Praying For Someone

[Guest]

If a christian who is in grace prays an unfavorable prayer against a fellow christian could that prayer be answered ?
Ive heard peple say "you're in my prayers" while the other person responds " do not pray for me" because they dont know what the person may be praying for. They possibly would not be praying for favorable things for that person.
So will God ignore some prayers because they may cause strife in another persons life ?
Or will he answer them and let that person (the person who is being prayed for) grow or learn from the experience they go through as a result of the unfavorable prayer ?

Edited December 23, 2008 by Guest

[Guest]

i shoulda put this in Transmundane Lane
its more less a question

Edited December 23, 2008 by Guest

[CatherineM]

Wow, when my husband starts thinking about stuff like that, I know it is time to find something for him to clean.

Why would a person in a state of grace make an unfavorable prayer? When someone tells me not to pray for them, I pray even harder because they are obviously in need of it.

[Guest]

[quote name='CatherineM' post='1734458' date='Dec 23 2008, 05:37 PM']Wow, when my husband starts thinking about stuff like that, I know it is time to find something for him to clean.

Why would a person in a state of grace make an unfavorable prayer? When someone tells me not to pray for them, I pray even harder because they are obviously in need of it.[/quote]

lol I could probally do some cleaning

Im just curious though how God would respond.

[philothea]

[quote name='Delivery Boy' post='1734618' date='Dec 23 2008, 10:29 PM']lol I could probally do some cleaning

Im just curious though how God would respond.[/quote]

Luke 9:52-56:
[indent]
On the way they entered a Samaritan village to prepare for his reception there, but they would not welcome him because the destination of his journey was Jerusalem.

When the disciples James and John saw this they asked, "Lord, do you want us to call down fire from heaven to consume them?"

[b]Jesus turned and rebuked them[/b], and they journeyed to another village.[/indent]

I'm guessing it would not go especially well for the person doing the praying-for-bad.

[Guest]

[quote name='philothea' post='1734656' date='Dec 24 2008, 01:31 AM']Luke 9:52-56:
[indent]
On the way they entered a Samaritan village to prepare for his reception there, but they would not welcome him because the destination of his journey was Jerusalem.

When the disciples James and John saw this they asked, "Lord, do you want us to call down fire from heaven to consume them?"

[b]Jesus turned and rebuked them[/b], and they journeyed to another village.[/indent]

I'm guessing it would not go especially well for the person doing the praying-for-bad.[/quote]

whats up philothea Godbless !

thanks for the scripture that pretty much answers my question

[HisChildForever]

[quote]Ive heard peple say "you're in my prayers" while the other person responds " do not pray for me" because they dont know what the person may be praying for.[/quote]

Anyone who says "you are in my prayers" says this out of love and prays out of love.

[Maria_Faustina]

[quote name='Delivery Boy' post='1734453' date='Dec 23 2008, 04:22 PM']So will God ignore some prayers because they may cause strife in another persons life ?
Or will he answer them and let that person (the person who is being prayed for) grow or learn from the experience they go through as a result of the unfavorable prayer ?[/quote]


To follow the answer in the Gospel, have you heard the saying, "God always answers your prayers...sometimes the answer is just 'no.'"? Otherwise we'd have people becoming millionaires overnight and all kinds of crazy things if God fulfilled our every request! He knows quite better than we do what we reALLy need to happen.

[Guest]

[quote name='HisChildForever' post='1734852' date='Dec 24 2008, 02:34 PM']Anyone who says "you are in my prayers" says this out of love and prays out of love.[/quote]

hmm anyone is a pretty broad word.
i would hope they would pray out of love but i dunno.

[Guest]

[quote name='Maria_Faustina' post='1737485' date='Dec 29 2008, 02:12 AM']To follow the answer in the Gospel, have you heard the saying, "God always answers your prayers...sometimes the answer is just 'no.'"? Otherwise we'd have people becoming millionaires overnight and all kinds of crazy things if God fulfilled our every request! He knows quite better than we do what we reALLy need to happen. [/quote]

ahh good point

[In The Arms of The Lord]

When someone asks me to pray that they will get what they want or think they need, I will say, "I will pray for you, and I will keep you in my prayers." When I pray for them I ask that the Lord's Will be done, that they will get what they need and put their trust in the Lord. I know and believe that He knows what we need more than we ever will, and He knows all hearts.

[MithLuin]

[quote name='HisChildForever' post='1734852' date='Dec 24 2008, 02:34 PM']Anyone who says "you are in my prayers" says this out of love and prays out of love.[/quote]


Maybe. Most of the time, that is surely true.

Where I have seen this come up, though, is where one person who is obviously Christian tries to share the gospel, and another person (obviously not a Christian) says the equivalent of 'go away,' and then the Christian, sometimes acting all shocked that the person did not respond to their meager attempt, will piously intone, "I'll pray for you!"

In that situation, it isn't much of a surprise when the person responds, "Please don't. Just...don't."

In other words, most of the time, we offer to keep someone in our prayers if they share a tough situation they are going through, or if they [i]request[/i] prayers. If no one brought up anything that sounded like a prayer request, the offer of prayers can be seen as pushy or presumptuous....or even worse, sanctimonious showing off. "I can't win this arguement, but I will go talk to God about you now, since I know you are so much more worse off than I am...."



To clarify - if one Christian offers to pray for another, I really don't see that mirroring the situation I just described. But when the offer of prayer seems to have strings attached, or to be a judgement...it is easy to see why a person might choose to refuse the offer of prayers.


Luckily, God seems to be above all this silly petty bickering, so I really doubt we have to 'worry' about someone praying for us to, for instance, give up our misguided faith in Jesus. If I suspect someone of praying for my conversion, I cheerfully remind them that I have a mother who prays for me

[Luigi]

I think it was St. Teresa of Avila who came up with the doctrine that "there are no wasted prayers" - basically, that God knows how to apply our prayers for other people (better than we do). This is one of those topics I should research some, but I think that in Theresa's day, when communication took a long time over distances, the question arose about "what if I've been praying for somebody for three weeks and the perosn died two weeks ago? Were my last two weeks of prayer wasted?" And Theresa's answer was, "No, God applies your prayers to other people who need them."

All of that is a long introduction to your original question. Pray for the person, even if they don't necessarily want you to. Prayers are not magic incantations that can bring about a specific desired objective - if that person is afraid you're going to pray them into the Catholic church or into doing some other thing that they don't want to do, tell 'em to get over it. This is prayer, not witchcraft!

Sort of based on that idea, I try not to pray "for" specific objectives/goals/events; I prefer to pray "about" them, leaving it up to God to figure out specifically what to do, how to help, how to resolve the problem. And God can always figure out a better solution than I can anyway, so there's no real need for me to be specific - we should bring our problems to God, not our solutions.