Never motivated to pray - not convinced it works

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Lady_Bug

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Hi,

I know my post title is a bit candid, but I am having a couple issues with the subject of praying. I know people say that prayer has power and stuff, but there are a couple of deterrents that I face when I think about beginning to pray, and then I renege on my plans to pray.

I am depressed about a lot of things in my life, and for my age, I feel that I should have had my life on track, and it is the furthest thing from being on track. I live in a non-Christian household who I’m sure would take me to task if they knew I am Christian (I have been Christian for about a year), I think I have been put on the blacklist, I suffer from suicidal thoughts all the time (I won’t do anything), and I lack the social skills to go out and make friends, for I am very shy and introverted.

If not praying my own prayers, I think I to myself that I should at least look at the Psalms…any form of prayer, you know? But then I stop myself and say:
  1. If God doesn’t change his mind (that’s what I’ve been told, anyhow), and I pray for something that is against God’s will, what is the point?
  2. If I see either nominal or non-Christians receive the same “blessings” (i.e. marriage, family, etc.) that the more faithful pray constantly for and never receive, it looks as if God’s justice is upside down. Why should someone who hates God, hates Jesus, hates the Bible, etc., be blessed with something that someone who loves God/Jesus/the Bible prays for and possibly never receives? I’m not just talking about marriage and family, I’m talking about anything, like someone recovering from a serious illness, someone getting hired for a job they wanted, or someone praying that they don’t miscarry, etc. Anything.
It says somewhere in Ecclesiastes about the righteous getting what the wicked deserve, and the wicked getting what the righteous deserve. After observing what seems to be true in real life, I don’t care to pray at all. Because as I said before, God’s justice seems way upside down. The people who try to do good suffer for doing the right thing, while the people who love to do bad seem to get what the faithful pray for in life and succeed in other endeavors more easily. I don’t know why.

Can someone please try to help me in understanding why it is important to still pray when as I said, God’s justice seems to be upside down? I know…I’m quite angry about this.
 
Remember, the purpose of prayer is foremost, to build your relationship with God. When we turn to prayer, we are turning to Christ, in order to know, love and serve him better in this world, and to be with him in eternal happiness in the next.

Too many people use prayer like taking a pill to cure an ailment.

Prayer should be an act of love. You pray because you love God and know that He will provide.

As some one has written somewhere, “always seek the God of consolation, rather than the consolation of God.”

God, the good and perfect Father, will provide whats best for you.This should be your understanding of the purpose of prayer.

Jim
 
Lady Bug,
I am happy that you had the strength to post such a question which is a very good one indeed. I think the holy spirit is working in you or you would’ve never posted such a thing.

Prayer is always answered and sometimes the answer is no. Prayer is answered in God’s time not ours. Sometimes things we pray for take years to come to fruition. Prayer is also of the soul, not of the brain. We can not rationalize it adequately with our minds. We must listen to our hearts.

Satin’s primary method of attack is to cause confusion and question. I’ve learned that the only way to avoid this is to have faith and pray…even when you doubt.

I personally have had many of my prayers answered and have been witness to prayers being answered that boarderline miraculus. If you need examples to help you let me know and I will write them for you. But I can tell you that prayers are answered.

I think you were on the right path to start reading the psalms. To start why don’t you pick a psalm and read it every night. Before you read the psalm each night ask God to grant you the graces that you need to pray then read your given psalm. While you are reading If any doubts or questions enter your mind ignore them and push them aside and continue. Do this EVERY night even when you don’t want to, are to tired, are sick of it, doubt it. Do it for 30 days in a row and then see how you feel about prayer.

Meanwhile it would be a good idea to ask people to pray for you to be given the graces to be able to see prayer for what it is. It might take a month of some prayers from people but you will see in the end.

