prescriptive or descriptive

"is the bible account of prayers prescriptive or descriptive?"  i raised this question in the early days of this thread.  no one picked up on it, so i will try again.  to clarify, 'prescriptive' means that bible teaching on prayer was meant to apply to all generations; 'descriptive' means that the bible narrative describes what happened then, which may not apply now. try reading the 'ask/seek/knock' text with the filter of 'that was then, this is now'.  it seems to me that the vast number of prayer requests do not get results, not like those in the early days of christianity.

is prayer simply a two-way conversation between you and God?

see http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125320323440120011.html.  found this article today on the wall street journal web site.  here is a quote it provided from billy graham:  "Prayer is simply a two-way conversation between you and God."  i don't experience the 'two-way' part when i pray.  do you?  would you be willing to describe it?

what qualifies as an answer to prayer?

the answers god might give to prayer requests can be grouped into these categories:  "yes", "no", "maybe", or "not yet".  anyone of those answers, or any variants thereof, i can deal with appropriately; some might take longer to assimilate than others, but i know i can get there.  what i cannot process is silence - no answer whatsover.  silence is not an answer.  maybe you believe that god has indeed answered my prayers, but i have not recognized it.  some have said to me, 'of course, god answers all prayers'.  that may be true for them, but not for me.  if i have to do everything just right in order to accurately detect an answer, then i am doomed.  it cannot hinge on me getting it right.  it should not be that hard!!  what do you think?

how does prayer work for you?

from angry conversations with god, p. 4:  "from the moment i could sing 'jesus loves me', i knew the words were true.  maybe i was just given the gift of faith the way some people get perfect pitch.  but i believed in the god of the bible and in jesus, his son.  of course, i also believed in santa claus and the tooth fairy.  but while those childhood myths died away for lack of evidence, my belief in jesus gained momentum.  one afternoon when i was about eight, i was standing in the backyard playing catch with our dog, and i got the sense that jesus was standing there with me.  he didn't say 'i died for you so go help your mom set the table'.  i just sensed he wanted me to know he was there.  and knowing he was there, i felt loved."

for some people, prayer has always been an active part of their faith from as far back as they can remember.  or maybe an active prayer life came later as a daily spiritual tool.  my question is this:  how has prayer worked for you?  do you receive answers to all or some?  if you do, how do you know?  has prayer been seasonal or constant?  how do you discern whether or not god is listening, much less answering? 

Let's Start with Susan Isaacs

Susan Isaacs has written a book entitled "Angry Conversations With God".  in it she makes a compelling presentation of her anger and frustration with God.  although her main theme is feeling abandoned by God, i want to use her thoughts as a vehicle for narrowing the focus on prayer.   the way she vents about God is very similar to my own experience.  read the book if you get the chance.  she is a good writer, and she is more honest about her faith than most people in mainline churches.  and she is funny.  the next few posts i make will be taken from her book.

Restart

after laying idle for several months, it's time to restart this discussion on prayer.  once a private affair, now it is open to anyone for reading and comments.  I, and maybe others, will be posting new content soon.

Thoughts on Prayer from N. T. Wright

This is a portion of an article on the Lord's Prayer from N. T. Wright.

"Your Will Be Done
The doing of YHWH’s will on earth as in heaven is, of course, part of the whole apocalyptic theme in which heavenly truths and events become embodied in their earthly counterparts. Part of the point of the whole Sinai theophany — the central part, in fact, of the Exodus story — was the meeting of heaven and earth, with Moses as the intermediary who went to and fro between the two spheres, so that laws and instructions made in heaven could be carried out on earth. This anticipates (or, depending on one’s view of Pentateuchal origins, reflects) the temple theology in which the sanctuary was considered to be quite literally the place where heaven and earth met. If Torah was the means by which, within Israel, God’s will was to be done on earth as in heaven, and if the temple was the place where this was embodied in cultic celebration and sacrifice, to pray that this might happen anew — within the context of the New Exodus motifs already so strongly present — was to pray not merely that certain things might occur within the earthly realm that would coincide with plans that God had made in the heavenly realm, but that a fresh integration of heaven and earth would take place in which all that temple and Torah had stood for would be realized afresh. It was to pray both that God’s saving purpose for Israel and the world would come about through God’s personal action, and that God’s people would find themselves not merely shaped by a law, however divine, or focused on a building, however God-given, but embraced by a saving personal love.
“Thy will be done on earth as in heaven” can, of course, carry all sorts of further overtones, such as prayers for wise political solutions to world-shaking crises, prayers for bread for the hungry, and prayers for justice for the oppressed. But at its heart lies a prayer for the appropriate integration of heaven and earth that the early Christians came to see already accomplished in Jesus himself — who was like Moses, but so much more so — and came to long for in God’s eventual future (cf. Rev. 21; see also Rom. 8:17-30, which we will discuss later)."

Maybe our prayers should be considered in the context of the Lord's Prayer and they are about the "fresh integration of heaven and earth would take place".