Why we christians pray

Hailemikael

hey all, how are you all doing?

I wanted to share this video with you. it is very informative. it's aroud 5:30 minutes. A Greek Orthodox priest explains to us why prayer is very important and what the purpose of prayer is.
In regard to this, i want to ask, how often do we pray? i sometimes forget to when i'm busy thinking about other things. i'm sure this happenes to many of us, but when we start to pray, our minds slips to something else and we start thinking about other things. we need to concentrate and give all our heart to God when we pray.

ok, check out the video and i want to hear about your prayer life.

kokiie

I asked my confession father the same question once ;
'How much should I pray?'
He replied, 'How much do you love God?' .

It took me a while to properly understand this..

Love is more important than anything else:

"'And you shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ This is the first commandment."[Mark 12:30]


Makes it pretty clear ;)

So even if you do the right thing, etc..
you are no different from a 'moral' human being. It is love for our Lord that makes us Christian.

Naturally if you love someone you want to be with them all the time.. prayer becomes just like a telephone line that is alwayys open. and youre constantly calling Go for help in a particular situation that just happened.. or thanking Him for it.

Dont get me wrong though ! there stilll has to be a time of day that is DEVOTED to God.. ideally this should be 2.4 hours a day [ tithes ] .. its like the minimum.... But yu can pray as much as you want ! ;D

hope i made sence && Good luck !

BTW ii cudnt watch the movie because ii have a really slow connection :( if anyone has some spare time on their hands maybe you can post the main points the movie makes ?

Hailemikael

[quote author=Hizz_chiilld link=board=13;threadid=4487;start=0#msg61818 date=1160181744]
I asked my confession father the same question once ;
'How much should I pray?'
He replied, 'How much do you love God?' .

It took me a while to properly understand this..

Love is more important than anything else:

"'And you shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ This is the first commandment."[Mark 12:30]


Makes it pretty clear ;)

So even if you do the right thing, etc..
you are no different from a 'moral' human being. It is love for our Lord that makes us Christian.

Naturally if you love someone you want to be with them all the time.. prayer becomes just like a telephone line that is alwayys open. and youre constantly calling Go for help in a particular situation that just happened.. or thanking Him for it.

Dont get me wrong though ! there stilll has to be a time of day that is DEVOTED to God.. ideally this should be 2.4 hours a day [ tithes ] .. its like the minimum.... But yu can pray as much as you want ! ;D

hope i made sence && Good luck !

BTW ii cudnt watch the movie because ii have a really slow connection :( if anyone has some spare time on their hands maybe you can post the main points the movie makes ?


thanks for the reply Hizz_chiilld. :) You totally made sense. I liked what your cofession father said "how much you love God" ...deep. anyways, like you said we have to have a time in a day that we devote it completely to God.

Give me a little while and i'll post some of the points the priest makes including the questions he is asked.

Hailemikael

lol I got carried away and ended up typing almost all the things he said.

check it out Hizz_chiilld.

Q: what is the purpose of prayer? Why should people pray?

A: prayer is what you establish your relationship with the Creator, our Lord God and Savior Jesus Christ. Without prayer, we have no relationship with Christ. …… In order to open up our hearts to Christ and in order o purify our heart so Christ can come and dwell there we need to establish a relationship with Him. …without prayer, we are at the mercy of the demons; they’ll help us do anything if they can keep us away from praying. Because they know that praying is the most important aspect and therapy the church offers. And that’s what the church is. It’s a hospital where the illness of the soul can be cured so that the heart could be purified and functioning properly. Prayer is something everyone talks about and everyone claims to do but it is one of the most difficult things for us to set aside time to pray to Christ and open up our heart to Him. It’s essential cause our relationship with Christ is formed there.

Q: there are people who pray and experience unpleasant things in life. And there are other people who don’t pray, and they experience pleasant things in life. How do I know prayer is helping me?

