Apparently, next week, we get to talk about whether God changes His mind for petitionary prayers. Obviously, He does not always answer to what we want, but there is some evidence in the Old Testament that He changed his mind. For example, Genesis 18 (here) shows Abraham praying for the town of Sodom and the dialogue there shows God changing His mind from His original plan. And my professor seems to think that God still does... Which makes the idea of prayer a lot more inviting, knowing that it's not just a futile attempt to converse with God. Not only does He listen, He responds and cares. But that's just a teaser, because I don't really know what I think about that - I sure trust God's plans more than mine - and we're talking about it next week. So start thinking about it; I'll be asking about it later. My main thing is like a "What if I actually get what I pray for? But God hadn't planned it for me? Wouldn't I be getting something that isn't as good for me as what He planned?"
So, a quick overview of things I found interesting from the first four days of class:
- Is it a "pagan practice" to pray for practical things? In the New Testament, individual requests were always "cradled between substantial introductions and conclusions that focused the petitioner's attention on praise and adoration." (Crump in Expository Times, 120(5)) Basically, we decided no, even though they're not really worth worrying about (Matthew 6:32). God won't fault us for praying for specific things, but we should be remembering the true purpose of prayer is NOT for our comfort or material requests.
- The majority of prayers in the New Testament are intercessory (for other people.) Hmm... Not mine, usually. How many Julies does it take to screw in a light bulb? (One, because the world revolved around me.)
- The Jewish prayer life was (is?) very focused on the idea of berakoth (blessings) and thanking God for the blessings that we find in our daily life. In class, we each made a list of 50 things we were thankful for. Easy, right? Try it. Now, how many blessings did you list that were material things or things for your comfort? Not that we can't enjoy these, but if I hadn't been thinking about other types of blessings, all 50 of my blessings would have been such.
- Berakoth was their way of life - it made worship a lifestyle and helped them focus on true joy and gratitude, or was supposed to. The prayers recited began and ended with berakoth. An ancient rabbi said, "for those who make berakah (singular form; blessing) a life, everything becomes manna." Manna was the miraculous bread that fell from heaven. Imagine living a life where everything - intellect, material, spiritual, all blessings were as obvious as bread falling from heaven when you're hungry.
- Romans 1:21 begins, "For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor..." - What do you expect follows from Paul's description of pagans? Don't glorify God and ?? Surprisingly, it finishes with "-nor gave thanks to him..." That's the strength of berakah; it was (and maybe still is? Thoughts?) a defining characteristic of pagans, the people who did not follow God. Praising God for our trials is not a Christian thing, it originates from Judaism. Saying berakoth for enemies, as Romans 12:14 (here; the word "bless" is eulogia, meaning a blessing or thanksgiving) IS unique to Christianity at that point.
finally, a good friend (whose honesty, cynicism, and love never ceases to amaze me) sent me this quote after we talked about a lot of the above stuff:
"For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business." - ts eliot, the four quartets
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1 comment:
Nice post Julie, those are some interesting points to be making, and I can agree that many of the things I pray for are not on behalf of others. I suppose that just because more than one of us is guilty doesn't mean we don't have to try though. I'll keep this in mind as I try to be more intercessory, especially as I may have discovered someone today, who has things weighing heavily on their mind -
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