Prayer and free will

[brinny]

Prayer and free will

Do you pray for people to be saved? If so, what are you asking God to do that He's not already doing?


Sent from my iPhone using my right thumb.

Please share your thoughts on whether we should pray that God saves the lost.

Thank you kindly.

 

[brinny]

It's still off topic for this thread.


Sent from my iPhone using my right thumb.

Please elaborate how it is off topic.

Thank you kindly.

 

[Tallguy88]

"Lord have mercy on so-and-so." If I can state the intention more specifically, I do.

 

[Hammster]

Prayer and free will



Please share your thoughts on whether we should pray that God saves the lost.

Thank you kindly.

I believe that we should pray for the lost. Specifically, that God will regenerate them. It's the only way they will be saved. If left to their "free will", they will be eternally lost.


Sent from my iPhone using my right thumb.

 

[brinny]

I believe that we should pray for the lost. Specifically, that God will regenerate them. It's the only way they will be saved. If left to their "free will", they will be eternally lost.


Sent from my iPhone using my right thumb.

I will ask you to respond to the questions you asked me. See the quotes below:

So you don't believe that God already does all those things? Does He wait for you to pray?


Sent from my iPhone using my right thumb.

Do you pray for people to be saved? If so, what are you asking God to do that He's not already doing?


Sent from my iPhone using my right thumb.

Thank you kindly.

 

[Hammster]

I will ask you to respond to the questions you asked me. See the quotes below:





Thank you kindly.

I believe that God ordains the means and the ends. So while He doesn't need anyone to pray in order for Him to save someone, He has ordered it so that our prayers to save some are effective.


Sent from my iPhone using my right thumb.

 

[MoreCoffee]

I wonder why people worry about free will or the lack of it when it is so clearly obvious that we can and do choose our course of action in whatever circumstances we're in. It seems odd to make God the cause for your own choices as if you were some helpless automaton awaiting divine instructions or running according to a divinely written software program that will run according to God's instructions as written in it with you having no more personality or choice than a vacuum cleaner or your computer.

 

[Hammster]

I wonder why people worry about free will or the lack of it when it is so clearly obvious that we can and do choose our course of action in whatever circumstances we're in. It seems odd to make God the cause for your own choices as if you were some helpless automaton awaiting divine instructions or running according to a divinely written software program that will run according to God's instructions as written in it with you having no more personality or choice than a vacuum cleaner or your computer.

Okay. Can you address the OP?


Sent from my iPhone using my right thumb.

 

[MoreCoffee]

For those who believe we have a free will, do you pray for the lost? If so, what is your prayer?


Sent from my iPhone using my right thumb.

I pray for folk recently departed from this world, for people in this world, and for the help of the saints in the next world so yes I do pray for others and hope that they pray for me, yet I do not expect God to force somebody to become a Christian or to rewrite their software (following the analogy from my previous post) to make them do what I asked for, so my prayers are for others to receive all the good things God intends for them to have and to be maintained in his grace.

But to return to the underlying point in the OP, namely that free will is somehow absent from human nature and the reality is that all creation acts out the Divine plan (or decree if you prefer that term). Thus implying that praying for the conversion of others implies that the person praying believes that God forces some to believe by subtle but irresistible means. That view of prayer and of God is incorrect. It's kind of horrible in a way. For the reasons outlined in my previous post.
​

I wonder why people worry about free will or the lack of it when it is so clearly obvious that we can and do choose our course of action in whatever circumstances we're in. It seems odd to make God the cause for your own choices as if you were some helpless automaton awaiting divine instructions or running according to a divinely written software program that will run according to God's instructions as written in it with you having no more personality or choice than a vacuum cleaner or your computer.

​

 

[Hammster]

I pray for folk recently departed from this world, for people in this world, and for the help of the saints in the next world so yes I do pray for others and hope that they pray for me, yet I do not expect God to force somebody to become a Christian or to rewrite their software (following the analogy from my previous post) to make them do what I asked for, so my prayers are for others to receive all the good things God intends for them to have and to be maintained in his grace.

But to return to the underlying point in the OP, namely that free will is somehow absent from human nature and the reality is that all creation acts out the Divine plan (or decree if you prefer that term). Thus implying that praying for the conversion of others implies that the person praying believes that God forces some to believe by subtle but irresistible means. That view of prayer and of God is incorrect. It's kind of horrible in a way. For the reasons outlined in my previous post.
​

​

So what happens in regeneration?


Sent from my iPhone using my right thumb.

 

[tango]

There's always hooks in my questions.

