Moderator Margee Posted January 22, 2011 Moderator Share Posted January 22, 2011 I have to admit that most of the time, I selfishly prayed (Wished) for things for myself. Yes, I would always ask at the end of my 'wish time' that God would help all the people of the world. Rarely did I pray for people's souls to be saved. Oh, yes - I always asked god, that if he wanted me to witness to someone - to put them right in my face and give me a sign that this was the person he wanted 'saved' or 'healed' from affliction. Right off the top of my head, I wished for: 1. Money was always number 1. 2. I always asked (wished) for god to put the holy spirit in my husband - This would be so he wouldn't cheat on me, lie, get into drugs or alcohol and always treat me like a 'princess'.(we eventually divorced) 3. I always prayed for my friends and family to be healed of any sickness or disease. I had 10 churches praying for my sister when she had her brain aneurysm and she still died. 4. I always wanted a 'normal' life - even though I did not know what a 'normal' life was. I just knew mine wasn't. 5. I had been plagued with depression after I accepted the Lord at 20 years old, and started to drink at 27, and I spent years praying for God to 'deliver' me from these afflictions. I stopped drinking myself at age 36 when I almost died from the alcohol) Still to this day - I suffer with 'low ly-ing depression' that I fight constantly by keeping as positive as I can! 6. I constantly remember 'praying' for god to keep the devil away from me. 7. I constantly prayed for protection on the roads, airplanes,murderers, rapists, etc... What did you 'wish'(pray) for? I'll be back with more - I'm sure! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thackerie Posted January 22, 2011 Share Posted January 22, 2011 Mainly, I prayed for God to give me faith and help me believe in him. He never answered. Or maybe he just said "no." 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Overcame Faith Posted January 22, 2011 Share Posted January 22, 2011 For god to use me in a way to further his kingdom on earth. Oh, the irony. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
par4dcourse Posted January 22, 2011 Share Posted January 22, 2011 To turn 18 and get the hell as far away from "church" as physically and mentally possible. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
excalvinist Posted January 22, 2011 Share Posted January 22, 2011 I prayed for a Godly wife and to become a Pastor. I hardly ever prayed for Money. However, there is nothing wrong or selfish praying for such things. Christians are constantley quoting the scripture, "God gives you the desires of your heart" or "Trust in the Lord with all of your heart, lean not on your own understanding", "In all of your ways acknowledge him and he will make your path strait". I prayed these two prayers everyday for thirteen years. The desires of my heart were never granted, and my path was never made strait. Therefore, I concluded that the Christian Bible gawd was either a liar, or not true. Looking back now, I would say he is not real. All those years I was praying to an imaginary friend. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oddbird1963 Posted January 22, 2011 Share Posted January 22, 2011 I prayed for things pretty similar to yours, Margee. Safety. Security, financial and physical. I prayed for wisdom, insight, understanding - I wanted to know how best to lead people because for the short time I was a pastor (years ago),I found the behavior and motivation of the flock to be quite perplexing. I really needed the "wisdom of god" and the leading of the Holy Spirit to know what to say and how to say it. I didn't hear much from god about that. I did get a lot of bumper sticker trivialities from other people about how to proceed. But the thing about bumper sticker "deepities" is that there is always plausible deniability built in. They are too vague as to be useful. Eventually I just prayed for god to show himself to me in some way meaningful to me. Presumably he knew me right down to the tiniest neuron. He supposedly knew the secrets about my inner workings that even I wasn't aware of. Surely he could translate some aspect of his being into something I could understand as a message from god and not from my imagination, or self-serving desires. But I got nothing. Eventually I just prayed, 'Please don't let me be a dumbass!" Sigh. Too late. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
flockoff Posted January 22, 2011 Share Posted January 22, 2011 I had read The Hiding Place by Corrie ten Boom when I was 16 and was greatly inspired by it. Early in the book Corrie gets her heart broken and her father, who knew better than to just say 'another one will be along,' told her to ask God to take the love she had for that person, because it was too great for her to handle. I took this advice for myself in handling a heartbreak of my own. I'm a big enough atheist to admit now that doing this actually worked. Even though there wasn't *really* a god magically receiving this love or bestowing it on that person, it worked as a placebo. I came to love that person in a healthy way of just wanting what was best. The only drawback, obviously, was getting pulled deeper into the lie that I had a "relationship" with this god, which enslaved me to religious dogma. My attitude toward prayer was that it was never so much about getting what you wanted as much as "growing in the Spirit." I thought that by "praying for earnest things" I could grow to care more about so-and-so in the hospital or so-and-so in the news than getting some new toy for myself, and that would make me a better person. I thought that by trusting in God, I could want the things he wanted and become more apt to accept "his will" when things didn't go "my way." On the face of it, that still makes a lot of sense to me. But then, there are certain aspects of "God's will" that I'm glad I didn't end up wanting. Hurricanes, floods, cancer, wars, people going to hell ... I didn't pray for any of those. And if not praising or trusting God's work when those things happened was wanting things "my way" or being selfish, then so be it. Accepting those things as the acts of a loving god who reluctantly carries them out even though he's all-powerful is a sign of madness, not maturity. