🔔 Prayer Q&A with Tom | Why Pray if God Already Knows? 🙏✨

In this episode, Tom dives deep into YOUR questions about prayer! 🙌 Ever wondered: If God knows our needs, why do we still pray? 🤔 Or, can we really claim 'anything' by faith in Jesus' name? ✝️
Plus, Tom opens up about his own personal prayer habits and how he connects with God daily. 🔥

Don’t miss out on these powerful insights and more listener questions answered in today’s show!
💬 #PrayerLife #Faith #AskTom #Christianity #QandA

👀 Watch Now and Deepen Your Prayer Life!

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Ask NT Wright Anything Podcast
The show that connects you to NT (Tom) Wright’s thoughts and theology through your questions. Produced by Premier Unbelievable in partnership with SPCK and NTWrightOnline.

About NT (Tom) Wright: Tom Wright is one of the world’s leading New Testament scholars and the author of numerous books including Surprised by Hope, The Day The Revolution Began, Paul: A Biography and most recently Jesus and the Powers. He is senior research fellow at Wycliffe Hall, University of Oxford. Wright is ordained in the Church of England and, among other roles, served as Bishop of Durham between 2003 – 2010. He is much in demand as a lecturer around the world and the author for the bestselling For Everyone commentary series and the New Testament For Everyone Bible translation. Wright is married to Maggie and they have 4 children. As well as being a voracious reader, he loves classical music and opera and enjoys playing the guitar!

[jessebourneau]

Prayed every day for 14 years for God to keep my son alive for one more day. Once, near the end of his life, I felt a strong impression, "if he passes away, I will be there for him". Found him deceased in his apartment last year at this time. Felt a very strong Presence, assuring me, he is finally at rest.

[onionbelly_]

NT Wright's answers are essentially "God works in mysterious ways" stretched into 30, 000 words.

[benphilips]

Thank you Tom and Justin. I'm going through some practical, physical and emotional challenges at the moment and your words of wisdom are truly appreciated and an inspiration. Thank you🙏🙏

[johnwashburn]

I appreciate this. I consider myself to be a "kingdom believer". My family and friends think I have lost my mind. I will be patient with them.

[PraiseYahforHeisHoly]

I journal prayers, so I remember I prayed them when they are answered. It aids in counting my blessings. I recommend writing down prayers and your spiritual journey, especially if like me, you have a faulty memory.

[horridhenry]

NT, when you pray what are you actually praying to. Is it a person. What sort of entity do you imagine is on the other end of your prayer. Is it visible? How can it hear you, does it have ears? Is it a one way or two way relationship?

[carmeister_]

I remember when I was young i begrudgingly went along with my mother to clean one of her clients homes. My brother was alone at home with our dog. He ended up calling me telling me our dog was barking at the end of the hallway and how he could hear growling or something. Now before I continue, our house was haunted and I thought I would be seen as crazy. But this really confirmed to me something was going on that wasn’t something psychological. So back to the story, my brother tells me that’s happening so we end the call and I’m just so fed up with these aoccurances at home that in anger prayed to the Lord how I hate that this is happening and to please make that go away very passionately by myself. I started sweeping and then my brother calls me back and I’m like hey what’s up and he just says “(my name)…did you pray?” And I’m shocked and say yeah and he said it went away. I didn’t tell him I would pray either. I’ve since learned by my mother that before we bought our home a woman would rent a room (this room had lots of frightening things occur, beds shaking etc) she was some sort of witch/santera or mixture of Christian but for sure not Christian. So many things man but yeah Glory to Jesus Christ he’s the most awesome and deserving of all praise. Amen.

[rogersacco]

Wright has a nice life studying men's God constructs. It doesn't begin to answer the problem of suffering as agnostics like Bart Ehrman, John Loftus, ,Richard Carrier and many more have pointed out

[seanpierce]

Prayer does increase your likelihood of believing that prayer works:
- If you pray for many things for longer, you’re statistically more likely to find one prayer answered eventually.
- If you make your prayer general and vague, you don’t get to see the effects of that prayer, and yet expect that it will happen anyway.
- If you pray for something and accept a different course of events than initially expected, then you will accept anything at all as answered prayer.
- Even if no one ever prayed for it, spontaneous disease remission tends to be taken as answered prayer. We don’t adequately understand the human body, let alone all the quirks of each individual. Miracle stories, no matter how uncommon, tend to spread and reach more people.
- Even when prayer demonstrably fails, you distract from it by inventing answers rather than taking it into consideration. We are not to question God.

All of these practices are encouraged in Christian circles as an example of a healthy prayer life. But they also encourage statistical fallacies.

[tedclemens]

Wright speaks of prayer as if it means requesting something of God. Even Jesus hit a stone wall with that at the Garden of Gethsemane (as Wright noted also). It’s more that God wants to “solicit our partnership, ” in this world—with our minds being in sync with God’s—resulting in, “not my will but yours.” So my model of prayer is also that of Moses and Abraham. They engaged with God and confronted him—sometimes even changing his mind.

[JohnBarr-rb]

If prayer works, then god is not immutable. And if he is not immutable he is not perfect. But Christians claim that god is perfect, and immutable and that prayer works. It doesn't add up.

[SkyfallenVT]

If you believe your God is all knowing, then praying does nothing. He already knows what’s going to happen and isn’t going to change his plans because someone prayed. God gives you no choices, free will is just an illusion. If God knows everything you’re going to do from birth to death, then there is no free will. God has already determined what you’re going to do. I welcome anyone to change my mind.

[toni]

Well, I suppose if I pray long enough for my constipation to come to an end, I'll end up with the runs. It might take a week or two, but I'm sure God will give me the shits in the end.