How do we distinguish between an answered prayer and mere coincidence?

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**In all things give Glory. Each sounds like a blessing - in all things give Glory. There is no need to distinguish…have gratitude. **
 
Coincidence generally happens before you enter into prayer, fasting, and sacrifice from which you request the grace of GOD upon you or your petition. Once entered into, GOD answers all prayer.
 
The answer to a prayer is different than mere coincidence by its nature.

In other words, it happens out of the ordinary, but also the answer brings an inner peace
with it.

Once I prayed to St Theresa for a special thing. Then in the middle of March as I was
on my lunch-time walk I suddenly came upon a wild rose in full bloom. I also had a sense of God’s presence at that moment and knew my prayer was answered.

FYI, roses don’t normally bloom during March in New England.

Jim
 
I once heard something like coincidence is God’s way of staying anonymous.

Considering that everything that happens is either God’s positive will or His permissive will, and that He is omniscient, I would say that there is no such thing as coincidence.
 
Mother Theresa also believed there was no such thing a coincidence! It is always God working in our lives. I believe that!
 
A few months ago I had did a St. Raphael novena and various prayers. During the course of my praying, I was looking thru my closet for something, and stumbled upon a St. Raphael Pin I had from YEARS ago. I was in shock at first than brushed it off as a mere coincidence. I do filing in a office, so while I was putting papers away I started to see the name ‘St. Raphael’, (its the name of a hospital), but I laughed and figured another mere coincidence. While filing in another instance, I came across the name Tobias… in 2010, come on, who has THAT name? I could not believe it, I just laughed to myself in total amazement. Hahaha. I really could not believe that one.

Same time this was going on, I started praying to Mary. Same things. I was walking past a store, I pass it everyday, it’s a toy store, and usually the toys in the windows change everyday, so one day I passed it, and there in the window was 3 Virgin Mary statues lined in a row. They weren’t there the next day. I started to see St. Mary’s name as well. Here’s a good one though, I was playing a video game, haha, and what do you know, in the video game, on a wall, a Mary Mural was painted. I found that to be too funny. But the first thing that happened to me, that had a solid grip on me was I had a dream of her. Never in my life have I dreamed of a Jesus, or a Mary, or a God, hahaha, so I was happy. In my dream I was talking to some woman named Mary who told me to hold on because the real Mary was coming or she was going to get the real Mary, I forgot what she said, but after she spoke, down came Mary from Heaven, and I woke up like ‘Oh my God’.

Here’s my problem, what do these mere coincidences have to with anything? My prayers are NOT being answered so these coincidences mean what? I gave up. I stopped all the praying. I wasn’t getting answers, only ‘signs’ so to speak? And of course, I stop praying, all these coincidences stop as well. So I wonder, is this just a mind game? You surround yourself with this hard deep praying, its on your mind constantly, is this just your mind playing tricks on you? I assumed it was. It’s very discouraging. I thought for sure an answer was on its way, with a dream like that. 🤷

I mean I wasn’t trying to look to see these little things, they just happened to grab my attention…while not paying attention, you know? Weird.
 
Bwtby: Maybe your “coincidences” were to help you understand that your prayers were heard and to have faith. Keep praying. Knock and the door will be opened. Sometimes the answer to our prayers is NO, and we don’t like that answer. We rarely hear people say that their prayers were answered with a “NO”, but it happens. Also, what time frame are you talking about? I prayed fervently for a year before I had an answer. In hindsight, I can see that there was movement in the direction of the answer, but I couldn’t see it while I was going through it.

Never cease praying. Let me know if you will begin to pray for whatever it is again and I will pray with you.
 
coco2 said:
Bwtby: Maybe your “coincidences” were to help you understand that your prayers were heard and to have faith. Keep praying. Knock and the door will be opened. Sometimes the answer to our prayers is NO, and we don’t like that answer. We rarely hear people say that their prayers were answered with a “NO”, but it happens. Also, what time frame are you talking about? I prayed fervently for a year before I had an answer. In hindsight, I can see that there was movement in the direction of the answer, but I couldn’t see it while I was going through it.

Never cease praying. Let me know if you will begin to pray for whatever it is again and I will pray with you.
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I prayed intensely for a month with novenas, various other prayers like for forgiveness and prayers of thanks. I took prayers from the Bible. I was doing alot in one day. 😛 I figured somebody upstairs was going to get mad.

So I stopped, and begin just doing, Hail Mary’s, Our Fathers, and just begging. Nothing, no answer…

You prayed for a year? Was your answer a yes?
 