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vomit Comet Posted January 22, 2011 Share Posted January 22, 2011 My number one 'wish' by a country mile was this: that He would finally hook me up with the Godly woman He had set aside for me, especially once I hit 24 and found that I was still a lonely never-had-a-girlfriend virgin, jacking off 4 times a day and beating my head against the wall. My number two wish was that the Holy Spirit would finally come through and cause the big final global revival outpouring that all the Pentecostals and Charismatics had been saying was going to hit any year. The holy rollers all around me were convinced that at any day there would be a massive revival with millions getting saved in the Los Angeles area alone, and I wanted it to happen so bad because then we wouldn't be deluded losers anymore. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hereticzero Posted January 22, 2011 Share Posted January 22, 2011 I prayed for a Godly wife and to become a Pastor. I hardly ever prayed for Money. However, there is nothing wrong or selfish praying for such things. Christians are constantley quoting the scripture, "God gives you the desires of your heart" or "Trust in the Lord with all of your heart, lean not on your own understanding", "In all of your ways acknowledge him and he will make your path strait". I prayed these two prayers everyday for thirteen years. The desires of my heart were never granted, and my path was never made strait. Therefore, I concluded that the Christian Bible gawd was either a liar, or not true. Looking back now, I would say he is not real. All those years I was praying to an imaginary friend. I think a christian who experiences self-realization for the first time almost has a religious experience, almost euphoric, and mine sent me to other denominations because I thought that my awakening from the enfluence of the cult was from god, so I thought I had to keep doing god's work. It wasn't until the events of 9-11 that I realized the complete futility of prayer. It took more than 45 years for me to kick the habit. I was also a minister with a growing ministry, small but growing. I just could not spend one more day and say, without vomiting, the stories of make-believe just because someone happens to believe it's true. I got a little angry when i thought of all the time I had spent in useless prayer, betrayal at the god, and then betrayal at the religion that encouraged the continuance of such nonsense. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hereticzero Posted January 22, 2011 Share Posted January 22, 2011 Oh yeah, what did I pray for? My number one prayer was for a liver transplant for my mother who went 13 excruciatingly painful years without a transfer. She spent about four years on the list in Denver, Colo., waiting and praying for a liver she never got. She would see others coming from other states and getting one but she did not get one. She was in her sixties and the others were younger. My other prayer was to become of the the two witnesses that were to go to Jerusalem to be martyred and bring about the end of days. I used to advertise myself as 'two of two.' I can't believe how I almost sent myself to another country to get murdered for spreading the gospel of Paul. A cult will melt your brain! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hereticzero Posted January 22, 2011 Share Posted January 22, 2011 One other thing: I believe prayer is like a self pep-talk. A person convinces themselves through prayer that god is talking to them in response. Enough prayer can make a bunch of Arabs fly several passenger jets into two world trade towers. That is the power of prayer--it bonds people into a self-controlled fantasy where they perform the act of god they prayed for. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wandering_Cookie Posted January 22, 2011 Share Posted January 22, 2011 When I was seven I prayed, quite evangelically styled of me, that beanie babies would hang from trees the next day, and I could pick them all. Man, I loooved me some beanie babies. Next day I apologized to gawd for asking for something I didn't need. XD Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Valk0010 Posted January 23, 2011 Share Posted January 23, 2011 Depends, I prayed primarily for my families health from about 17 to deconversion. Before that, 10-17, my greatest wish was god curing me of OCD. There was other things I of course I prayed for, but that one of the biggest ones. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NaturalMary63 Posted January 23, 2011 Share Posted January 23, 2011 As a child I prayed regularly to grow wings out of my back like a bird (or angel) so I could fly like I did in my dreams. I'd even check my back in the bathroom mirror, craning my neck around trying to look for the newly sprouting nubs. Never did get them. As an adult, I prayed sometimes to be able to lose weight, or win a massive amount of money, but what I prayed longest and hardest for was wisdom and understanding so that I could better know God. That wish lead me to read the Bible for the first time (at the age of 34), which lead me to trying to understand what it was saying, which lead to a decade of studying everything from ancient history to evolution to quantum mechanics. It's been a strange and cool irony to me that my efforts to understand God lead me to atheism... but I think I understand God better now than I ever hoped for back then. ;-) By the way - for anyone interested - I've started blogging here at x-xian.net about my life and religious-->irreligious journey. I invite you to check it out. http://www.ex-christian.net/index.php?