Prayer, Part II

Hi everyone.

In the previous post, Dave opened up a discussion on prayer in the Christian church and addressed the overall topic of what it looks like to be a Christian.

Dave also mentioned our revamp of the blog. We sat down together and looked over all the posts on the blog so far, grouping those questions which received the most comments under categories to explore in greater detail. Thus, as Dave wrote last week, we hope to "go a bit deeper into the central issues that people grapple with as they engage with the Christian gospel."

We wanted to kick off a new round of inquiry on the Question Group blog with a topic familiar to just about everyone. In addition to the questions about prayer and its importance in the Christian church, I want to ask a few more related to our individual experiences with the topic. Please feel free to address any of these with a comment; or if you have a new question you would like the group to discuss, you are welcome to pose it to the group via comment as well:

Whether you are a Christian or not, chances are you have had some experience with prayer. And yet, a fundamental assumption of prayer is that we can somehow and in some way communicate with God. How is this possible? How do we know our prayers are being heard? Does this question ever bother you (as it often does me) when you pray?

A more traditional question involving prayer is why pray at all? If God is all-knowing, then God already knows what we will pray for even before we pray. What, then, is the purpose of prayer? Is it only done to change our perspective, give us practice in faith/patience, etc.? On the other hand, is it possible to change God's mind at all with our prayers?

What is your personal experience with prayer? What problems and issues arise in your mind when you think about these experiences?

What is a Christian? Part One: What Christians do

Hey Gang. Hope you all have had a good beginning of year and are settled into a good rhythm. Clint and I have been working on revamping the blog so that it is a more helpful tool for folks who have questions about Christianity. In order to achieve this, our goal this year is that our discussions be more focused which will allow us to go a bit deeper into the central issues that people grabble with as they engage with the Christian gospel.

So, with that said, the first central issue we are going to concentrate on for the next several weeks is "What is a Christian?" There are a lot of ways to answer that but right now we will start with one of the basic things that Christians do: pray. Very early in his ministry Jesus taught his disciples how to pray and expected that prayer would a fundamental part of being his follower. We see that prayer was a critical part of the early church experience and that the writers of many of the New Testament books integrated personal prayers into their letters to churches. So the question is, why do you suppose this was such an important part of following Jesus? For someone who has questions about Christianity, what does it mean that prayer played(s) such a critical role in following Jesus?