I will pray for you starting tonight. Please try.
Sarah
 
Lady_Bug said:
  1. If I see either nominal or non-Christians receive the same “blessings” (i.e. marriage, family, etc.) that the more faithful pray constantly for and never receive, it looks as if God’s justice is upside down. Why should someone who hates God, hates Jesus, hates the Bible, etc., be blessed with something that someone who loves God/Jesus/the Bible prays for and possibly never receives? I’m not just talking about marriage and family, I’m talking about anything, like someone recovering from a serious illness, someone getting hired for a job they wanted, or someone praying that they don’t miscarry, etc. Anything.
Can someone please try to help me in understanding why it is important to still pray when as I said, God’s justice seems to be upside down? I know…I’m quite angry about this.
Click to expand...
From St. Faustina’s diary:

“One day I saw two roads. One was broad, covered with sand and flowers, full of joy, music and all sorts of pleasures. People walked along it, dancing and enjoying themselves. They reached the end without realizing it. And at the end of the road there was a horrible precipice; that is, the abyss of hell. The souls fell blindly into it; as they walked, so they fell. And their number was so great that it was impossible to count them. And I saw the other road, or rather, a path, for it was narrow and strewn with thorns and rocks; and the people who walked along it had tears in their eyes, and all kinds of suffering befell them. Some fell down upon the rocks, but stood up immediately and went on. At the end of the road there was a magnificent garden filled with all sorts of happiness, and all these souls entered there. At the very first instant they forgot all their sufferings.”

– Divine Mercy in My Soul, Notebook I, page 86

~~ the phoenix
 
Dear Ladybug, It is not for no reason that this life is sometimes refered to as a vale of tears.Some of us are called to a life of sacrifice and suffering.It is intirely possible that this God’s will for you.Pray that God give you His grace to live in His will, for Him.To pray is far better than not to pray.You call yourself a christian,and you do not pray?to whom will you turn?You are pulling the stool out from under yourself this way.Please turn to Him who is the sourse of all our help.He will give you understanding if you want it.
 
My prayers are answered in amazing ways. I woke up one day when I was broke and said to God, “Can I have some clothes,” and later that day someone I barely knew went to a second-hand store, invited me along an dasked what I wanted. I picked an outfit and he bought it. I was waiting for a bus, realized I had just missed it and would not make it to work, which meant proably losing my job, so I prayed quicklyand a man drove out of a store parking lot, walked up and asked what was going on. I asked him to drive me to work. He got me there just on time. I asked God to take away a tumor from me and one from my cat and the next day there was no sign of either growth. On and on and on… God answers prayer. Sometimes it just takes a while.
Remember that this world is only the introduction to our real lives.
Have faith.
 
Lady_Bug said:
Hi,

I know my post title is a bit candid, but I am having a couple issues with the subject of praying. I know people say that prayer has power and stuff, but there are a couple of deterrents that I face when I think about beginning to pray, and then I renege on my plans to pray.

I am depressed about a lot of things in my life, and for my age, I feel that I should have had my life on track, and it is the furthest thing from being on track. I live in a non-Christian household who I’m sure would take me to task if they knew I am Christian (I have been Christian for about a year), I think I have been put on the blacklist, I suffer from suicidal thoughts all the time (I won’t do anything), and I lack the social skills to go out and make friends, for I am very shy and introverted.

If not praying my own prayers, I think I to myself that I should at least look at the Psalms…any form of prayer, you know? But then I stop myself and say:
  1. If God doesn’t change his mind (that’s what I’ve been told, anyhow), and I pray for something that is against God’s will, what is the point?
  2. If I see either nominal or non-Christians receive the same “blessings” (i.e. marriage, family, etc.) that the more faithful pray constantly for and never receive, it looks as if God’s justice is upside down. Why should someone who hates God, hates Jesus, hates the Bible, etc., be blessed with something that someone who loves God/Jesus/the Bible prays for and possibly never receives? I’m not just talking about marriage and family, I’m talking about anything, like someone recovering from a serious illness, someone getting hired for a job they wanted, or someone praying that they don’t miscarry, etc. Anything.
It says somewhere in Ecclesiastes about the righteous getting what the wicked deserve, and the wicked getting what the righteous deserve. After observing what seems to be true in real life, I don’t care to pray at all. Because as I said before, God’s justice seems way upside down. The people who try to do good suffer for doing the right thing, while the people who love to do bad seem to get what the faithful pray for in life and succeed in other endeavors more easily. I don’t know why.

