unsafe said:
Thanks for your input into this thread
You are welcome.
unsafe said:
I feel we are on 2 different beliefs and that that is fine
Is it though. You seem quite insistent on refuting my points despite asserting that it is fine for me to believe that way.
unsafe said:
God makes it very clear in His word that He does hear and see all things that
unsafe said:
Save for those bits of scripture where he flat out says he is not listening I agree.
unsafe said:
if we go with your way of thinking then there would be no wars ----no flooding ----no volcanoes spuing out ash etc etc
Not so.
That would be the result if I advocated that God answers every prayer with a yes. Since I have not taken that position your assertion is quite a fabrication.
unsafe said:
God gave man free will to choose
At Creation God most certainly did give humanity a free will. At the Fall that free will became as subject to corruption as anything else human. Therefore there is no longer a will free to do the good that God requires. Human will continuously falls short fo God's glory. It belongs to sin.
If you have a text which teaches me that humanity's fall was not complete and that the will is exempt from the influence of sin I would love to hear it and consider how the will continues to remain free despite the corrupting influence of sin.
unsafe said:
God will not go against His word in my view
My view doesn't require God to go against his word either.
unsafe said:
God gives very clear instructions for believers and unbeliever in His word to get answered prayer
Technically God does not. All of scripture is written to those who will believe. It is not written for those who will not believe. While unbelievers do, at times, figure prominently in passages of scripture there is no passage of scripture that is written for the unbeliever and not the believer.
unsafe said:
Jesus never once did not get an answer to His prayers
Agree. Sometimes the answers he got were the answers he did not want. What is different about Jesus than the rest of us is that Jesus realized that prayer was not about getting from God what was desired so much as it was about becoming rooted in the mind and mission of God.
Which allows him, when told that the cup would not be taken away from him, to say, "Yet not my will but yours." That is a spiritual maturity which is difficult to come by and which the word/faith elements of the Christian tradition simply cannot tolerate.
It is reflected in Paul's account about the thorn. "My grace will be sufficient for you." is not God granting a wish so much as it is God providing for a need. What God offers will wind up more valuable to Paul than having the thorn removed.
unsafe said:
We can't just pray any old way and get answers ----God knows our heart
I agree. And that is strictly speaking about believers. Clearly, Jesus and Paul fit into that category and neither got what they prayed for. Arguably they got better. In order to get the "better" God had to say "no" to the requests about the cup and the thorn.
And I quite agree with God knowing our heart and that being of greater import in God's willingness to answer even when the answer God gives is not the answer those praying are most desperate to receive.
unsafe said:
The Heart of unbelievers are far from God
Be careful that such presumption is not the evidence of an arrogant spirit. Until you are God you will not know what fills the heart of the unbeliever. You would profit from listening to and hearing Jesus when he speaks in Matthew,
Matthew 7: 9-11 said:
9 “Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? 10 Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? 11 If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!
It is particularly interesting to note that while scripture elsewhere tells us that the prayers of the righteous are powerful and effective Jesus is suggesting that even those who are evil will receive gifts from their Father in heaven if they ask.
Maybe those gifts will not be the gifts that those evil people offering prayers are most desperate to receive. Perhaps like the prayers of Jesus and Paul the door is opened for God to do better.
unsafe said:
and the heart of many believers are far from God
Which, when accepted as true shows little correlation between believers and unbelievers and the relationship of their hearts to God. That being the case being a believer doesn't always carry a benefit that the unbeliever cannot access.
I also think that it is important to note that the quoted text from Isaiah does not address unbelievers.
A constant concern in the prophet Isaiah is the failure of Israel to be faithful. This is important because it then allows everything endured by the Israelites to be viewed through the lense of the covenantal curses and blessings. It can be argued that the Israelites have failed to honour their covenantal promises.
God does not dissolve the covenants in that event. God insists on honouring the covenant God has made all the more and the covenantal curses belong to God's disciplinary action to correct Israel's failing.
unsafe said:
So if people who are unsaved
Unsaved or unbelieving. Which are we actually dealing with unsafe. You started with unbelievers and now you are dragging unsaved into the conversation. Are you equating the two or are they different in your opinion.
unsafe said:
can come into God's holy presents with their self righteous sinful wicked selves to pray and get answers to their prayers
The scripture teaches us that there is nowhere that we can go to escape God. Not on the highest heights or the lowest depths. Even in the grave we cannot escape God so how is it then that we can be outside of God's holy presence? The earth is the Lord's and the fulness thereof is it not? If so where can we go to escape from the presence of God? Are there some places where God is not holy and present?
unsafe said:
then Jesus died for nothing in my view
I get that.
