I had to laugh at that. :laugh:
I assume you are joking becauuse any other suggestion would be foolish. That scripture is about not to pray too promote ones self for public recognition. Not an example to pray without understanding. Praying unspoken prayers is unbiblical and sin.
I admit that I have issues with unspoken prayer requests, however I would not call it sinful.
One of the problems I have with it is that if asked to pray for something unspoken, I really can't pray for the specific request because I don't know what it is.
It's possible the request is something against God's will.
So the only prayer I can offer up to God is for His will to be done.
Another problem I have with it is if I don't trust someone enough to disclose my request, I really don't want their prayers anyway.
I would not ask a known gossip to pray for me regardless if the request was spoken or unspoken.
I would take my request to people that care for me and I could trust to keep it private.
Ok it seems pretty obvious to me that you simply have an ax to grind around here and want others to help you to do that. I refuse to be a part of that.
Have fun.
Although I don't agree with freeatlast's conclusions, I do think he's having a bit of trouble communicating what an "Unspoken Request" is, and it seems like it must not be a universal practice.
It can be illustrated like this: In our church we have a prayer request sheet to inform us of the members' prayer requests.
There's a section for Health in which there will be items like, "Jim is having surgery, please pray he comes through it okay."
There's a section for "Salvation" which has stuff like, "Witnessed to my neighbor yesterday, please pray they come to church next week."
Then there's a section called "Unspoken" that doesn't list specific requests, it just has the names of all of the people that have private needs that they feel are of a personal nature,
so you end up praying something like, "God, please be with George's unspoken request, whatever it may be."
The problem some people have with this practice is that George's request could be for his estranged wife to die of natural causes so that he can finally marry the woman he truly wants.
Of course, one would have to have a pretty pessimistic view of his brethren to think this way.
Freeatlast,
you called your post an article in an earlier post. Is this taken from some book or did you write it.
Readmore,
I understand what you are saying. But in my mind, even when praying for some need that is left unspoken, I imagine that most of us have the assumption of "if it is God's will".
at least I do.
Thank you for the explanation. This is one way that "Unspoken prayer requests" come about. I would however disagree with your belief that we need to just trust that people always want us to pray for things that are God's will. However let's say that such were always true. No one ever wants God to grant them things against His will. That still does not solve the problem because it is not simply about what they want in secret. it is about following God's design for prayer and it is impossible to pray in faith and not know what you are asking. That makes it sin.
Then pray in private yourself. God can hear any of His children, but to pray for someone and not know what you are asking is sin.
I understand the resistance to this since there are those pastors who have lead their congreations into this sin and now are accountable. They do not want to be found out so they defend the practice. The wise thing would be to confess and repent.
Well, I wouldn't go that far.
:laugh: But sometimes people do have prayer requests that are just not right.
I have read some pretty far out prayer requests on this board.
There was one in particular whose wife had left him because he was abusive and he requested prayers for her to return to him even though she had not spoken to him in over a year and had no intention of reconciling.
He posted multiple, multiple times, even getting angry with some who gave him good advice that contradicted what he wanted.
He wanted others to pray for what he wanted and not for what was best for his wife.
Now if his request had been unspoken, people may well have prayed for his request (although it was wrong) to be granted.
This type of thing is my reason for concern.
Again, this is just me and my opinion, if it's worth anything.
:)
Amy is correct. There are many times when people cannot get God to do their will so they ask others to pray for them in their request. Sometimes they do so through "Unspoken prayer requests."' However that in itself would not be reason enough to not ever pray such requests IF the "unspoken prayer" was biblical, but it is not! There is not so single example of anyone praying that way. There is not even a hint that this is a proper manner to pray even if we trust the person requesting the prayer. We can be sure that it is absolutely impossible to pray in faith when lifting an unknown prayer. Unless you know what you ask you cannot believe that God will say yes so you end up with a prayer without any faith which goes against what we are commanded as to how to pray. At worst you ask God to grant a sin because you intercede for that persons sinful request. The bottom line is that it is against the way God calls for us to pray and that makes it sin.
If so, would it not have been much clearer, and less open to misinterpretation, to call this thread "Unspoken Prayer Requests", rather than "Unspoken Prayers"?
It's no big deal, I suppose, but why the apparent reluctance to answer Tom publicly, Freeatlast? For a start, knowing whether the OP was your own, or copied from a book or magazine would help us know the context in which it was written.
Agreed, but where the article appeared originally could affect our understanding of the content. For instance, if a Quaker periodical included an article on "unspoken prayer", it would probably be coming from a different point of view than if the article were in a Pentecostal magazine. (Don't read anything into my choice of example denominations - they were random). As it stands, the OP makes it seem as if you personally had written, "In today's church there has risen a practice by some that is both non biblical as well as disrespectful to the Lord."
However, as I said, it is no big deal, and if you have a reason for not telling us all where the article came from, that is entirely up to you, and I shall respect that.
Are we forgetting Baptist Boards rules on posting articles? Yes, it is a deal, you need to give the writer credit and post a link to the article when you post them here.