A: we don’t always feel the effects. We know that Astronomers have seen the stars told us about the stars and we believed them, we don’t question the scientists because we can verify what they claim. We can do the same thing with the saints. The saints tell us that Christ will always hear our prayers and that He will not give us what we want. He will give us what we need. But sometimes what we need and what we want are the same things. This is what the saints have reached and essentially what we need is Christ and we need to have a union with Him. What we want isn’t always good for us. We want high salary, we want good health, we want what’s best for our children, we want peace in the world. This are things inherently good. But they are not always what Christ wants for us individually. He may allow suffering to happen to us because it may be good for us to go through that suffering to wake us up, for who knows what God’s purpose is. …Well, we know His purpose is to save us, but we don’t always know how His plan is working in our lives. He allows us to have free will. He will not violet our free will. He wants us to come to Him in freedom using our free will giving over to Him. And prayer, Lord Jesus Christ Son of God have mercy on me, that prayer, the Jesus prayer as it’s called, the most important prayer, the most powerful of all prayers, that prayer is asking for mercy and not for anything else because God knows what we want.

Q: some people pray only when they’re in times of trouble, sadness. Why is it important that we pray in a daily basis?

A: Well because we’re addicts. We’re addicted severely to our passions. We’re addicted to pleasures. We’re addicted to the self-center ness of our personalities. We’re addicted to caring for number one. This is what we, what the fathers of the Church call the passions. The passions that are stirred up through the flesh, through the mind, through the emotions. When we don’t get what we want, we become like little brats. We get stuck in traffic and we start cursing everything and everybody around us, except for ourselves of course. And even sometimes God, we curse. So the passions have to be cured and it takes an intensive care, it takes intensive prayer. It just can’t happen over night. Most babies as we see from the minute they were born, they’re screaming for their bottle, they’re screaming for their milk, they want what they want, and they want it now. So, some of us never graduate, never mature from that state. So, prayer is like a therapy. It’s a therapy that has to be used every single day for the cure. If you get a horrible disease like cancer, would we ever think twice about not taking our therapy every single day? Would we think about skipping our therapy? We don’t take it that seriously the sickness of the soul. Most of man kind doesn’t take it seriously. But it’s an eternal, an eternal concern, the Gospel of St. Mathew says, Christ says that you have to take the kingdom of heaven through violence or by force, and that means by force of your will.

Hailemikael

praying is so important. this part he said is very deep and concerning for me. kinda' scared me.

without prayer, we are at the mercy of the demons; they’ll help us do anything if they can keep us away from praying.

kokiie

wow ! i lovee iit ! s0oo truu.. ;D thx heaps for sharing it with us 'Hailemikael' ..

Hailemikael

Hizz_chiilld....no problem. I'm glad you liked it. :)

Hailemikael

so, other people saw the video yet?



here is another video about Orthodox. enjoy ..!!! ;D

Hailemikael

another nice video about orthodox. i liked the back ground music/hymn. :)

is it in coptic, russian, greek, armenian, etc....??

enjoy! ;D

Unknown

[quote author=Hailemikael link=board=13;threadid=4487;start=0#msg61846 date=1160268633]
another nice video about orthodox. i liked the back ground music/hymn. :)

is it in coptic, russian, greek, armenian, etc....??

enjoy! ;D





Its a video about the Eastern Orthodox Church, and so it wouldn't be Coptic or Armenian.

The hymn is Russian-style, but in English.

Hailemikael

thanks Orthodox11.

i forgot there was difference between the Five Sister churches and the Eastern Orthodx Churches. Anybody know what's the main difference between these churches?

here is Coptic hymn



compare it with some part of Ethiopian Orthodox mass (around the beginning)

Unknown

[quote author=Hailemikael link=board=13;threadid=4487;start=0#msg61848 date=1160270935]
thanks Orthodox11.

i forgot there was difference between the Five Sister churches and the Eastern Orthodx Churches. Anybody know what's the main difference between these churches?


The Oriental Orthodox Church does not accept the Council of Chalcedon and the subsequent Councils considered Ecumenical by Eastern Orthodox.

Hailemikael

What was decided at the Council of Chalcedon?  ???

I can look it up, but I wanted to bring up this topic...

minatasgeel

[quote author=Hailemikael link=topic=4487.msg75116#msg75116 date=1186309604]
What was decided at the Council of Chalcedon?  ???

I can look it up, but I wanted to bring up this topic...


It's very long story...But the result is was that the Oriental churches led by Pope Dioscoros putting a written anathema or the dogmas that were changed in the council by Pope Leo and his bishops and the churches with him. The dogmas that were changed were not approved by the Oriental churches for simply, 1st: they were not physically in the council, 2nd: there was a lot of confusion of what happened in the second council of Ephesus (not recognized).