What are you asking God to do that He's not already doing?


Sent from my iPhone using my right thumb.

For the same reason people throughout time have asked God to do stuff for them. It's not like it's a new thing, back in the early chapters of Genesis we see people pleading with God, negotiating with God etc.

 

[Hammster]

For the same reason people throughout time have asked God to do stuff for them. It's not like it's a new thing, back in the early chapters of Genesis we see people pleading with God, negotiating with God etc.

What are you asking Him to do that He's not already doing?


Sent from my iPhone using my right thumb.

 

[MoreCoffee]

So what happens in regeneration?


Sent from my iPhone using my right thumb.

What's that got to do with the original post?

 

[Alithis]

What are you asking God to do that He's not already doing?

who says i am asking him anything of myself .. do I ,that is my flesh , care for any other ? the Spirit of God has come to reside within me .. when i pray i pray by his spirit. thus i am but declaring the will of God ..i am declaring love . i am not praying for something he is not already doing.. I am joining him in the doing of it by the laying down of my own will in submission to him .the very fact i pray for another is the love of GOD ,,(not the love of me )being shed abroad in my heart .

 

[Alithis]

I wonder why people worry about free will or the lack of it when it is so clearly obvious that we can and do choose our course of action in whatever circumstances we're in. It seems odd to make God the cause for your own choices as if you were some helpless automaton awaiting divine instructions or running according to a divinely written software program that will run according to God's instructions as written in it with you having no more personality or choice than a vacuum cleaner or your computer.

perhaps because they so desire to not lay it down preferring their "own way" to be right ...

 

[Hammster]

who says i am asking him anything of myself .. do I ,that is my flesh , care for any other ? the Spirit of God has come to reside within me .. when i pray i pray by his spirit. thus i am but declaring the will of God ..i am declaring love . i am not praying for something he is not already doing.. I am joining him in the doing of it by the laying down of my own will in submission to him .the very fact i pray for another is the love of GOD ,,(not the love of me )being shed abroad in my heart .

I'll try again. If you are praying for someone who's lost, what are you asking God to do that He hasn't already done?


Sent from my iPhone using my right thumb.

 

[Hammster]

What's that got to do with the original post?

You say that you don't think God forces anyone to become a Christian. So what happens in regeneration?


Sent from my iPhone using my right thumb.

 

[tango]

What are you asking Him to do that He's not already doing?


Sent from my iPhone using my right thumb.

Hard to know, when a prayer is answered I'm usually not able to maintain a scientific control to find out how things would have panned out had I not prayed the way I did.

It would be handy to be able to split myself into as many different universes as I needed, so I could pray in one version of reality, not pray in another, and maybe run a few dozen permutations of prayers, so I could see which ones were most effective. I'd need a totally independent observer to note untold millions of data points, so as not to introduce any bias in the observation of the results, and a means of collating data across multiple universes into a single one for analysis.

Since we don't know what God would have done anyway we either have to figure out we'll continue to petition God for the things we believe are right, or we get to a place where we might as well stop praying because God is going to do what God wants to do regardless. I don't care to go down that latter road. But maybe that was God's plan from the beginning

 

[Hammster]

Hard to know, when a prayer is answered I'm usually not able to maintain a scientific control to find out how things would have panned out had I not prayed the way I did.

It would be handy to be able to split myself into as many different universes as I needed, so I could pray in one version of reality, not pray in another, and maybe run a few dozen permutations of prayers, so I could see which ones were most effective. I'd need a totally independent observer to note untold millions of data points, so as not to introduce any bias in the observation of the results, and a means of collating data across multiple universes into a single one for analysis.

Since we don't know what God would have done anyway we either have to figure out we'll continue to petition God for the things we believe are right, or we get to a place where we might as well stop praying because God is going to do what God wants to do regardless. I don't care to go down that latter road. But maybe that was God's plan from the beginning

I appreciate the response. But it didn't answer the question I asked.

If you are praying to God for someone who is not saved, what are you hoping He does?


Sent from my iPhone using my right thumb.

 

[tango]

I appreciate the response. But it didn't answer the question I asked.

If you are praying to God for someone who is not saved, what are you hoping He does?


Sent from my iPhone using my right thumb.

The question you actually asked was "What are you asking Him to do that He's not already doing?", but no matter.

What am I hoping God does when I pray for an unsaved person? Usually that God will reveal himself in a way that is relevant to that person. So much of the testimony I've heard and experienced about how God works is in ways that many people would consider little more than a run of coincidences, but sometimes things happen that convince someone that God is real. From there it's just a question of how they respond.