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UGW #8: Advice about prayer

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  Understanding God's Will #8: (I am combining three posts - 8a, 8b, 8c - into one post here.) 8a.   If praying for God’s Will is necessary, then do I have to know the specifics of what to ask for?    How do we pray so that His Will gets done? (This is just some of my own thoughts and advice on prayer.) I think that it’s okay to ask for certain things and to make specific requests, but I also think that  God doesn’t always need us to know exactly what to ask for.    Because it’s not always about how  we  want Him to act or answer.    God knows the best course of action, so we don’t have to have the details all ironed out before we pray.    But we do need to pray.    We need to share our concerns with Him and give them over to Him, to be transparent and authentic with Him, to confess our sins, to honestly share our wants and needs, to be sensitive to the Spirit, and to ask for His providence, His wisdom, and His g...
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UGW #7: But God already knows our needs

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  Understanding God's Will #7: But what about the verses that talk about how God knows what we need before we ask, like  Matthew 6:8  and  Matthew 6:32 ?    Doesn’t this show that we don’t really need to pray for His care, because He’ll care for us anyway, since He knows our needs?             God knows what we need, and He can read our thoughts.    (All the more reason to make sure that we set our minds on things above and not on impure, ungodly things.)    But once again, it doesn’t say that He responds to our thoughts or that He gives us what we need just because He knows we need it.    We can choose to live apart from God, in self-sufficiency.    We can choose to live life sitting back, putting our feet up and saying, “Ok, God, bring on the blessings... Look how well He takes care of me!”    We can choose to think like Calvinists do, that God's already planned out everything...
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UGW #6: But God can read our minds

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  Understanding God's Will #6: But if God can read our minds, isn’t just thinking about what we want to pray good enough?    Isn’t saying, “I’ll pray for you” and intending to do it as good as doing it?    You know, “It’s the thought that counts,” right?                I used to think this.    I used to think that if prayers were just formalities and if He could read my thoughts, then He knew what I wanted to pray.    And that was just as good as praying.    Right? Wrong!    Once again, it wasn’t until Job actually prayed for God to forgive his friends that God forgave them.    Even though God planned to forgive, He didn’t act on that until Job prayed.    And on top of that, it wasn’t until after Job obeyed and prayed that God blessed him again.                Job 42:9-10 :     “... and the...
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A Calvinist pastor's sermons on 9-11 (vs. C.S. Lewis)

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With the anniversary of 9-11 approaching, I thought I'd share on my blogs some quotes from my Calvinist ex-pastor's sermons about 9-11 or around the anniversary of 9-11.  Enjoy!  (I've shared all these before, so skip them in you want to.)   And I'm so sorry to share these.  (Please don't read them if you were greatly hurt by 9-11, or any other tragedy.)  But it's a great example of how hyper-focused Calvinists can be on God's "sovereignty", to the point that they can't even hear how heartless and tone-deaf (and unbiblical!) they sound about a horrible tragedy that destroyed many people and families and that greatly wounded our country.  They can't even comprehend - or don't care about - the damage they might be doing to someone's faith in God.  All they can think about is that they are supposedly glorifying God by singing the praises of His "sovereign control" and encouraging others to do the same, regardless of the trage...
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