Would you agree with this statement or not?

Question

''People who pray do it because that's how they choose to deal with their life.''

I personally find it enlightening. It's like tossing all your baggage in God's direction and letting Him deal with it. But then again, that's how I interpret it. Any thoughts?

Have a nice day, by the way :)

Icarus, exactly my thoughts. It's like they lack courage to deal with life on their own.

Answer 1

People pray as a psychological release. By praying, they feel that they have actually done something to help when they can't or don't really want to. When people pray for the sick, they truly want the person to get better, but why not just pray instead of helping the person to a doctor's appointment? Because they don't want to help that much, so they throw it to god instead.

Answer 2

I am a praying Christian and my experience has been that prayer IS for us and if expressing our needs and tapping into spiritual energy helps us to cope with hard times and to go on and love others then I fail to see how this is a weakness or lack of courage rather than a natural human response to the natural impulse to connect with an ultimate purpose.

Furthermore, CG Jung and Abraham Maslow have demonstrated that this sort of connection among unconscious, consciousness, life, and action is required for becoming an integrated or self-actualized person. Yet still more, scientific studies have shown that people who pray have better health (http://www.beliefnet.com/story/69/story_6991_1.html). Both of these findings are completely independent from the question of whether there really is a deity we are praying to or it's just a figment of our imaginations.

Answer 3

Disagree. I pray because I know I don't have all the answers and can't solve all problems. Do you? Can you?

On occasion, God has answered my prayers in dramatic fashion. He has led me in directions I never would have chosen on my own.

For example, my son was a teenager, becoming oppositional. He had been in 'gifted and talented' classes in elementary school, but middle school was too much for him to handle due to his attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. So he started to hang out with kids who thought it was cool to get bad grades. Though I spent 2 hours supervising his homework each night, encouraging and praising him, he would typically lose it or simply not turn it in.

At my wits' end, I asked God to guide me. To hear God's voice, I admitted all of this embarassing detail to Christian friends of mine. The very first mentioned a school I had never heard of. He said that his parents had sent him there and it was a wonderful place.

Fork Union Military Academy, a Baptist affiliated military school, was the last place I would have chosen for my son. Military schools, I thought, were for truly bad kids, not my son. And Baptist? No way I thought. So I asked more people, 6 more times folks mentioned FUMA no one mentioned any other school.

So I got on my knees, and told God I would send him for one year and see how it went. The next day, I saw my closest friend and told her the problem. She said FUMA was a great school but said she knew a family whose boy said he had his act together after a year whose grades did a nosedive once back in public school.

Mike graduated a member of the National Honor Society. He has wonderful fond memories of FUMA and wants his brother to attend.

I had a problem I couldn't solve-so I consulted an expert, THE EXPERT. That's not weakness or a crutch-that's intelligence.

If you disagree, then you must never consult doctors, lawyers, mechanics, teachers, counselors....

Most of my prayer is for other people. Praying for other people has affected my personality outside prayer by making me a more loving person. Effective prayer is not treating God like a cosmic Santa Claus. Praise, adoration, repentance, intercession and communication is all part of it. Prayer isn't easy and the best prayer is from the heart, not a book. The more you do it, the more you acknowledge His Lordship in His Life, the more love you show in it, the better you will be at it.

Prayer for the fully devoted follower of Christ is an everyday miracle.

Answer 4

praying fulfills different goals, not everyone prays to God, some people pray to a dead family member, some people pray to Buddha, some people pray to a Goddess. Praying doesn't make the problems of your life go away, but it can be a way of unloading your stress level and when you speak your problems out loud, sometimes new solutions come to mind. If you pray and expect all of your problems to be solved by a god, or blame them on god or the devil, than no i don't think its helpful. It all depends on your mind set. We all have problems, but asking for help with them isn't necessarily bad.

Answer 5

Prayer for me is aligning my will with the will of God which is written in the sacred scriptures of my faith. As God desires only my happiness and well-being, my challenge then is reigning in my rebellious ego, facing myself squarely, and realigning my thoughts and actions as best I know how to God's will. As I act with my newly aligned will and face life, I right the wrongs and proceed confidently and joyfully until I hit another bump in the road and the cycle starts anew. Of course, taking time to align my will with God's will daily keeps me far stronger, more confident, more joyful, and far more effective than I ever am on my own. Through prayer that aligns my will with the will of God, I can face anything. I compare myself to a lamp being plugged into the source of power. Without that power, I'm a pretty lamp, but not fulfilling my potential. Plugged in however I'm brilliant, radiant, and shed light on the dark world.

Answer 6

I think that its foolish for people to think that all you have to do is pray, like it has some of abracadabra effect.
As far as Islam goes, the prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) told a man once to "trust in Allah, but tie up your camel" meaning that obviously, we are to understand that Allah is in control of all things, but that doesn't give us a free pass to inertia, to wait around for things to spontaneously happen without any effort on our part.
Sometimes Allah answers your du'a (prayer), sometimes he doesn't.
Divine order and free will of man is a difficult balance for people to understand, but that's how it works.

Answer 7

Sorry but my observations differ.

Most people I've seen pray have realized that they have/soon will be/of fear that they wil be caught out doing wrong.

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Answer 8

Who else should control your life? i want Jesus to run mine, i only screw things up,but God on the other hand i think he can do a better job,the Bible says be like children.so i am putting all my faith in Jesus and what he did at the cross

Answer 9

I feel the same way, fwiw.

The problems may still be there, but they never look as insurmountable as they did.

Answer 10

I suspect people pray in the forlorn hope that there might be someone listening who can influence the world in their favour.