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Opposing Prayers

I found out, while chatting with a friend today that we were praying for opposite things. I was praying that an event will happen and my friend was praying that the event will not happen.
What happens when 2 persons pray to God but they pray for the opposite things? I guess you can say that since they are opposites, then one of them may turn out to be the will of God and the other one may not.
Or you can say that one is more righteous than the other and so the more righteous one will get what he wants. ( This one is unlikely..?)

For example: there is a job (one position). Both person A and person B prays that they will get it.

If God gives B the job does that mean that he is not listening to A? does it mean that he is listening to B??? is A less righteous? B more?

Posted by Jot.. on Tuesday, September 14, 2004 at 11:47 pm |

When Lok mentioned about the father with two sons giving out candy, and about giving out candy based on 'productivity' terms, makes me think of the story Jesus tells about the lost son (Luke 15:11-32)

But that was on a totally different issue of celebrating the brother repenting.

Posted by Blogger Ivan | 5:21 pm, September 15, 2004  

But on this note of "conflict of interest" in prayers, in addition to keeping in mind that God will give us the best, maybe we can see this "conflict" as a test or challenge to become more like God: that is, rather being selfish little humans (as we do in many occassions), we have to learn how to love unconditionally (generally speaking. I mean I can't see love in this employment example at this current moment though :P), and to learn not to strive for our will, but to accept God's will.

Are there any "conflict of interests" in this viewpoint? :P

Posted by Blogger Ivan | 5:37 pm, September 15, 2004  

And in response to Jot's post in taking his former argument: it may turn out that neither of what you two have prayed for are God's will.

To put it in context of your job example, its obvious then that the job goes neither to A nor B, but to C!

We are reminded to strive for God's will and put down our selfish wants when Jesus prayed on the Mount of Olives prior to him being arrested:
"Father, he said, if you will, take this cup of suffering away from me. Not my will, however, but your will be done." (Luke 22:42)

Posted by Blogger Ivan | 5:53 pm, September 15, 2004  

so person A prays for B to get the job and person B prays for person A to get the job.

in the end one of them gets the job

beauuuutiful :D

Posted by Blogger Jot.. | 6:16 pm, September 16, 2004  

haha! That's funny :) Yeah, what Lok said. God will listen to our prayers and we have the guarantee that he'll do what's best for us.

Posted by Blogger James | 12:53 am, September 17, 2004  

Then one may ask the question, if God has decided on everything that is going to happen by His will, then does that mean all we really should do in our prayers is to really just thank Him for what He has given us and not ask for anything?

Of course, then one could reduce that even further by saying, since God has infinite wisdom, He knows what we want before we pray anyway, so we could save our time and effort to even pray ...

Posted by Blogger Ivan | 9:45 am, September 17, 2004  

Ivan,

Your final post hits the bullseye. Yes, that is ultimately what we are trying to get to as a Christian, to model our lives to follow and be content with God's Will working in us.

In other words, like what the others briefly touched on, God likes to hear our prayers and our requests. However, He ultimately wants us to be like Jesus, as in praying for His Will to be done, rather than our own.

Anyway, that's my thoughts.

YBIC,
Brian

Posted by Anonymous Anonymous | 9:52 am, September 17, 2004  

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