Yes, I prayed for a year before I got an answer. My answer was both yes and no! To understand I’d have to tell you what happened. A dental appointment left me with a nerve injury that caused extreme pain of my entire face, neck, and severe constant burning of my tongue and under my bottom teeth. If you can imagine the hottest coffee burning your tongue…it was like that, but I couldn’t pull away from it or cool it down at all. No medications were working and the pain was complete agony. I had to quit work, just getting through every second was horrid. Through the course of a year I saw about 30 doctors, none who have seen this type of injury to this extent. My trigeminal nerve was involved, but usually with the trigeminal nerve the pain comes and goes but mine was constant. I prayed constantly, begged, pleaded, had many others praying for me as well. I did many novenas, and our family said a rosary once a week with another family down the street who was dealing with cancer. About 6 months into it, it occurred to me that I might not ever get relief and that might be God’s Will. In my heart I knew I had to say God’s Will BE Done, but I couldn’t do it…I just couldn’t deal with the pain. It took me another couple of months but I finally got the courage to say and mean, “God’s will be done”. I can honestly say it was the hardest thing I ever had to do. About that time I received a rose…( I was saying a Novena to ST. Theresa) I did take it as a sign that I would be healed. Soon after that, my sister-in-law ( who doesn’t not like me, by the way) heard someone talking about a doctor they went to for severe TMJ and she told my brother to give the name of the doctor to me. ( God works in mysterious ways, eh?) I went to this doctor and he used a method of ultrasound and TENS on my face. The pain was greatly reduced, except for the tongue pain. It was very expensive. He sent me to a Pain specialist, who couldn’t find anything to control the tongue pain and then the pain specialist sent me to a doctor from the Johns Hopkins. This man put me on medications, that finally control the pain. I am not healed. I still have the injury, but the Lord had mercy on me, and the pain is GREATLY REDUCED. I can work again and miss out on not much of life. I offer up any and all pain I have for the conversion of sinners, especially those in my family.

So my prayers were answered. Lord will you heal me? That answer was NO. But I think because I was able to truly mean…Thy Will Be Done…God had a different answer. No to complete healing, but instead led me ( through a person who hates me!) to pain relief, for which I am eternally grateful. This is a win/win situation. Although I am not healed, I can tolerate the pain AND I am able to offer the pain to help sinners in some way. I would not be doing that if I didn’t have pain to offer!

Keep praying. Pray without ceasing. You will have an answer. God knows what is best.
 
coco2 said:
Yes, I prayed for a year before I got an answer. My answer was both yes and no! To understand I’d have to tell you what happened. A dental appointment left me with a nerve injury that caused extreme pain of my entire face, neck, and severe constant burning of my tongue and under my bottom teeth. If you can imagine the hottest coffee burning your tongue…it was like that, but I couldn’t pull away from it or cool it down at all. No medications were working and the pain was complete agony. I had to quit work, just getting through every second was horrid. Through the course of a year I saw about 30 doctors, none who have seen this type of injury to this extent. My trigeminal nerve was involved, but usually with the trigeminal nerve the pain comes and goes but mine was constant. I prayed constantly, begged, pleaded, had many others praying for me as well. I did many novenas, and our family said a rosary once a week with another family down the street who was dealing with cancer. About 6 months into it, it occurred to me that I might not ever get relief and that might be God’s Will. In my heart I knew I had to say God’s Will BE Done, but I couldn’t do it…I just couldn’t deal with the pain. It took me another couple of months but I finally got the courage to say and mean, “God’s will be done”. I can honestly say it was the hardest thing I ever had to do. About that time I received a rose…( I was saying a Novena to ST. Theresa) I did take it as a sign that I would be healed. Soon after that, my sister-in-law ( who doesn’t not like me, by the way) heard someone talking about a doctor they went to for severe TMJ and she told my brother to give the name of the doctor to me. ( God works in mysterious ways, eh?) I went to this doctor and he used a method of ultrasound and TENS on my face. The pain was greatly reduced, except for the tongue pain. It was very expensive. He sent me to a Pain specialist, who couldn’t find anything to control the tongue pain and then the pain specialist sent me to a doctor from the Johns Hopkins. This man put me on medications, that finally control the pain. I am not healed. I still have the injury, but the Lord had mercy on me, and the pain is GREATLY REDUCED. I can work again and miss out on not much of life. I offer up any and all pain I have for the conversion of sinners, especially those in my family.

So my prayers were answered. Lord will you heal me? That answer was NO. But I think because I was able to truly mean…Thy Will Be Done…God had a different answer. No to complete healing, but instead led me ( through a person who hates me!) to pain relief, for which I am eternally grateful. This is a win/win situation. Although I am not healed, I can tolerate the pain AND I am able to offer the pain to help sinners in some way. I would not be doing that if I didn’t have pain to offer!

Keep praying. Pray without ceasing. You will have an answer. God knows what is best.
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Thanks for sharing your testimony Coco. It is quite beneficial to those of us who are still going through trying times. That said, I’ve always wondered about testimonies such as yours. You claim that God healed you, and possibly that might be the case. But why didn’t God heal you from all your pain? There are some testimonies that have the same theme as yours that also say that even though God healed them, there were still vestiges of hurt/injury. Why can’t God just heal everything, and leave it at that?

