Andrewofthetribe
Well-Known Member
If your about to die then YES PRAY NOW if there is a chance you can get help then no leave your prayers until you are sorted. Good luck
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Andrewofthetribe
Well-Known Member
Where do you live my friend it sounds like you are in the bowels of hell?
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Steve Petersen
Senior Veteran
I completely relate. There is no point in praying IMO. You end up having to rationalize the perceived outcome anyway.
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Andrewofthetribe
Well-Known Member
Is there no Christian spirit where you live? Seek out other Christians in your area, you will know them by their fruits, join hands with your brothers and sisters and rejoice our Lord and saviour Jesus Christ
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Andrewofthetribe
Well-Known Member
What would be the point of your life if you were to give up now ?
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- Jan 10, 2010
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God has heard all your past prayers as well as your future prayers. He heard them before He formed the world and He arranged for your life at that time. All your prayers were answered. The purpose of prayer is that it pleases God, and it helps you see/feel that His plans for your are correct. The only "work" for you is to practice trust in God. He heard all your past and future prayers and answered them. See Answered Prayer below.
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Andrewofthetribe
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Humble yourself on to your knees my friend and place your forehead on the floor, do this alone, in secret, let your soul praise the Lord and beg to become his servant, hopefully the Lord Jesus will hear your cries and wash you with his Holy Spirit.
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Radrook
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Now you have become my judge!
My faith in Jesus' sacrifice is the only washing I need. Furthermore, I live a life of a veritable monk. The only thing missing is the monastery and the monk attire and maybe shaving the back of my head. So what is he going to wash? My pate?
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Tinyarch
Well-Known Member
Prayer aligns us and humbles us as we seek God's will. God is not our personal genie. We don't come into his presence with a list of demands. We are in the presence of the Sovereign King of the Universe who has the right and authority to cast us out of his presence. Yet, he says "Welcome, come to me, you who are weary." He does not promise that he will grant all our list of demands. He promises to listen and grant us rest from our strife. In his love he grants peace.
Over the past few years I have had five immediate family members die from cancer or incurable disease. God chose to bring each person to heaven rather than heal. He said no to my list of demands in prayer, yet he granted deep peace and an empathy I never had before.
In 2011, I was laid-off and it wasn't until 2015 that I was granted a full-time job again. God didn't immediately grant my plea for a full-time job, but he provided what was needed and he used the time to show me he never leaves nor forsake his child whom he adopted.
I can tell you that I did cry out and I did find myself in the depth of the valley of death. But, even there, in my deepest despair, God was with me. He heard my screams of anguish as my soul was crushed. He held me close as he said no to healing and no to a full-time job. He granted me those moments of peace. As C H Spurgeon said, "I have learned to kiss the wave that tosses me onto the Rock of Ages."
Life is hard. The path of the cross is filled with suffering and sorrow. Yet, in the present moment, even as you read these words, God is kindly holding you close.
The place where heaven and earth meet in reality is in the now. The past is past. The future may never come. But, at this moment, God meets with us and wraps his arms around us in love.
Walk in step with the Spirit of God in the now. It's the best place to be.
Keep looking up. The Son is still shining!
Peace be with you.
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Andrewofthetribe
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Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.
(James 1:2-4)
God does discipline us, but He also allows suffering and various trials to happen to us to produce perseverance, and steadfastness, for the sake of our sanctification and His glory.
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Faith and prayer... Without works... Are dead...
1. Pray
2. Go out on faith
3. Return to step one
Here is the story of the Saint of these Virginia mountains, who had the ultimate prayer life...
1. Pray
2. Go out on faith
3. Return to step one
Here is the story of the Saint of these Virginia mountains, who had the ultimate prayer life...
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God acts according to His will, but His will may be to work through your prayer, without which the thing you ask for would not happen.
It's like you're about to turn on a kettle to boil some water, but you tell yourself "what's the point, when according to God's will the water should boil anyway?" Well... no, you still have to turn the kettle on.
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Robert Sheffey described by George Clark Rankin...
I passed my examinations and that year I was sent to the Wytheville Station and Circuit. That was adjoining my former charge. We reached the old parsonage on the pike just out of Wytheville as Rev. B. W. S. Bishop moved out. Charley Bishop was then a little tow-headed boy. He is now the learned Regent of Southwestern University. The parsonage was an old two-and-a-half-story structure with nine rooms and it looked a little like Hawthorne's house with the seven gables. It was the lonesomest-looking old house I ever saw. There was no one there to meet us, for we had not notified anybody of the time we would arrive.
Think of taking a young bride to that sort of a mansion! But she was brave and showed no sign of disappointment. That first night we felt like two whortleberries in a Virginia tobacco wagonbed. We had room and to spare, but it was scantily furnished with specimens as antique as those in Noah's ark. But in a week or so we were invited out to spend the day with a good family, and when we went back we found the doors fastened just as we had left them, but when we entered a bedroom was elegantly furnished with everything modern and the parlor was in fine shape. The ladies had been there and done the work. How much does the preacher owe to the good women of the Church!
The circuit was a large one, comprising seventeen appointments. They were practically scattered all over the county. I preached every other day, and never less than twice and generally three times on Sunday.
I had associated with me that year a young collegemate, Rev. W. B. Stradley. He was a bright, popular fellow, and we managed to give Wytheville regular Sunday preaching. Stradley became a great preacher and died a few years ago while pastor of Trinity Church, Atlanta, Georgia. We were true yokefellows and did a great work on that charge, held fine revivals and had large ingatherings.
