Prayer

The stakes are high when it comes to identifying the one to whom we should pray, and we can discover who by answering an apparently simple question: Can we expect prayers to be heard no matter who we address them to?

I’m going to be honest with you. I find prayer really hard. If I had to give reasons for all my tears over the past few years, most of them have come during conversations with God.

Centuries ago, the German theologian and philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz used the term “theodicy”1 for the first time—“God’s justification”. By theodicy, Leibniz meant the ultimate reality of justification, once and for all, of God and all of His ways before the whole universe.

"Suppose I go to the Israelites…and they ask me, ‘What is his name?' Then what shall I tell them? God said to Moses, 'I AM who I AM. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: I AM has sent me to you'" (Exodus 3:13-14).

One day, Jesus’s disciples—who followed Him about, observing His every word and action—asked Him to teach them how to pray.

What do Protestants have against the intercession of saints? If, during their lives on earth, the saints interceded with God for their fellow men, after they’ve gone to heaven would they be wrapped in holy indifference? Or would their intercession continue?

We have trouble understanding and accepting the image of a loving God, as we have grown too familiar with the type of love that offers itself only when it finds in a person the qualities that make them easy to love.

The imbalance between the requests and the thanksgiving we bring into our worship is a topic any Christian can talk about, and not just based on other people’s experience. As long as we approach praise and thanksgiving as duties to be fulfilled, we will miss the greatest blessings that can rest upon a heart full of gratitude.

We love people for who they are. But there is a kind of love that is too high for us to truly comprehend in all its nuances, a love that manifests itself towards people no matter who they are or what they become. We find a love such as this in the beautiful story of Ian and Larissa.

A major crisis pushes us to re-evaluate the way we see and do things in the fields of health, finance, and social interaction. But how does this crisis affect our religious practices—especially the most common of these, prayer?

God reveals Himself through the Bible, the person of Jesus Christ, nature, and our conscience. Prayer is not revelatory. If it is neither revelatory for humans nor for God, what is prayer then?

The words God is not listening! He is not answering! are the essence of one of our most troubling complaints. Is there an answer to it powerful enough to pull us from doubt’s darkness?

No one has ever seen God, but the One who knew Him before He was born on this earth taught us all to address Him in prayer.

Noemina is a graduate of the University of Hertfordshire, UK, where she majored in health care. She is working in her field as of 2012. The journal excerpt she sent to us reflects her week-long experience at the epicentre of the battle with the new coronavirus in the intensive care unit, where serious cases are admitted.

The following interview was conducted by Hope Channel Romania almost ten years ago when the guest, Pastor Don Schneider, was the president of the Adventist Church in North America. Last year, on May 23, he passed away at the age of 76. Those who follow Hope Channel remember that, for a few seasons, they were able to watch his show, Really Living. Every...