I feel guilty when I pray for myself

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Roselander said:
When I’m praying for something for myself, for example healing or relief from pain, I start to think about all the other people in the world who are worse off than I am, and then I start to feel that I don’t deserve to have my prayer answered. Any advice?
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First and foremost, you do deserve to have your prayers answered! You are a Daughter of God.
A priest gave a talk at my LifeTeen group a little while ago, saying that we don’t need to pray for ourselves, because there are thousands of priests and religious around the world whose vocations it is to pray the Liturgy of the Hours for us. What we need to do is to pray for others, and pray just to get closer to God. Also, something that has been rather helpful to me is to offer up the suffering to Jesus for some intention, someone you know, or the Holy Souls, etc. So, you’d be suffering for a purpose 🙂
 
Pray for everyone, yourself included.

If we pray for the self then we may like to pray this way…’ Merciful Jesus, make me a better daughter/son, make me a better mother/father, make me a better friend and neighbour according to Your Will. I offer you my small sufferings of mind, body and spirit united to Your Cross for Your Will, please look favourably on my petition of ‘X’. Thank you for everything. Amen’ That covers everything, spirit, mind and body.

The love of Jesus to you and yours.🙂
 
Perhaps if you feel bad praying for yourself, maybe pray for others, pray to accept God’s will, praise God, thank Him for what you already have?
 
Roselander said:
When I’m praying for something for myself, for example healing or relief from pain, I start to think about all the other people in the world who are worse off than I am, and then I start to feel that I don’t deserve to have my prayer answered. Any advice?
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“Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven”

Catholig
 
I don’t want to nag anyone to do anything that’s against their basic make-up, but… in the past, the Church has had heresies which claimed that it was wrong to pray for oneself, and a lot of people got messed up by this. (I also knew a guy who wouldn’t pray for himself, who’s ended up becoming a sort of Druidish pagan. So this is a bit fraught for me…)

Obviously, it’s not wrong to pray for our own needs, since Jesus told us to do it. “Give us this day our daily bread.”

“If you ask for an egg, will he give you a rock? If you ask for a fish, will he give you a snake?”

If you feel uncomfortable, pray for “us” and include yourself. But ask for your needs, as Jesus commanded you.
 
Roselander said:
When I’m praying for something for myself, for example healing or relief from pain, I start to think about all the other people in the world who are worse off than I am, and then I start to feel that I don’t deserve to have my prayer answered. Any advice?
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Pray for them too, as you are thinking of them. Maybe that is why you are thinking of them, so that they have someone to pray for them. Then perhaps including a few of your own petitions at the very end won’t seem so strange.

Zirconia
 
Mintaka said:
I don’t want to nag anyone to do anything that’s against their basic make-up, but… in the past, the Church has had heresies which claimed that it was wrong to pray for oneself, and a lot of people got messed up by this. (I also knew a guy who wouldn’t pray for himself, who’s ended up becoming a sort of Druidish pagan. So this is a bit fraught for me…)

Obviously, it’s not wrong to pray for our own needs, since Jesus told us to do it. “Give us this day our daily bread.”

“If you ask for an egg, will he give you a rock? If you ask for a fish, will he give you a snake?”

If you feel uncomfortable, pray for “us” and include yourself. But ask for your needs, as Jesus commanded you.
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Thanks. This makes me feel better
 
I think it is important to note that rejecting the need to pray for ourselves is because we are made ashamed by the influence of satan. It is a sin of Pride to refuse to pray for ourselves. God has promised us mercy and grace, and He has promised us to hear our prayers.

Who are we, then, to reject the mercy and grace of God, or to hold ourselves as better off than others and insist that we need no prayers? We are all broken sinners in the eyes of God and we ALL need His infinite mercy. Perhaps this desire to reject prayer for the self is more of a call to your conscience to review your disposition to determine if you are not privately and subconciously suffering from a touch of presumption?
 
promethius95945 said:
God has promised us mercy and grace, and He has promised us to hear our prayers.

Who are we, then, to reject the mercy and grace of God, or to hold ourselves as better off than others and insist that we need no prayers?
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I must point out that feeling uncomfortable praying for yourself is not necessarily the same as insisting that you need no prayers. After all, even if you don’t feel right praying for yourself, you can still ask others to pray for you. And that would seem the precise opposite of insisting you need no prayer.

Also, if you tend to do a lot of intercessionary prayer, it will seem strange at first to ask anything for yourself because you are so used to asking things for others that it doesn’t really occur to you to ask much for yourself.

Sometimes too, it seems ungrateful to pray for myself. I mean, since God did give me everything I have from existence upward, and I am asking for more?

Zirconia
 
Good points, Zirconia,

All I’m getting at is that the basic desire to NOT recieve prayers because “we’re better off than others” is a promulgation of Satan which seeks to cut off one from being receptive to the graces of God (whether that be through refusing praying for ourselves or refusing asking others). Is it understandable? Yes, but we should learn to overcome being resistant to God’s blessings for us.
 
Jesus basically told us to pray for ourselves, along with prayers for others. Don’t feel guilty. “Your Heavenly Father knows what you have need of before you ask.” But ask anyway!
 
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