The famous Cripple Creek Campground was on that work. They have kept up campmeetings there for more than a hundred years. It is still the great rallying point for the Methodists of all that section. I have never heard such singing and preaching and shouting anywhere else in my life. I met the Rev. John Boring there and heard him preach. He was a well-known preacher in the conference; original, peculiar, strikingly odd, but a great revival preacher.
One morning in the beginning of the service he was to preach and he called the people to prayer. He prayed loud and long and told the Lord just what sort of a meeting we were expecting and really exhorted the people as to their conduct on the grounds. Among other things, he said we wanted no horse- trading and then related that just before kneeling he had seen a man just outside the encampment looking into the mouth of a horse and he made such a peculiar sound as he described the incident that I lifted up my head to look at him, and he was holding his mouth open with his hands just as the man had done in looking into the horse's mouth! But he was a man of power and wrought well for the Church and for humanity.
The rarest character I ever met in my life I met at that campmeeting in the person of Rev. Robert Sheffy, known as "Bob" Sheffy. He was recognized all over Southwest Virginia as the most eccentric preacher of that country. He was a local preacher; crude, illiterate, queer and the oddest specimen known among preachers. But he was saintly in his life, devout in his experience and a man of unbounded faith. He wandered hither and thither over that section attending meetings, holding revivals and living among the people. He was great in prayer, and Cripple Creek campground was not complete without "Bob" Sheffy. They wanted him there to pray and work in the altar.
He was wonderful with penitents. And he was great in following up the sermon with his exhortations and appeals. He would sometimes spend nearly the whole night in the straw with mourners; and now and then if the meeting lagged he would go out on the mountain and spend the entire night in prayer, and the next morning he would come rushing into the service with his face all aglow shouting at the top of his voice. And then the meeting always broke loose with a floodtide.
He could say the oddest things, hold the most unique interviews with God, break forth in the most unexpected spasms of praise, use the homeliest illustrations, do the funniest things and go through with the most grotesque performances of any man born of woman.
It was just "Bob" Sheffy, and nobody thought anything of what he did and said, except to let him have his own way and do exactly as he pleased. In anybody else it would not have been tolerated for a moment. In fact, he acted more like a crazy man than otherwise, but he was wonderful in a meeting. He would stir the people, crowd the mourner's bench with crying penitents and have genuine conversions by the score. I doubt if any man in all that conference has as many souls to his credit in the Lamb's Book of Life as old "Bob" Sheffy.
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Here is a story of a lady who went against the will and got her request...
1 And he spake a parable unto them to this end, that men ought always to pray, and not to faint;
2 Saying, There was in a city a judge, which feared not God, neither regarded man:
3 And there was a widow in that city; and she came unto him, saying, Avenge me of mine adversary.
4 And he would not for a while: but afterward he said within himself, Though I fear not God, nor regard man;
5 Yet because this widow troubleth me, I will avenge her, lest by her continual coming she weary me.
6 And the Lord said, Hear what the unjust judge saith.
7 And shall not God avenge his own elect, which cry day and night unto him, though he bear long with them?
8 I tell you that he will avenge them speedily. Nevertheless when the Son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth?
Notes....
1. It was not the will of the judge to do anything at all for this woman.
2. The judge wanted nothing to do with this woman and was eager to get her off his back..
3. Assuredly... The judge did not care to avenge her adversaries and had no interest in her case
But....
She kept coming back!
Kept coming back!
Kept coming back!
After a while she wearied the judge and he gave her what she had need of. This is the same way with God the Father. There may be cares and issues in our life that he appears to care nothing about. It also may appear our requests are outside his will. But like the widow in the story there is hope that if we cry unto God the Father in Jesus name, and stay daily in prayer and faith, that we will see our requests made. I must say also... It is not the will of God for a revival to occur. If no one has interest in prayer a revival will never come to town... However... If we do like the widow in the story... And keep coming back.. Keep coming back... Keep coming back! There is great hope for revival! And whatever else you have in need of prayer!
1 And he spake a parable unto them to this end, that men ought always to pray, and not to faint;
2 Saying, There was in a city a judge, which feared not God, neither regarded man:
3 And there was a widow in that city; and she came unto him, saying, Avenge me of mine adversary.
4 And he would not for a while: but afterward he said within himself, Though I fear not God, nor regard man;
5 Yet because this widow troubleth me, I will avenge her, lest by her continual coming she weary me.
6 And the Lord said, Hear what the unjust judge saith.
7 And shall not God avenge his own elect, which cry day and night unto him, though he bear long with them?
8 I tell you that he will avenge them speedily. Nevertheless when the Son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth?
Notes....
1. It was not the will of the judge to do anything at all for this woman.
2. The judge wanted nothing to do with this woman and was eager to get her off his back..
3. Assuredly... The judge did not care to avenge her adversaries and had no interest in her case
But....
She kept coming back!
Kept coming back!
Kept coming back!
After a while she wearied the judge and he gave her what she had need of. This is the same way with God the Father. There may be cares and issues in our life that he appears to care nothing about. It also may appear our requests are outside his will. But like the widow in the story there is hope that if we cry unto God the Father in Jesus name, and stay daily in prayer and faith, that we will see our requests made. I must say also... It is not the will of God for a revival to occur. If no one has interest in prayer a revival will never come to town... However... If we do like the widow in the story... And keep coming back.. Keep coming back... Keep coming back! There is great hope for revival! And whatever else you have in need of prayer!
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I agree that God may work through continuous, perseverant and repeated prayer, but I'm not sure the parable is directly transferable in that these prayers are truly 'against God's will'. If they are against God's will, they aren't really the best for us, as God wills what is best for us. We probably agree with each other, just checking.
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