There are so many misleading things said about 'prayer' that it seems to me yet another subject on which we must each, individually, seek clarification from intuition and by communing with the Holy Ghost.
For example, I don't suppose that a typical modern Man will get anything positive simply from 'saying prayers' - because it would, to him, simply be just that: saying some words.
Before prayer can have an effect, there may well be a need to clarify some very basic things - such as that there is a creator, and the creator is a personal God, and perhaps too that that personal God creator loves us individually.
If someone can get such matters somewhat clear, then he can pray - effectually.
Or, maybe that is what his prayer might consist in: the inner desire to understand such matters.
Before I could pray with effect and benefit, I myself needed to sort-out that there was a loving Father and personal God. And then I had some immediate effects of prayer which pushed me over the edge into becoming a Christian.
But many,
many times, in earlier years, I had said prayers of many and various kinds but without any clear idea of what I was doing - and these 'prayers' did no good
at all - so far as I could see.
In other words; the modern problem is deep and metaphysical - based on false basic assumptions, that are not even recognized as assumptions but instead habitual and/or regarded as necessarily true because supposedly massively 'evidenced'.
(There is no empirical 'evidence' relating to genuine basic metaphysical assumptions; on the contrary, it is these assumptions that determine what counts as evidence.)
Somehow or another; modern Man needs to get down to these depths (to his real-and-divine self, below the surface 'personality'); and discard these demonically-implanted falsehoods sufficiently to be able to pray.
At that point (only), he will become free; and can thenceforth intuit everything he needs to know for salvation (and theosis), by using the powers of discernment that we all posses.
But the common injunction of Christian evangelists for mainstream modern leftist-materialist-atheists to 'pray' about stuff, is almost certain to be a complete waste of time; leading to disappointment, disillusion and potentially hardening the mainstream anti-Christian prejudice that afflicts almost everyone.
5 comments:
Very helpful
@Nova - It is a principle of this blog that generic advice to unfamiliar people is usually bad advice. Each person's destiny and situation is specific; which means that only those who are familiar with both (if any such persons exist) can advise - otherwise we each must use our God-given discernment.
@Bruce
Understood, Bruce. However you actually provided the answer I needed to hear anyhow:
"we each must use our God-given discernment"
Thank you Bruce, this was my intuition many years ago - that man *should* be able to fully know Jesus Christ even if he was alone on an island (or even a prison, without full access to nature) without books, etc.
Unlike you, I was never able to pursue it further - but it is certainly something that has gnawed at the back of my mind.
You've clarified that "each person's destiny and situation is specific", so we know even now - when perhaps we are in a worse situation (with conflicting external information about the good, with constant deceptions from the enemy) we can still discern God and the truth.
@MA - A further factor is what we knew as pre-mortal spirits.
Presumably we then knew about Jesus, and what he had done - probably we all met and knew him. I some way, we still know this - albeit seldom explicitly and seldom with any direct memory of it.
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