Miraculous Conversion Story

[Flopfoot]

Well, I prayed for others because I thought it would help. I haven’t prayed since getting into this dilemma (only a few hours ago) but anyway even if I can’t fig it out I think I’ll just assume that even if I can’t understand it there actually is some explanation (that maybe only God knows) and still keep praying for others and hoping it does some good. I guess that’s prolly the best explanation - I pray because I hope. But in this thread I’m asking, how does it work? What exactly does our prayer do? Can it move God? etc. In a way I would like to know rather than hope, but I guess that is asking too much… it’d be a bit presumptuous to be able to say exactly when and how God is going to answer my prayer with 100% certainty… all I know for sure is that God listenes to my prayer. What He does with it after that I don’t know.

 

[Eileen_T]

Even if the prayer for the repentance and conversion of certain individuals didn’t work, and we don’t/can’t know that for sure this side of Heaven, no prayer is wasted. It changes US when we pray for others.

Besides, we are told to do so in Scripture and that’s enough for me.

Flopfoot, we are told “Seek and you shall find.” From the benefit of my many years I will give you this advice…

Start seeking!

 

[Eileen_T]

Even if the prayer for the repentance and conversion of certain individuals didn’t work, and we don’t/can’t know that for sure this side of Heaven, no prayer is wasted. It changes US when we pray for others.

Besides, we are told to do so in Scripture and that’s enough for me.

Flopfoot, we are told “Seek and you shall find.” From the benefit of my many years I will give you this advice…

Start seeking! 2000 years of saintly writings are available for you, many of them on the internet. Happy hunting.

 

[pbaylis]

A possible answer is that God wants us to act to save others. By doing this, we are demonstrating love for our neighbour which is God’s second principle commandment. So, we benefit from this sacrificial action as well as the person being prayed for. We repay God the love He has shown us principally via our neighbour. This was what God Himself supposedly told St Catherine of Siena (again I’m quoting from this Dialogue…third time today). He said that because of our imperfect love we can’t repay God directly, but He accepts done to Him what we do for our neighbour.

Flopfoot:

I have been misunderstood again. Let me be clear on this.

There are 3 parties here - you, God, and your friend. There are 2 actions that have been getting confused. One action is God offering your friend grace to convert. The other action is your friend choosing to accept or reject that grace, and hence either converting or not converting.

I am not trying to discuss the second action here. I know that neither you nor God can force your friend to convert, as he has free will. That is totally up to him.

However, it is the first action I am discussing - God offering grace to your friend in the first place. Can you influence this action, or not? Because we know that you can’t influence the second action (your friend accepting or rejecting) by prayer… so can your prayer influence the first action, God’s action, or not? Does God give more grace, encourage more strongly, etc., because someone prayed for Him to do this? I’ve read that God is always calling us to himself. That means that God will always be offering grace - regardless of whether you pray or not. But, if your prayer can influence neither your friend’s decision to convert nor God’s decision to offer grace, then doesn’t that mean that your prayer doesn’t do any good at all (except for making you feel better?)

I’m stuck between 2 beliefs I have that I think are both true but that don’t seem to work together. The first idea - that prayer is always helpful for the person I pray for. The second idea - that God is loving and always offers grace to people to help them to know and love him. The reason these don’t seem to be able to co-exist? If God already is doing the best He can to help someone to know and love Him, then what can my prayer possibly do?

If there is no way to compromise, if I have to pick which of those things I believe, then I would pick the second thing. I can’t believe that God would refuse to offer someone the grace to convert unless someone prayed for him. God’s love should not (does not) depend on human love, even if no one in the world loved, God would still love. Of course, this would mean that prayer is sort of ‘useless’, but I’d be okay with that as I could think, that prayer that is sort of fruitless still helps the person who is praying and still gives glory to God even if it can’t do it’s intended action, so it’s actually not that useless.

The problem then is, that if that story is true, it seems that Mary disagrees with me - she says that our prayers will actually help to determine who goes where. Surely she’s not just saying that to frighten us into praying harder. There must be a compromise. So what is it???