Prayer: Personal, Intimate, One-on-One

People sometimes believe really dumb things. The idea of an LDS-Scientology connection is one of the dumbest things I can think of.

CCNL, CCNL, CCNL,

"Your Matt 6:6 (actually Matt 6:1-8) are single passages/attestations i.e. not found in any other gospel or epistle and therefore not historically reliable as something said by the simple, preacher man aka Jesus."

Lighten up. Your slavish devotion to the methods of The Borg have clearly put you into a Funk, old boy.

Re Scientology and Mormonism, committed Birthers believe that a lack of sufficient documentation can be very powerful evidence.

The reason we see no documentation of any connection between the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and Scientology is because the idea is so preposterous that anybody seriously considering it is, in my opinion, mentally unhinged.

Given their enormous similarities, especially origins and the focus on money, it it very probable that the Mormon and Scientology organizations are closely, although invisibly, connected. If this is not so, why do we see zero documentation for that contention?

And the odd and strange probability wave named Homeland1 again infects this thread!!

Hmmm, is there a cure for this kind of behavior??? A good dose of honesty would do the trick but then again we are dealing with probability waves.

And the odd and strange probability wave named Homeland1 again infects a thread!!
Could it be the mad impersonator has returned??

The probability wave detector has btw identified the following as possible waves:

Observer12,
Observer31,
Yael1,
ivri5678,
Billy8,
nadinebatra,
stadtbear,
Spark1,
Shark2,
Spidermean3,
DOUG_WHITE,
FTH123
MANSOUR112,
hsnkhwj,
Zebra4,
Captn_Ahab
James210
and liveandlove
DOULGASLBARBER
arancia12 |??
Whistling
pgibson
stadtbear
SUSAN_JACOBY
r92531 R.H. Malick
pastorred68
EFAVORITE
SECULARGURU |
Muckenfuss
anti-davidwaters
Carstonio
Concernedex-JewNowLiberated
New world
IVRI#
Homeland1

homeland1

you forgot Quetzacoatal!

mark
always seek the truth

Mike,
It is you that are misinformed (perhaps by your church).

I have met many mormon missionaries. They have, as a vast majority only regurgitated knowledge of God, Truth, or the bible. anyone who knows the bible can easily pick through their misunderstandings, ending in "well it is a matter of faith and what I believe" They are arrogant, usually, and don't "seek the truth" but seek to simply prove that what they have been told is true.

As I said, Jesus is now an Aztec. See when he got to hell, he saw the problem of his ways and joined a more enlightened religion. I am sorry if you didn't get the opportunity to see the Aztec way of belief, but in the next life you may see that and your children will already have been given the opportunity and come to the Aztec gods (is this offensive to you).

By the way, just because you read a book does not make it true. Just because you believe joseph smith saw magic letters does not make it true.

You see god as a condemning entity. Your god is a hateful one that says you will be condemned if you don't follow me. (you can't help this as you have been taught it by people you thought were the best.) Oh, I know you will deny it, but then why do you need a savior - or perhaps he is but another human teacher that could well be wrong about what he is teaching? but the God that is, is a loving one. It says, when you seek the truth by any name, you seek it. when you have faith in truth and love beyond your ego, you have faith in it. When you act in conscience in your daily life, you act with it. It also says I love each creation as my child.

You see, Mark, as you seek the truth, you realize you don't need salvation from the hell created by a demon-god. You don't need to follow ritulistic ordinances to know the truth. You don't need to tithe to get into the temple of God. You don't need a book to tell you what is written in every human soul. God is much more loving than what you have been taught. God is with you, twittering away in your mind this very moment, and It is with me and with jesus aztec. And we each share a profound intimacy with It.

So seek the truth. If you are not arrogant, if your demigod hasn't closed your mind and heart, if you are earnest in your quest, you will come out of the tradition of darkness and come directly to the light - without an intermediary. (But alas, I think you will rationalize that god must be in a book, the book you were given, not anyone else's book, and not join the true seekers)

hariaum

Navin1

Wow, are you misinformed.

Mormon Missionaries know more about the bible than most people.
Their goal is to spread the word of God. As directed by God in both the bible and the book of Mormon. (Which complement each other)
They receive their knowledge of the bible and the book of Mormon from seminary school, and missionary school.
Knowing about the word of God is a pretence to knowing about life. Because learning about the word of God teaches you a great deal about life. If you don’t believe that then you haven’t really studied the bible. If you have, then no where near enough.

As for performing ordinances for the dead, that too is in the bible.
It is why temples were built throughout history and is directed and ordained by God in the bible.

We are not converting dead people.
We are performing ordinances for people that they didn’t have the opportunity to receive when they were on this earth.
Said ordinances are a requirement to getting back into heaven as stated by Jesus himself.

You still have a free will in the spirit world.
It is up to the recipient of the ordinance, done by proxy in a temple as directed by God, wither or not they accept said ordinances.

After all, you wouldn’t expect God to condemn a soul just because he/she didn’t have the opportunity to be baptized while on the earth, or never had the opportunity to study the word of God would you? If you do, then you haven’t really studied the word of God.

All of this is in the bible and the book of Mormon. Study it, learn the word of God, and learn about life and the after life.