Doesn't mean I agree with it.
Jesus died for us while we were still dead in our sins. The dead do not have the power to raise themselves from the dead. Jesus had the power to raise Lazarus from death. Jesus did not have the power to raise himself from death. God the Father raised God the Son from death.
Resurrection is a gift of grace.
Grace is scandalous.
It scandalizes the proud and those who consider themselves righteous. Those who have come to believe that their salvation is less a gift of God's graciousness than it is the reward for their righteousness. Nothing in scripture should allow anyone to boast about their own role in the process of salvation yet it is undeniably true that there are many to take great pride not in the fact that they were redeemed according to the graciousness of Christ Jesus when they were helpless to do anything while dead in their sins but rather by the fake fact that they are so worthy God was compelled to raise them from the dead.
unsafe said:
God wants to answer the prayers of all people ----it is not God who distances Himself from us ---it is Us who have distanced ourselves from God through our wicked ways and sin -------we are the ones who screwed up not God
True. Humanity has been estranged from God.
False. That estrangement ties God's hands.
God is not impotent. God's grace is ultimately proven irresistible. Those who would wander off will be sought, they will be found and the Great Shepherd does pick them up, place them on his shoulders and carry them home.
Not because the sheep wills it, the wandering off is what the sheep willed.
No the sheep is brought home because that is what the Shepherd wills.
Which proves grace quite scandalous. And ultimately it is why many reject the reality of grace.
unsafe said:
Why should a Holy God who has sent His Son to die on the Cross to forgive sins of all people answer the prayers of those people who refuse to believe and receive His Son who died a horrible death to free us from our iniquity and sin nature accept the prayers of people who don't give Him the time of day and refuse His offer which He gives Freely to all people to be free from their iniquity and sin and to be able to come into His Holy Presents ------ What makes us feel we are all that --that we can just come to God anyway we want to and get answers to our prayers
No attempt at self-justification here on your part.
Why should a Holy God send his Son to die on a cross for any who have sinned?
Go ahead, tell me what forces God's hand. Tell me what obligates God the Father to sacrifice God the Son. Tell me what you accomplished roughly 2000 years ago that forced God the Father to sacrifice his only begotten Son for you long before you could be born dead in sin and completely powerless to save yourself.
unsafe said:
It has been said here that God is not a vending machine
It has been said here repeatedly that God is not a vending machine and it is said, for the most part, well.
unsafe said:
and yet by unsaved people coming to a Holy God in prayer and expecting answers whatever the answer --yes--no---maybe---not now ---later dude -----then as far as I am concerned this is the perfect example of people using God as a vending machine
Which demonstrates that you are truly scandalized by grace and rather ignorant about how a vending machine actually works.
unsafe said:
put your quarter in and get an answer no need to even give God the time of day -----pray as you wish
A vending machine includes three basic components. First, there is the treat which the machine communicates to you either by displaying the treat in a window or a picture of the treat somewhere else. Second, there is a cost affixed to that particular treat. Third there is a button or button(s) which must be utilized after the payment is made to get the desired treat.
So, returning to Paul for example.
Paul approaches the divine vending machine, sees that the thorn pulling option is A1 and costs X prayer. Paul deposits X prayer, manipulates button(s) A1 and out pops the thorn pulling kit.
That is God as a vending machine. It is precisely how the word/faith element of Christianity expects God to respond to prayer with a proviso, only genuine believers/born again can deposit the required currency.
Which means then that Paul is not a genuine believer/born again since he did not get what he prayed for. Even though the prayer did get answered.
unsafe said:
As far as believers go -----Answered prayer is in place for those whose hearts are in the right place and obey His word and pray His will
So not for Jesus who doesn't get the cup taken away or Paul who doesn't have the thorn removed
unsafe said:
many believers that don't get their prayers
unsafe said:
I disagree. I think it is far more evident that many believers do not get the answers they want.
unsafe said:
they ask with the wrong motives
I agree. They are thinking more about what they would like rather than what God desires. They still get their prayers answered even if the answer is not what they desired when they set out to pray. Rather gracious of God to help them see things differently don't you think?
Had Jesus not drank from the cup how would you and I have benefitted from that?
Had the thorn been pulled from Paul's flesh what might we have missed out that we are now so grateful for?
unsafe said:
And as far as Paul goes with his prayer to have Satan taken away from Him
Not Satan. A thorn. Paul was pretty clear about what he prayed for. I think it is very obvious that Paul was not being literal in his use of thorn so much as he was making an analogy. That said, we have no way of knowing precisely what it was that Paul was comparing the thorn to. Paul never made it explicit.
