The Power Of Prayer?

 

The Power Of Prayer?

      This popular phrase almost sickens me.  To me it puts emphasis on the prayer and less on the One to whom it is given.

     Back to the working of God.  He does not manipulate.  Rather, He coordinates with Man respecting his free will.  The outcome is Man’s responsibility since it was his own actions he enacted.  So how does God intervene?

     Man is a rational being created like God capable of free thought.  My dog is a slave to inborn instinct, making it a lesser creature.  Christ died for me, not my dog.

     Man has been given a consciousness with an awareness of self-existence.  My dog’s time awareness is based on its internal biological clock.  Time to pee?  Time to pee.

     Man couples these attributes together with his imagination and arrives at conclusions determining the course of his own vessel.

     So when we pray, we ask God to intervene.  To change a situation.  Since situations largely depend on Man’s decisions, we are asking God to change men’s minds to get the desired outcome.  Sounds like witchcraft?  Very near it if we forget God is not our personal voodoo doll.

     What happens when we petition God?  He calls us to ask.  To plead at times, not to beg in a groveling sense.  Our God respects our dignity and calls us children.  We ask Him and He hears our prayers.

      If God respects our dignity not wanting us to be puppets, how does He interact with us?  All good thoughts come from above.  Since Man is base upon conception, he is incapable of manufacturing the right way within himself.  But what he is given is consideration.  God’s Spirit mingles with Man.  Upon this earth, it has been released to flow upon its face with a freedom never felt before the cross.

     God works in the power of suggestion.  Since He is the originator of all good thoughts, He is pleased to counsel Man.  Even if the man is ignorant of God, He can come to him and drop an idea into his cranium.  Not forced to obey the new thought, the man chooses a direction independently of a higher power.

     My wife and I prayed and asked God to help our son’s family care for their sick daughter.  Sleep was needed.  We turned the night over to God.  At the right time, my son and his wife used wisdom to give a medication to her that stopped the stomach flu.  Correct ideas and timing are from God.  Ministry is not by accident.  We ask His counsel to be present among us suggesting pathways.

     How does God intervene?  He largely suggests ideas.  Men make decisions.  Men move things.  Men are held accountable for their actions.  (Men encompasses women also.)

     If we were puppets, God would not be just in judging us.  Hence, He provides the sticks, and it is up to us to build.  The more good stuff you shove in your mind, the more He has to work with.

     At an early age, my wife would provide food choices to my children.  Given them two good options meant they could not fail.  At other times, candy snuck in and became a distraction.  Competition in their heads brought out their freewill which we could not legally control.  At an older age, my children make decisions bearing more weight than a Snickers bar.  I trust the stuff I shoved into them at a young age gives good fodder for the Holy Spirit to work with them now.

     The power of prayer?  Witchcraft He does not know.  Santa Claus, He refuses.  Simple requests to do what we can’t, He honors.

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