Can someone please try to help me in understanding why it is important to still pray when as I said, God’s justice seems to be upside down? I know…I’m quite angry about this.
Click to expand...
I recommend a couple of books by Peter Kreeft:

Prayer For Beginners
Prayer: The Great Conversation
 
Prayer is meant to establish/maintain a close relationship with God, not necessarily to answer everything we ask for. God knows the big picture; He knows what is best for us, and He knows the right timing. We sometimes have no idea! It is about a lot of faith—I used to feel the way you do about prayer, but realized I was thinking of prayer in the wrong way. I used to pray and it didn’t mean anything…it wasn’t from the heart and wasn’t sincere. I had to establish a relationship and desire to know/love Him before prayer meant anything to me. However, this does not mean prayer was useless back when I felt that way. I still believe it helped me in a huge way—to desire a relationship with Him, to discern, and to help open my heart to Him. Ultimately, we show our love for God through prayer.

My advice is to keep praying of course! It doesn’t have to be formal…most of my prayer is informal…speaking from my heart, like you do to a best friend. Sometimes I don’t have the spiritual energy to pray or don’t know what to say, so then I turn to formal prayer like the rosary, or The Lord’s Prayer. Or, I feel I need protection so I pray to St. Michael. I don’t believe there is a right way/certain way to pray. But do have faith that your prayers are heard by God and that He loves you. Just because you don’t feel them being heard and/or don’t see them being answered doesn’t mean He isn’t working in your life. God bless :hug1:
 
Hi guys,

Someone who said that I was a Christian and yet not prayed did bring up a good point; that if I am Christian I should pray, no matter what the prayer is, formal or informal, it does not matter if it enables us to cultivate a healthy, budding relationship between us and God.

I was a bit naive, I guess, to think of prayer as primarily something you say in the hopes of getting something you “want” from God as opposed to building our relationship to Him. Maybe that isn’t what I always thought of when I thought of prayer, but I have to admit it was one of the principal things that came to my mind. Maybe it’s just my attitude towards prayer that needs a change.

to sawman: I really truly hope that some of the suffering I feel is not God’s will in the long run for me, because a sizable portion of the suffering involves self-destructive thoughts that I know can’t possibly be coming from God.

I have a knack for looking at “formal” prayers; they just have a way of writing words to God that I admire. Catholic Answers has a link somewhere on their site to specific Catholic prayers. I think I will print it out and give it a look-see.
 
Good. I hope you keep praying. Your unwanted thoughts may be part of a chemical imbalance. sometimes God wants us to grow by finding and addressing underlying causes of problems and uses us to heal one another and ourselves, rather than directly healing us miraculously. If you’ve been struggling with other stress symptoms, maybe it’s PTSD or another stress overload with a cause you can do something about. Even taking care of myself with what resources I have can have a huge effect on my mental state.
 
When I was separated from the Church, I found myself on jury duty. We were involved in a heated debate in deliberations. In fact, the more we debated, the more firmly I was entrenched in my viewpoint. To be honest, most of the people on the jury weren’t too bright. I guess the bright people got out of jury duty.

At one point, I was inspired to suggest prayer. To this day, I don’t know what made me do it because I had never before this time led a prayer or even engaged in spontaneous prayer before.

I led the prayer asking for wisdom and expressing gratitude for jury duty, but in my head, I was praying, “change the mind of these idiots.”

Soon after, I found that the idiot was changing her mind (me :o ). The prayer experience taught me that prayer changes the one praying more than it affects anything else.

Prayer conforms us to God’s Will rather than conforming God to our desires.
 
Lady_Bug said:
Hi,

I know my post title is a bit candid, but I am having a couple issues with the subject of praying. I know people say that prayer has power and stuff, but there are a couple of deterrents that I face when I think about beginning to pray, and then I renege on my plans to pray.

I am depressed about a lot of things in my life, and for my age, I feel that I should have had my life on track, and it is the furthest thing from being on track. I live in a non-Christian household who I’m sure would take me to task if they knew I am Christian (I have been Christian for about a year), I think I have been put on the blacklist, I suffer from suicidal thoughts all the time (I won’t do anything), and I lack the social skills to go out and make friends, for I am very shy and introverted.