Mark
Always seek the truth.

ccnl,

so, you do want something for nothing.

dont hold your breath.

mark
always seek the truth

Mark, Mark, Mark,

Your Matt 6:6 (actually Matt 6:1-8) are single passages/attestations i.e. not found in any other gospel or epistle and therefore not historically reliable as something said by the simple, preacher man aka Jesus.

Again Matthew (whoever he was) put words in the simple preacher man's mouth in an attempt to create a deity and/or prophet.

e.g. http://www.faithfutures.org/JDB/jdb399.html

http://www.faithfutures.org/JDB/jdb397.html

Ccnl

Hope and prayer is not the same thing.

God wants to here from you directly.

To use the quote above used by brother Otterson:

"But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly." (Matthew 6:6)

To merely hope is to discount his presence. One must take action if you expect to receive his blessings. If you want something from someone, you must let them know. Wishing for it doesn’t cut it.

Are you so cheep that you can’t spend a minute to talk to your heavenly father each day?
If it is that unimportant to you, then your hopes are also unimportant to God.
You don’t get something for nothing, you know.

Mark
Always seek the truth.

Hope is not the same as praying.

v.intr.

To wish for something with expectation of its fulfillment.

Archaic. To have confidence; trust.

v.tr.

To look forward to with confidence or expectation: We hope that our children will be successful.

To expect and desire. See synonyms at expect

n. A wish or desire accompanied by confident expectation of its fulfillment.

Something that is hoped for or desired: Success is our hope.

One that is a source of or reason for hope: the team's only hope for victory.

"But among all the forms of religious communication, prayer stands apart. For me, prayer is an intensely personal, one-on-one form of communication with God that transcends any form of technology. I find prayer most beneficial when I can escape the noise and distraction of the world - much of which, ironically, is generated by technology - and immerse myself in the quiet and solitude that comes only through an intimate conversation with my Creator. "

Wild. You know, I actually find it a favorite form of prayer to sing along with the radio to the Gods, not for me, so much, as to sing things some might be feeling but can't express. Maybe they do. Maybe it isn't the important part.

Maybe it is. :)

Sure, people pray with song, but not really sharing what is, ...whatever it is... that's separated, and made profane, especially since the radio got all but completely bought out by the same few corporations and most of the rest of the bands filled with conservative rage, corporate pablum, and religious pontificating...

Music and radio and even holy books have very long been about who controls the presses, who controls the bands and antennas, who controls the bandwith,

Who controls.

Prayer isn't a pop quiz or orthodoxy examination, not in the singing, and not in the feeling and listening and filtering.

Never was. Maybe that's why some get scared of every new communication tech.

I fear for grammar, too, but, hey.

The really substantial pattern of prayer was given by Krishna when he said that so long as you earnestly have faith in whatever personal form of god, he would accept that as a prayer to the supreme self that he is.

As to technology, it is a neutral object. Nazi christians, american christians (and mormons), catholics, etc all used it to commit genocide. It belongs to the evil and the good. The goodness is in the choices we make, and that includes how to use technology. If propaganda is spread via twitter or bibles, it remains ignorance promoting. If truth is spread by word of mouth, or simply letting others experience a reality divergent than your own, it remains truth.

hariaum

"I try to make it a habit never to dismiss, denigrate or marginalize anyone else's religious practice."

and yet you donate money to missionaries that barely know anything about life, let alone spirituality, to prey upon widows and desperate people to convert them out of their lifelong religion.

Pray that your perceptions of god go beyond a book based religion and that the Mormon leadership teaches that converting dead people is an anathema to those person's lives and free choices (oh yeah, by the way, jesus converted to aztec in his next life).

hariuam

ccnl

You are contradicting yourself.

First you hope there is a heaven.

Then you wont waste your time praying.

What waste would there be to spend a minute praying when you get up in the morning, if you are hoping there is a heaven?

Mark
Always seek the truth.

Hmmm,

All that and still pray? What could you be doing though if you were not praying?

After reading the great words of the contemporary theologian, Edward Schillebeeckx, god might listen but his/her "hands" are tied by the gifts/human condition of free will and future:

"Church: The Human Story of God,
Crossroad, 1993, p.91 (softcover)

"Christians (et al) must give up a perverse, unhealthy and inhuman doctrine of predestination without in so doing making God the great scapegoat of history."

"Nothing is determined in advance: in
nature there is chance and determinism; in the world of human activity there is possibility of free choices. Therefore the historical future is not known even to God, otherwise we and our history would be merely a puppet show in which God holds the strings. For God, too, history is an adventure, an open history for and of men and women."

ccnl,

We do all of that AND we pray.

Mark
Always seek the truth

Put down your rosaries and prayer beads and stop worshiping cows and bowing to Mecca five times a day and believing in "horn-blowing pretty thingies" and related "propheteers/profiteers".

Instead work hard at your job, take care of aging parents, volunteer at a soup kitchen, donate to charities and the poor and continue to follow the Commandments of your religion or any good rules of living as gracious and good human beings. And lets all hope there indeed is a place called Heaven!!!

Amen.

Mark
Always seek the truth.