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43 comments. A couple of coincidences, couple of fake stories, but mostly dumb, mundane accounts of things that clearly have zero to do with a prayer being answered. It was an entertaining read though. "I prayed for the light to change green. IT DID!!"

I'll try to keep this as short as I can. It still freaks me out.

I've always had a very complicated relationship with God and religion. Just fast-forward at 10x through years of struggle and banging my head against the wall when it comes to God.

Arrive at a June night in 2020. For a while, I'd been having a fairly rough time for reasons I will keep to myself. I'm outside smoking a cigarette. For the first time in years, I start praying. I have no real idea why, but I keep going. I get carried away actually. Like an absolute psycho, eventually I'm at the point of nearly shouting. Obscenities. Insults. All aimed at God. In the end, I say, "If you're real, just give me a fucking sign." I was sick of wavering.

I receive a call in the early hours (2-3 am or so). I ignore it. When I wake up, I see that it was a call from someone I hadn't spoken to in ten years or more. Our connection in the past had been through church. We were close in our 'church lives', but not outside of the church. We'll call her Jennifer.

It had been so long since we'd spoken. I hadn't thought about her at all during that time, not once from what I can recall (she would later tell me that it was the same for her).

Anyway, I decide I am not going to call her back, even though the level of weirdness was enough to make me curious. Then, in the early afternoon I get a call from a buddy of mine who had also attended church with us back in the day. He and I were part of the worship band - it was one of these quasi-concert Prot churches. He says, "Have you talked to Jennifer lately? What's going on, she is trying to get a hold of you. She called me to see if I'd reach out to you." When I asked what her reason was, he couldn't tell me. He said she only indicated she needed to talk to me.

I wind up calling her a little while later. We quickly get over the awkwardness of ten years of silence. She explains to me that last night (the same night I said my prayer) she had a dream where I was running through this large building, almost like a castle, with many halls and rooms. She said she knew God was in the castle and he was pursuing me, but I was running scared, hiding any which way I could. She said she woke from the dream with a sense that she had to call me. Again, we hadn't spoken in a decade and probably a bit longer than that. She woke her husband up because she was freaking out about the need to call me. She told her husband that she knew God wanted her to call me.

When I told her what I'd done that night, she was beside herself. I was a little beside myself, too.

why do you doubt?

what benefit do you get from doubting if praying works?

what does it cost you?

I have a teenage son. We butt heads at times. Several times it was pretty heated. Each time I would kneel down at the end of the bed at night and pray. Each morning I would wake up and he and I immediately made good.
I don't look for "feels". I just trust in God and ask for His guidance.

Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and heed not your own understanding.

Twice. It's a long story. But yeah praying, and I accept that praying is what worked because there's no other way to explain what happened.

I've been praying for Trumpman1488 to choke to death on his social security check or a little piece of Lego or whatever. So far I haven't seen any sign of him, so I think my prayers have been answered. Feels great and I have huge faith that God came through for me.

Maybe? I prayed for something a few years ago and I achieved it, albeit with some caveats. However, I have been praying for something else for a couple years and no signs of achieving it at all so far.
The problem with answered prayers is most people forget how they prayed desperately and don’t attribute the prayers to the achievements if it didn’t happen right away or extremely obviously and directly

God indeed answers prayers of his people. i have been through serious situations due bad health and prayers brought relief in ways that i didnt think it was possible. he's faithful!

one small example: i wanted to live in this area of miami for the longest time since i was a young adult. we as family we didnt have the money to live in this place but we saved money to buy a house near this place. well, it just happens that 1 year or 2 after we moved to a new house this place incorporated the area in which i wanted to live.

another example: i just had colic's from time to time that was accompanied by pain on my back side. this happened for sometime. until one day i was rushed to the ER and they took a ct scan of my gallbladder. to make the story short. i was in an operating table 15 days later while the surgeon was removing the sick and full of small stones gallbladder which according to him those are the most dangerous stones because they could have gotten stuck in the bile duct and then i would have been in deep trouble.(i prayed i the hospital restroom that night)

another one: one friday night i was sick with some virus or bacteria and i was constantly coughing even after i was taking cough meds. just before midnight i became disoriented and i started to become pale,with high fever and i couldnt breath well at all. my sister in law heard me and called my other family and they took me to the ER and i was diagnosed with sepsis. i spent almost a week in ICU (man got stories to tell when i got there too, some are even too funny)getting ivs and cocktails of antibiotics and some oxygen. 1 month later i was still taking strong antibiotics because my blood was still acidic. the weird part is that i never lost consciousness for a moment while my mother that have gotten sepsis was really knocked out from it.she got it from a kidney stone that got infected. she was in more danger to die than me and yet i prayed for her and she didnt die (glory to God)

so i have more stories like this, God exists and he does answer prayers. glory to his name amen!

I prayed for Trump, and God stopped the bullet and put him in office.

the ability to talk to people all over the world and tell them the truth of the things i've seen and the dangers of global socialism. the trumpdozer stopping the pillow covered bulldozer of agenda 2030. i did not think that was going to happen. the sleeping giant awakening. lucefarianism being drug kicking and screaming into the light of day. bolshevism being exposed. the truth about apartheid and the boers. so much more. its a wonderful time to be alive. it's going to suck when everything collapses, but our people are as ready as they can be. we'll get through it.

