Willful Prayer – That Voodoo That You Do

Most of us haven’t been taught how to pray. Instead, we’ve been tutored on how to conjure in the name of Heaven and God. Even in the name of Jesus. 

Praying for outcomes is tantamount to voodoo. It’s principally witchcraft, wizardry, sorcery, pick your description. It is also vile and faithless conjuring. And it is playing God. 

Impassioned beseeching toward Heaven isn’t even the kind of prayer spoken of by Christ. After all when asked to show how to pray, he gave what we call today ‘The Lord’s Prayer.” That’s it. That’s all he gave. It is enough.

I know, I know, you love your Aunt Fannie. But praying to God to remove her goiter is out of the question. That would be my will—not Thy will. The ego starts playing God of God’s, going on about what we need or laying out our own ideas for how to best run the universe, serving our concept of what is good and right. I mean, Aunt Fannie’s goiter ought to be removed! Right? We don’t like to see her suffer. 

He already knows without us piping in, and if she’s to die a miserable gasping hag in her deathbed, with tubes and hoses stuck in all her orifices, crying because her own children have abandoned her, then it’s none of our business! We aren’t to fire up some holy incantation designed to move heaven and earth, manifesting her recovery or a family reunion—regardless of our fondness for poor ol’ Auntie. 

Better to ask God how we might best serve Him and her as she dies. If she dies.

It takes enormous deflation of ego to cease praying for outcomes, as though should we fail to ask for things we believe are right, just and fair, God might overlook our needs. In other words, He’d fail us.

Most folks find it difficult to give up their old ways of petitioning God with internal mumbling. This is especially true among those with church addictions, who’ve been raised in religions or suggestible folks who’ve been duped into prayer cults and movements.

Once we become truly God-conscious we stop trying to tell God what He needs to do for a better world—we let go and let God. He already knows what we need.