Effectiveness of prayer? October 2018

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Needy1

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How can explain the state of people of the country that I’m living in? More than 97 percent of them are pagans.😰
Still there is some carmelites, franciscans etc so they are probably praying for the people. Also Catholics and other christians. Some Orthodox Church do pray without sleep every saturday night.
So how can explain this situation? Are the people rejecting the grace of God by their free will, so terribly? Or prayers not enough?
 
Prayer can be powerful. Our prayers are heard.

Our free will is important, God doesn’t force us to love Him and abide by His commandments, if He did we would be nothing more than puppets. Would you rather a child came to you because that child loved you or out of fear or for what it could get? Of course we want genuine love and so God I’m sure.

If such a large proportion of your country is pagan then surely Christianity can only rise? People change because they see that it would be better for them if they did. Perhaps evangelisation should be increased but you can evangelise by example. By showing people how beneficial Catholicism can be to the health of an individuals mind and soul and how beneficial following God’s laws can be to society as a whole.

Love God with all your being and love your neighbour as yourself. Very simple commandments but if adhered to have very far reaching effects for good, in any country.
 
The effectiveness of prayer can be discovered. Survey a large group of people who have prayed for things and compare the number of answered prayers to the non-answered in say a 5 year wait period. I think the answer would be that prayer for things humans want is not very effective. I have many friends and at least two dozen older cousins who have all prayed extensively for their parents and aunts and uncles when they were diagnosed with some bad, probably fatal illness. Not a one of them was healed. They all died within the predicted time span. You couldn’t call those efforts effective prayer.
 
I’ve heard of some research showing positive results and I vaguely remember some which showed no effect was recorded.

Personally I don’t remember particular prayers of mine being ‘answered’ before I became a Catholic, but since I have had this positive experience. And the latter couldn’t have happened by chance.

Why some prayers are successful and others not I don’t know. We must just trust in God’s wisdom and always add to our prayers “thy will be done.”
 
Needy1 said:
Are the people rejecting the grace of God by their free will, so terribly? Or prayers not enough?
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The Apostles themselves were rejected by many despite the miracles and sometimes even because of the miracles. Same happened to many great saints of the Early Church. Sometimes Christians were accused of witchcraft for the miracles God was performing for them to be believed.
Jesus Christ called the Church “small flock” which means a lot. He never promised success or lack of it to Christianity in the world.
The prayers always always help even if they the demands in the prayers themselves are not fulfilled.
 
Then there is always the list of God’s attributes, one of which strongly states that He is not affected by the actions of any being. Praying to him is trying to affect him into doing something that the prayer wishes. Impossible if the attribute list is to be believed.
 
They get you in touch with your Maker. They get you closer to Him. The Holy Spirit comes down each time someone prays to God.
Beginning prayers should always be the typical canonical prayers teaches the Church, and then your wish or intention.
 
Have you prayed without expecting anything? The regular canonical prayers?
The theological.studies.are done to reinforce respect for God. There are blasphemies against Him daily. Evoking Him in His highest is also.a way to try to make retribution of what is being said today avout God.
God bless!
 
Is there a result that would show that a prayer was not answered? I ask this because I find no matter what happens, good or bad, believers will use it as proof that God answers prayers.
 
clarkgamble1 said:
The effectiveness of prayer can be discovered. Survey a large group of people who have prayed for things and compare the number of answered prayers to the non-answered in say a 5 year wait period.
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That’s a terrible methodology.

At best, it would give you an answer to the question “Do people think that their prayers have been answered?”, when you are supposed to be interested in an answer to the question “Are the prayers of the people answered?”.

And you can get the answer to the question “Do people think that their prayers have been answered?” by asking that right away.
clarkgamble1 said:
I have many friends and at least two dozen older cousins who have all prayed extensively for their parents and aunts and uncles when they were diagnosed with some bad, probably fatal illness.
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And how exactly do you know that?

Did you put microphones in their rooms, or what? 🙂

Maybe they prayed that the suffering would be lessened - a prayer, which, if answered “affirmatively”, could be very compatible with death coming sooner?

Maybe they prayed generally, that things would end well? Again, things end well if one goes to heaven after death.
clarkgamble1 said:
Exactly how do they help? If the requests are not fulfilled the prayer was a waste of time.
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Why don’t you actually wait for the answer before coming to your conclusion? 🙂
clarkgamble1 said:
Then there is always the list of God’s attributes, one of which strongly states that He is not affected by the actions of any being. Praying to him is trying to affect him into doing something that the prayer wishes. Impossible if the attribute list is to be believed.
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And why would God have to be changed by anything for the prayers to work? Maybe you’re missing the part where God is also outside of time?
 
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There’s more to prayer than just asking. They were probably doing it wrong.
 
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