If not praying my own prayers, I think I to myself that I should at least look at the Psalms…any form of prayer, you know? But then I stop myself and say:
  1. If God doesn’t change his mind (that’s what I’ve been told, anyhow), and I pray for something that is against God’s will, what is the point?
  2. If I see either nominal or non-Christians receive the same “blessings” (i.e. marriage, family, etc.) that the more faithful pray constantly for and never receive, it looks as if God’s justice is upside down. Why should someone who hates God, hates Jesus, hates the Bible, etc., be blessed with something that someone who loves God/Jesus/the Bible prays for and possibly never receives? I’m not just talking about marriage and family, I’m talking about anything, like someone recovering from a serious illness, someone getting hired for a job they wanted, or someone praying that they don’t miscarry, etc. Anything.
It says somewhere in Ecclesiastes about the righteous getting what the wicked deserve, and the wicked getting what the righteous deserve. After observing what seems to be true in real life, I don’t care to pray at all. Because as I said before, God’s justice seems way upside down. The people who try to do good suffer for doing the right thing, while the people who love to do bad seem to get what the faithful pray for in life and succeed in other endeavors more easily. I don’t know why.

Can someone please try to help me in understanding why it is important to still pray when as I said, God’s justice seems to be upside down? I know…I’m quite angry about this.
Click to expand...
Hello my friend,

God is a good Father and gives us what He knows is good for us but also doesn’t respond the instant we ask for something. That would be something rather miraculous and probably dangerous to our frail human condition.
You probably have no idea the things that have been accomplished thru your prayers. Possibly nothing you expected or are immediatly aware of. Prayers are like that.

My job, your job…in fact the job of every christian is to pray. Not just spoken,discursive prayer but also the prayer that we do when we work, play and interact with others as christians.
The desire to please God actually pleases God - Thomas Merton.

If we do our job (pray), regardless of outcome or expectation…then we are acting according to God’s will. No need for me to see or know of the results of my prayer…that’s not my business.

Remember what happened to the mule that carried Jesus and Mary in their flight into Egypt?
Or maybe what happened to the mule that carried Jesus into His triumphant entry into Jerusalem?

The answer to both is “I dunno”. Why do we need to know? We are the mules that do our job and are unknown.

Me - I’m the mangy dog, eating the crumbs that fall from my Master’s table. My job is to pray…the results are His.

Pax Domini sit semper vobiscum.
 
When I was 8 I prayed that God would change my baby doll
into a real baby. In the morning, it was still a doll. I knew just
what the problem was - I had prayed for the wrong doll.
I went through all 13 of my dolls and none of them became a
real baby. God wasn’t able to explain all the reasons to me
why I didn’t get what I wanted at that time.

If I was God, I wouldn’t get someone married who had
suicidal thoughts. There are other things to work on first.
 
cheeto1 said:
When I was 8 I prayed that God would change my baby doll
into a real baby. In the morning, it was still a doll. I knew just
what the problem was - I had prayed for the wrong doll.
I went through all 13 of my dolls and none of them became a
real baby. God wasn’t able to explain all the reasons to me
why I didn’t get what I wanted at that time.

If I was God, I wouldn’t get someone married who had
suicidal thoughts. There are other things to work on first.
Click to expand...
The chair is against the door!?! 🤷

C’mon in from left field and talk a while, yes?
 
Remember, feelings come and go.
I think it’s fairly obvious here as to what has happened, you have become a christian and satan isn’t happy and God has kicked you out in the dark to see how you deal with your feelings, how you act on it.

You could go back to your old way (whatever it was), but then realize it will never help you. Just pray, even if you don’t ‘feel right’, you may feel so bad, but that won’t affect God hearing you and knowing you are trying your best. You will be eventually answered, whether it’s a yes or no. Try to keep in mind that our feelings sometimes stops us from seeing clearly the future and hence we ask God for things that will not help us. His no is the best thing that can happen to us. And similarly, his yes.

Don’t be afraid to let your household know, who cares, if they ask you difficult questions, try answering it, if you can’t, there are more than enough people here that can and will answer any tough questions. You have done so much already, making the transition in becoming a Christian and remember God hasn’t forgotten that, God knows how difficult it is.

You can never appreciate the good times if you haven’t been through the bad.
 
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