Jesus himself says prayer works:

7 “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. 8 For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened. 9 Or what man is there among you who, when his son asks for a loaf, will give him a stone? 10 Or if he asks for a fish, he will not give him a snake, will he? 11 If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give what is good to those who ask Him!

12 “In everything, therefore, treat people the same way you want them to treat you, for this is the Law and the Prophets.

Matthew 7:7-12 NASB 1995

Praying works. Sometimes with non-intended results.

Twice. The first back in my days of being an athicuck, but I was so split between two options, finding the life changing decision difficult.

It was answered immediately, the sign blatant and unmistakable, I was actually in shock for a few minutes staring in disbelief. This is the moment I left the athicuck cult.

When I was twelve and just lost my grandpa, we had to clean out his house and help get grandma situated. I was looking for a half hour trying to find something trivial, when out of frustration "can you just fucking show me" came out of my mouth. Within a minute I hear something fall - nobody but me in the basement. Walk over to the source of the sound and the stupid thing I was trying to locate was right there.

While a bachelor, I had terrible luck finding any worthwhile women. First dates going nowhere, a couple that went to dating for a few weeks before something in life caused them to fuck off. After a few months, I had the conversation with my inner dialog (so not intended to be a prayer, but the inner dialog works seemingly in a similar fashion) that I'm done "trying to find love" and will proceed with less traditional means. A week later my wife found me...never had to resort to CougarLife.

Have had prayers answered many times, but nothing dramatic or exciting. But there's been times where I was afraid and close to dying, and prayed and was saved.
But most of all, I notice times where I was broke, and still paid tithes, I always end up being more financially secure. And times where I don't pay tithes, I struggle financially.

All my prayers have gone unanswered. The opposite of what I pray for happens. I no longer pray.

Yes, incredibly specifically and within 12 hours. My wife and I were in an unfamiliar area in southeast Washington state. We had been living in Kentucky for six months and decided to go on a cross country drive back to Maine. Lol. There were some good times but mostly it sucked. We did visit my brother in Oregon, and visited a handful of western states we had missed on a previous hitchhiking trip.

Anyways, this may sound lame, but we needed gas money and a place to park our van, and we both really felt like having a big bag of cooking herbs would cheer us up. We prayed for those three things and went on with our day.

That evening we came into a town and noticed a large church parking lot. We thought at least one prayer was answered, but within 5 minutes a guy came up and asked if we had permission to park there. We said no and he asked us to leave since it was private property. We left, and within minutes noticed flashing headlights in the rear view. It was the guy. He let us park in his driveway, which was right next to the church, in the morning he offered us use of his bathroom and shower, gave us a huge box of food, money, a giant bag of herbs, and some newspapers from when Mt St. Helens erupted.

Nah... i believe life is ying and yang... you get the good with the bad

Many times.

The one that was the most insane was when I was much younger and dealing with the loss of the first serious relationship. Massive depression. One night praying on mu own it was literally ripped out of me. Violently. For 3 days every kept asking why I was smiling so much because I couldnt stop.

No. In fact for years I prayed to stop jacking off. It never worked. So I stopped praying for years.

Then Jesus started talking to me and even appearing to me. I've related such incidents before. The proof was in the pudding one night after I got out of the psych ward. I was looking for the library and a homeless black guy gave me directions. I was just about at the street to turn to it when there he was again. It was obvious by the situation that he could have only gotten there on foot - yet he got there impossibly quickly.

After directing me down the turnoff street I asked him his name. He said "Jesus - I mean Matthew."

I had a similar incident the month before where he healed my knee. This time as a white guy.

Isn't "no" an answer?

You could make the case that every prayer is answered.

If you have faith that everything is according to God's plan and that a "no" answer to a prayer is simply due to the fact that your want cannot be accommodated in the scope of the plan, then every prayer is satisfactorily answered.

But I believe you are asking something more nuanced than that.

I was raised as a Lutheran, went through times of rejecting, eventually became compelled to look back into Christianity. Accepted the substance of Christianity and then sought out the form that I felt was the best vessel for that substance. Catholicism was the form I landed on.

Some will see this kind of metamorphosis as the prayers of others being fulfilled.

For them they would have seen abrupt 180s that just "happened" and become the evidence of things working in the background that are unseen (cf Heb 11:1). No outsider can truly see your heart, but an outsider can have faith in what they believe the content of your heart to be. They accept on faith that their prayer worked.

From my own view it came down to "show me signs" and "show me logic" and from that petition/prayer, things were spoken through events and happenings that led me to accept premises on faith that my prayer was answered.

Hard to explain.

of course not

Oh yeah, plenty. But the issue is, none of them were exciting and even if they were there's no way to prove them to an outsider. So i just thank God and move on.

I lost the tip of my dick when i was born. I've prayed throughout my life for God to grow it back but he has yet to answer. Why can't God heal foreskin?

No, no one has that.

Lot's of delusions, that's all.