Posted: 7/21/2012 7:40:04 PM EDT
| The Bible says to pray for your enemies, how are you supposed to do this? If you pray for their success you are by default praying for your failure. So how do you do it? |
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Quoted:
The Bible says to pray for your enemies, how are you supposed to do this? If you pray for their success you are by default praying for your failure. So how do you do it? You don't have to pray for their success against you, if they are doing unlawful things then you pray that God would convict them of their sin, be gracious and merciful to them as He has been to you and bring peace between you, mutual respect, and genuine love. Maybe it's a business competitor that is doing things like interfering with your contracts, you can pray for them regarding this and also for the protection of your business and it's property rights in those contracts. The point is if they are your enemy it is presumed they are despitefully using you, persecuting you, those types of things so you are interceding with God and seeking His redeeming Grace to be applied to them; not that they would be successful in destroying you. |
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You can pray for your enemies' eternal souls/fates without having to pray for their earthly success against you, or even their general health and well-being in this life. Their eternal salvation and yours aren't mutually exclusive, even if your worldy survival may be. IOW, in eternal terms, pray first for salvation (yours and theirs)... in wordly things, pray first and foremost that His will be done. JMHO. (I can't tell you how many of my pleading prayers begin "If it be according to Thy will, please [xyz]...") Then there's the whole question of imprecatory prayer and its appropriateness (or not), but beliefs vary greatly on that subject in my experience... |
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Quoted:
You can pray for your enemies' eternal souls/fates without having to pray for their earthly success against you, or even their general health and well-being in this life. Their eternal salvation and yours aren't mutually exclusive, even if your worldy survival may be. IOW, in eternal terms, pray first for salvation (yours and theirs)... in wordly things, pray first and foremost that His will be done. JMHO. (I can't tell you how many of my pleading prayers begin "If it be according to Thy will, please [xyz]...") Then there's the whole question of imprecatory prayer and its appropriateness (or not), but beliefs vary greatly on that subject in my experience... What is imprecatorey prayer? |
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Quoted: What is imprecatorey prayer? Here's one link on the subject, but please start a new thread if you want to discuss it –– it doesn't actually fit here, it can be quite controversial, and I'd hate to have to issue myself a warning for hijacking the OP's thread.  http://helives.blogspot.com/2011/03/imprecatory-prayer.html |
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Quoted:
What is imprecatorey prayer? To be frank, Chad, that doesn't sound right; anyway, my suggestion is to work through your first question and come to grips with the command to pray for your enemies. Imprecatory prayers are invoked against God's enemies and the spiritual maturity and discernment necessary to even consider them is probably some of the most difficult challenges a Christian will face. The answers of various Christians to a question like this will really expose the totality of one's theology and it's controversial as the other gentlemen said because one is getting into the fundamental disagreements as to why there are ecclesiastical divisions in the Church. |