can be yelling up to Heaven, or I could simply be quiet in a corner somewhere sending up prayers privately. I can only assume that expression is meant as to the measure of sincerity in the prayer, but then again, I could be wrong.
Rip Rokken wrote:I've also heard it expressed in different ways, like it's ok to scream at God, or beat on his door. And again my question - why would this even be necessary?
It's not. God hears our prayers and I do believe He deals with them the best way He sees fit. If that means not answering them right away, or not answering them in a way that we feel should be answered (i.e., praying for someone who is dying of Cancer or for Saint John to love Steve Perry...lol) those prayers are heard. Certainly, it would sound as if God would ignore prayers, which we would think kind of cruel. However, I have to keep in mind that again, it's all on God's time. Somehow, He knows the perfect timing for everything. Maybe He is waiting on something in our own lives that we need to get rid of before we could truly pay attention to the blessing He is about to give us? All I know is, we can bring our burdens to Him, but it also has a lot to do with that "Faith" word that people tend to shy away from. We have to have faith that God allows things to happen for a reason. We don't understand it always, at least not at first.
Rip Rokken wrote:Regarding my prayer life, that's a commonly offered perception but not the case. Like most Christians, my patterns of prayer evolved over time as I kept trying to find the most effective style of praying -- silent, out loud (alone or in worship groups), standing, sitting, kneeling, or prostrate... in standard English or in tongues (which didn't last long). And of course, what to pray for and in what order. I outgrew most of the selfish prayers pretty quickly -- praying for things, or that God would find me a girlfriend, or get her to forgive me for something stupid I did, lol. Those were gone pretty quick.
The last several years I always started out prayers with praise, for the forgiveness of my sins (necessary to enter into the "Holy Place" and worship in spirit), and for God's interests (his coming kingdom, that his will be done, etc - the pattern given to us by the Lord's Prayer). Any prayers for myself were generally for growth in Christian character - that he help with with wisdom, strength, and just to develop a strong heart for him and his purposes -- I wanted real and lasting growth more than anything. Occasionally I would pray for personal situations - the "Which way should I go, Lord?" type of prayer. But the large bulk of my specific prayers were intercessory -- for others and their situations. That people would get saved or come to know the Lord, be healed of a health situation, or be helped thru a difficult time. When you pray you become emotionally invested in the outcome -- of course you want fulfillment in those prayers. You want people to accept Christ, be healed, get thru tough times. When it doesn't happen, there can be a lot of disappointment. I noticed over time that I, like many, had started dumbing my prayers down to just presenting situations to the Lord out of concern, and asking that his will be done. Not asking for an outcome made it much more easy to live with whatever happened next. None of this was really conscious - it was manly subconscious, an internal shift that I finally caught and recognized. The reason is because even if I couldn't admit it to myself, prayer simply was not working the way it should, and the Bible's promises were not true.
So, is it that you were searching for how to pray? Or, what is the most effective way to pray that would reach God and have Him answer your prayers? I think what you say about being emotionally invested, that's great in that it shows sincerity. But, again, it also has a lot to do with faith. We pray wholeheartedly for the healing of someone, and we are sincere. We don't want to seem them lost to some deadly disease or we don't want them to be angry at us for some reason. And yes, I understand where you are coming from in wanting "dumb" down your prayers. You don't want to get to technical in what all you want....you really want the prayers answered, but you're afraid to ask for too much? Yes, God's Will is always what will happen. What it starts with, Rip, is us wanting the same thing that God wants. We want what is God's Will, not necessarily what we hoped would be God's Will. We can ask and say "If it be your Will God" but it may be and He might have another plan. Does that make any sense?
Rip Rokken wrote:I also noticed a lot of falsity in the prayers of others. I knew someone who told me they prayed while taking a hot bath with some candles and aromatherapy stuff floating in the water -- that it helped them open up to God. To me, that was no different that eating peyote and sitting in a smoke lodge to contact the spirit world - there was nothing spiritual about it. There are so many things people add to their worship practices, like rock music, huge sound systems, etc -- they are just (as Dave said) tickling their senses. Why is this necessary for so many people to believe they are experiencing God? It's the same thing with these mega-worship conferences, where you see a stadium-sized group of believers holding their arms up to God. Every one of them walks out of that stadium "on fire" for Christ, but it's really nothing more than group-think and surges of adrenaline and dopamine. You get quite the same effect when you walk out of a football stadium after your son's team kicks ass in the State Championships.
I think people get too wrapped up in rituals rather than the actual relationship with God. The mega-churches kind of scare me in a way. I think, often, these churches become so big because they are trying to put the most attractive product out there, instead of maybe what the truth is. Not saying this is true for all huge churches/conferences, but as Dave said - something to tickle their senses. It's OK to be entertained, but it's also necessary to find a strong bible believing church that will preach the word without taking away or adding to - often those churches are very small.
Rip Rokken wrote:There have been several double-blind studies on prayer that showed no difference at all in the outcomes of people being prayed for vs. those who weren't. Interestingly, one study of cardiac patients actually showed that those who were told they were being prayed for actually fared a little worse, probably because it built up anticipation. I know people will say, "You can't test or measure God", and believe that he just refused to participate because he was being questioned by secular scientists. Then where is the glory? Shouldn't there be something that we can look at which proves that prayer actually does make a difference?
But you know yourself you really can't use a scientific approach to measure God. How can you truthfully measure faith beyond someone displaying a visual lack of or strength in faith? I can't really seem to wrap my mind around a case study such as this? I don't see how it can prove or disprove that prayer works or not. Shouldn't it first prove that God exists? If so, then I think it's jumping the gun to assume that we could measure the validity of prayer if we first haven't proven the existence of God through science.