/blog/142-naturalmarys-ponderings/ (I just realized I forgot to mention the praying-for-wings bit in my blog.) I'll be adding the next chapter soon. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DrummerScott Posted January 23, 2011 Share Posted January 23, 2011 I prayed heavily for god to rid myself of depression. I prayed HARD. I wished to better serve him by having a clear and normal mind. This ultimately made things much worse since I relied on him to make things better. After four years of this empty promise I left god and haven't felt better. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dagan Posted January 23, 2011 Share Posted January 23, 2011 I prayed for God to reveal himself to me and restore my faith. Guess what happened! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Temijin Posted January 23, 2011 Share Posted January 23, 2011 I prayed for god to heal the brokeness in my family. That never happened of course, and now I'm gradually accepting that I can't change my parents and what they do to hurt each other and their children is up to them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deva Posted January 23, 2011 Share Posted January 23, 2011 As a child I prayed regularly to grow wings out of my back like a bird (or angel) so I could fly like I did in my dreams. I'd even check my back in the bathroom mirror, craning my neck around trying to look for the newly sprouting nubs. Never did get them. When I was a child I did this too! I used to dream of being able to fly all the time. Then I prayed to be turned into a bird. It seemed logical to me, if God could do anything. Of course nothing happened. Same old heavy unattractive body. This might have been the first time I doubted that prayer made any difference in the way things worked out. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phanta Posted January 23, 2011 Share Posted January 23, 2011 I wanted my stepdad not to die. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Suzy Posted January 23, 2011 Share Posted January 23, 2011 1) To put my "unsaved" family members on the right track and make them accept "the Lord". It never happened - thank God . Instead now I'm here. 2) To heal my ill Christian(!) father who is tied to bed for 10 years now. Never happened. He's still tied to bed (and still a Christian). 3) To free me from my inner turmoils - fear, guilt. Well, it eventually happened: after I deconverted. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JadedAtheist Posted January 23, 2011 Share Posted January 23, 2011 I prayed for a whole bunch of different things. I prayed for the salvation of my parents. For God to reveal his will to me and give me the wisdom and maturity to follow him. I prayed for him to provide me with a godly wife and every opportunity I had came back with negative results. I desired to go to BJU but had to settle for a local seminary here. I prayed for jobs with better opportunities/pay on occasion (mostly when my work started to violate my morals) but never got them. I prayed that he would be glorified by my life and that people would never see me but only him living through me and all that rubbish. I never asked for *big* things like money and all that. The main things I wanted was a career that was manuable around my family life and a good godly wife to live with and raise a family with. I was content with that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vomit Comet Posted January 23, 2011 Share Posted January 23, 2011 Before that, 10-17, my greatest wish was god curing me of OCD. Did you pray that prayer 500 times a day in exactly the same word order? (Sorry, couldn't resist. I have AS so I kinda know the feeling.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ouroboros Posted January 24, 2011 Share Posted January 24, 2011 I prayed for God to reveal himself to me and restore my faith. Guess what happened! Same here. After many other failed prayers, of course, but, ultimately, that was the most important one Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oddbird1963 Posted January 24, 2011 Share Posted January 24, 2011 I prayed for God to reveal himself to me and restore my faith. Guess what happened! Same here. After many other failed prayers, of course, but, ultimately, that was the most important one I prayed these kinds of prayers as well. And how many times have we heard from Christian apologists that our praying was flippant and superficial or that we didn't wait long enough for an answer? Praying for the presence of god in your life is considered in most Christian circles as the most spiritual of prayers and reflective of a sincere and mature person. Yet when it doesn't come about - when god remains absent, it is "WE" who have failed and not their religion. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ouroboros Posted January 24, 2011 Share Posted January 24, 2011 I prayed these kinds of prayers as well. And how many times have we heard from Christian apologists that our praying was flippant and superficial or that we didn't wait long enough for an answer? The answer to that is, I'm still waiting. Meanwhile, my belief is suspended. Since the prayer was to fix a lack of belief, it's impossible to believe while waiting to get the answer of belief. It's like eating the cake before a piece is given to you. Praying for the presence of god in your life is considered in most Christian circles as the most spiritual of prayers and reflective of a sincere and mature person. Yet when it doesn't come about - when god remains absent, it is "WE" who have failed and not their religion. That's right. They prefer to blame the victim instead of their fairy godmother. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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