Unless you know Paul's mind or know of a text which does make the straight up comparison between Satan and Paul's thorn it is not wise to invent connections that cannot be proven.
Particularly so you can turn it into a triteism.
unsafe said:
the instructions are for believers who's heart is in the right place and God knows who these people are ---we don't
Back to Matthew 7: 9-11 for the most part and I would agree with you we don't know whose heart is in the right place. Since there is ample evidence to suggest that not all believers have their hearts in the right place it would be foolish to suggest that there is no way an unbeliever could ever have their heart in the right place.
unsafe said:
God's love is unconditional but His Covenant promises have conditions -----we can believe this or not
This is an unfortunate construction of ideas.
The idea that God's love is unconditional is no way contingent of God's covenantal promises having conditions.
It would have been better written as,
God's love is unconditional and God's covenantal promises rest upon conditions.
Even so, it is important to note that while the human covenantal partners continually fail to live up to their covenantal obligations God never uses that as an out which releases him from his covenantal promises. Instead, God turns to the disciplinary causes which are meant to bring the human covenantal partners back into compliance with the terms of the covenant.
Pretty scandalous from a contractual perspective.
Interesting appeal to 1 John 5: 14-15, where the condition is given, that our request is according to his will rather than believing vs unbelieving. It puts Christ's prayer in Gethsemane and Paul's prayer about the thorn into perspective. At the same time, both received a "no" answer which leads to growth on their part.
One could argue that unbelievers would have a difficult time discerning God's will in any particular circumstance and yet, if God calls humanity to love mercy, do justly and walk humbly there is an opportunity for unbelievers to walk closer to God's will than we see some believers doing.
Would God, seeing their hearts and knowing that they share his will still refuse to hear them or is the grace of God still too scandalous?
The appeal in John 15: 7 is rather two pronged though isn't it? It is not simply that we abide in Him, it is also that His words abide in us. This is actually very much in keeping with the whole concept of covenant partners. Our covenantal obligation is to abide in Him, while God as our covenantal partner, is to have His words abide in us.
Should we fall short of our covenantal promises and obligations do we presume that God defaults on His covenantal promises and obligations? Have we not seen that God takes decidedly different action with respect to covenantal partnerships?
So, if God has placed his words in our heart do we have any reason to suspect that God will completely ignore any prayer request we might make?
I think we can count on getting a "no" if we aren't praying according to his will. That is still an answer even if it isn't the one that we want.
unsafe said:
If we abide in Him ----condition here ---question ----do unbelievers abide in Him
One wouldn't presume so. Of course, since we are arguing about whether unbelievers would even bother to pray to God in the first place I think we have to say that they don't at all or that on the rare occasions that they might God, being slow to anger and quick to show mercy probably listens and considers how to answer.
unsafe said:
and then there is another condition here -----and my word abides in you ----does the word abide in unbelievers
Enough that they are prompted to pray. Is that insufficient? The Samaritan woman who mentions dogs eat scraps from the masters table has her faith praised though she doesn't qualify as Jew or Christian and Jesus is very clear that her prayers were answered.
Scandalous no?
unsafe said:
But we must always remember there is an enemy loose and he can block prayers and he can make us believe that God is the one answering the prayer we pray and discernment is needed to know the difference ------God's answer will always line up with His will and His word
The enemy is intercepting prayers and preventing them from getting to God? Really? Then abiding in God and having God's word abide in us is overwhelmed by the machinations of the enemy? Even though no weapon fashioned against us may prosper?
unsafe said:
Telling unbelievers God will answer their prayers without telling them what the Bible says about answered prayer is giving them False Hope
Telling unbelievers God will answer their prayers however they want would be giving them false hope. Since I am not suggesting that to be the case the most I offer is slim hope. Nothing false about it. That you are scandalized by such a suggestion is more your problem than it is mine.
unsafe said:
and watering down scripture is to please the Church not God
I'm confident that I am not watering down the scriptures. I am also not twisting scriptures about faithful and faithless responses to covenantal promises into critiques between believers and unbelievers. Who are you attempting to please by doing that?
unsafe said:
It is just that yes.
unsafe said:
we are to preach truth not what we want to please people
Agreed. And since I am certainly not pleasing you it is entirely possible that I am not on the wrong track.
I also agree with Galatians 1: 10