Thank you,
Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk
 
coco2 said:
Yes, I prayed for a year before I got an answer. My answer was both yes and no! To understand I’d have to tell you what happened. A dental appointment left me with a nerve injury that caused extreme pain of my entire face, neck, and severe constant burning of my tongue and under my bottom teeth. If you can imagine the hottest coffee burning your tongue…it was like that, but I couldn’t pull away from it or cool it down at all. No medications were working and the pain was complete agony. I had to quit work, just getting through every second was horrid. Through the course of a year I saw about 30 doctors, none who have seen this type of injury to this extent. My trigeminal nerve was involved, but usually with the trigeminal nerve the pain comes and goes but mine was constant. I prayed constantly, begged, pleaded, had many others praying for me as well. I did many novenas, and our family said a rosary once a week with another family down the street who was dealing with cancer. About 6 months into it, it occurred to me that I might not ever get relief and that might be God’s Will. In my heart I knew I had to say God’s Will BE Done, but I couldn’t do it…I just couldn’t deal with the pain. It took me another couple of months but I finally got the courage to say and mean, “God’s will be done”. I can honestly say it was the hardest thing I ever had to do. About that time I received a rose…( I was saying a Novena to ST. Theresa) I did take it as a sign that I would be healed. Soon after that, my sister-in-law ( who doesn’t not like me, by the way) heard someone talking about a doctor they went to for severe TMJ and she told my brother to give the name of the doctor to me. ( God works in mysterious ways, eh?) I went to this doctor and he used a method of ultrasound and TENS on my face. The pain was greatly reduced, except for the tongue pain. It was very expensive. He sent me to a Pain specialist, who couldn’t find anything to control the tongue pain and then the pain specialist sent me to a doctor from the Johns Hopkins. This man put me on medications, that finally control the pain. I am not healed. I still have the injury, but the Lord had mercy on me, and the pain is GREATLY REDUCED. I can work again and miss out on not much of life. I offer up any and all pain I have for the conversion of sinners, especially those in my family.

So my prayers were answered. Lord will you heal me? That answer was NO. But I think because I was able to truly mean…Thy Will Be Done…God had a different answer. No to complete healing, but instead led me ( through a person who hates me!) to pain relief, for which I am eternally grateful. This is a win/win situation. Although I am not healed, I can tolerate the pain AND I am able to offer the pain to help sinners in some way. I would not be doing that if I didn’t have pain to offer!

Keep praying. Pray without ceasing. You will have an answer. God knows what is best.
Click to expand...
Wow. Good story (of course not having the pain part, but you know what I mean). Like Bohm Bawerk said, it is beneficial. Thanks for your post! 🙂
 
Bohm_Bawerk said:
Thanks for sharing your testimony Coco. It is quite beneficial to those of us who are still going through trying times. That said, I’ve always wondered about testimonies such as yours. You claim that God healed you, and possibly that might be the case. But why didn’t God heal you from all your pain? There are some testimonies that have the same theme as yours that also say that even though God healed them, there were still vestiges of hurt/injury. Why can’t God just heal everything, and leave it at that?

Thank you,
Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk
Click to expand...
I think God didn’t heal me completely because there is some benefit as to having me offer the pain in reparation for sin. I did say Thy Will Be Done and I meant it! I forgot to mention that I also changed the way I prayed. I thanked God for the pain relief that He was going to bring to me BEFORE I had any relief in sight!

God hasn’t healed me completely ( yet!) therefore he said no to my petition of complete healing. However, he worked through others to give me much needed relief. I also have other health issues, a couple of auto-immune diseases. I’m in remission with sarcoidosis as well. I’ve been through a lot of pain and misery, but nothing even comes close to that nerve pain in my face and mouth. I’m so grateful for the pain relief!
 
Bohm_Bawerk said:
Thank you,
Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk
Click to expand...
Whenever God answers your prayer, while your spirit may desire to respond with gratitude, Satan will suggest that it is mere coincidence. This is because he knows very well that expressing gratitude is going to bring in graces in abundance which would drive him away. Just remember this GOLDEN rule: thank God at all time and more so when a blessing follows a prayer. There is NO need to distinguish one blessing from another, as they are all from God
 
I no longer believe in coincidence. If we believe in an omnipotent and omniscient God who is in charge of all on this earth, then no room is left for coincidence. Wouldn’t “coincidence” tend to support the concept of a random earth, with no one directing it?
 
One criteria is that answered prayer will always, in some manner, serve to advance the kingdom of God-it’s never merely to serve or benefit ourselves except to the extent it also furthers His will on earth.
 
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