I agree that this is a good summation of where our heart should be when we're praying, but there's an element of the biblical passages on prayer that I wouldn't want to dismiss so easily.

When Jesus taught his disciples how to pray, he told them to address God as Father. He told them to see God as someone who will give to his children bread when they ask for bread and not snakes instead. He told them to say "your will be done", which he modeled himself, but he also taught them to make their requests to God, which he also modeled in Gethsemane, even when he knew it wasn't going to happen. He desires for us to express the desires of our heart, and he's the sort of Father who will grant them.

I don't think it's misstating things to say that sometimes he grants the requests simply because they were made, which is a kind of causation, even if we don't want to say it's the strong kind of causation of directly causing something.
Jeremy Pierce | Email | Homepage | 2005-02-23 - 17:20 | #

FYI. I will soon feature this post on SmartChristian.com/blog. Andy
Dr. Andy Jackson | Email | Homepage | 2005-02-23 - 20:06 | #

I've gone back and forth quite a bit on this topic in my own mind for quite awhile. I had a hard time with intercessory prayer as God's plan has to be better than mine,
however I'm still stuck with:

Phi 4:6 NET Bible
do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.

although, again the Thanksgiving and prayer may serve more to bring God into our situations than to change the outcome...
Chad Winters | Email | Homepage | 2005-02-24 - 18:38 | #

..actually I used the ESV not the NET on that one...my bad!
Chad Winters | Email | Homepage | 2005-02-24 - 20:13 | #

I concur with you that praying involves changing the pray-er as well as changing the circumstances. Phil 4:6 is a very comforting verse to me in a number of ways.

The point of the thread was that people seem to make what could be considered as retroactive prayer requests all the time, and it's encouraging to know that isn't a stupid thing to do, from both a logical and psychological viewpoint.
Douglas | Email | Homepage | 2005-02-27 - 11:35 | #

Thanks guys for all of your comments and thanks to Andy as well for the link.

Chad, I am thinking that the passage in Phil 4 emphasizes "peace that passes all understanding" so that perhaps our requests may initially start at the point of the circumstances that we are in, but as we mature, we need to focus on us in the circumstances rather than the circumstances themselves.

Donald, I understand where your post was coming from, and I was trying to add to the conversation (at least from Jeremy's part of it anyway) by suggesting that it might be a hindrance to our spiritual formation by focusing on events rather than on relationship.

Jeremy, I think that there is Scriptural support for God granting our requests, but I have a suspicion that his gifts often are not exactly what we asked for, and the Scriptures probably have quite a lot of evidence for this!

TheBloke...IntheOuter | Email | Homepage | 2005-02-27 - 19:52 | #