Praying for miracles

Let’s say you are going home teaching (or visiting teaching for that matter). The person you are going to visit is often not home when you visit. On your way there (or before you leave your house), you pray to God that s/he will be there.

Now let’s say that before you prayed this person was eating supper with his buddies at a restaurant.

Do you think God will ever move use supernatural means to instantaneously transport him/her from the restaurant and put him/her home in order to answer your prayer?

23 thoughts on “Praying for miracles

  1. Maybe sometimes. Or He will lead you to stop by the restaurant to be able to meet with him. That would seem more likely.

  2. “Maybe sometimes.”

    What if it takes you three minutes to drive to the person’s house, but 15 minutes for the person to drive home from the restaurant?

  3. :)

    I couldn’t tell you.

    But like I said, I think it would be more likely you would be led to the restaurant rather than he to come home.

  4. Yes. If it was important that he be there. But it might happen this way:

    It takes him 15 minutes to drive home, and it only takes you 3 minutes to get there, but you run out of gas and take 30 minutes to get there. Or you get a phone call and are delayed.

    Or if you get there and he isn’t there, you might be inspired as to another time that you could find him home, since you hadn’t prayed about picking the original time beforehand.

  5. ok. Sorry. :) And I usually understand you better than anyone.

    Ok, no, I find it hard to believe he would use supernatural means unless it was absolutely necessary. And it usually isn’t. He tends to use natural laws.

  6. The Lord’s natural laws, nature. I think He would lead you to go to the restaurant, or for something to happen to change when you visit him, etc etc. But he won’t speed up time or slow it down or whatever.

  7. Only Mormoms focus on such frivolous banter. Why not ask Father, that we might know His will, then “Just do it.”

  8. Yeah ok, frivlous banter? Heavenly Father wants us to think it out for ourselves, make a decision and then ask what is right.

    I don’t think what I, or anyone else was saying, is frivolous banter. It’s our thoughts and opinions on the subject.

    No one is saying we shouldn’t ask His will. But we need to use our brains too and then be obedient and listen to His answer.

  9. “Define supernatural.”

    Outside nature

    “Instantaneously? No. Miraculously? Yes.”

    How would instantaneous not be miraculous?

  10. Heavenly father knows what we are going to ask for before we ask it. Therefore, if he’s going to answer a prayer, he can arrange it and start setting it up loooong before we even ask.

    Remember the story about Spencer Kimball getting real sick the day of some big area conference in Mexico or south America? At the last minute he gets better and decides to go to the stadium. And after they have announced that the prophet won’t be able to make it, the boy who’s gives the opening prayer asks that the prophet can make it anyway, and just then, the prophets car drives in. Well in order to do that, the prophet had to get better, get dressed etc., and start the trip at least a little bit before the opening prayer even started.

    When praying for miracles, (this is in BoM and D&C, but I don’t have the refs handy) we are to only pray for what the Holy Ghost tells us to pray for. It goes something like “whatever you ask for, will be given, but the Holy Ghost will tell you want to ask for.” So the miracle can’t be at the whim of the person asking. He/she has to ask under inspiration.

    This is also backed up by this verse DC 24:13,

    Require not miracles, except I shall command you, except casting out devils, healing the sick, and against poisonous serpents, and against deadly poisons;

    I think the “except I shall command you” refers to the Holy Ghost telling us what to pray for.

  11. “Heavenly father knows what we are going to ask for before we ask it. Therefore, if he’s going to answer a prayer, he can arrange it and start setting it up loooong before we even ask.”

    So is nothing miraculous then? Everything is set up beforehand? Did God set up the weather on Galilee to abate at the precise moment Jesus commanded it to, for example?

  12. Kim, why do you say/imply it’s not miraculous if God sets it up beforehand. The miracle is not the instantaneous-ness of it, the miracle is that God got involved and did something that we couldn’t have done on our own.

    That said, I also believe in the “on the spot” miracles of Jesus commanding the weather to abate, and the “rise up and walk” miracles.

    Back to the “supernatural transport” type miracles. The scriptures have 3 references to similar events, though they are physical/temporal transports, not a supernatural “conduit” like Moroni appearing in JS’s room.

    1. Acts 8:39, where after baptizing the eunuch, Philip was “caught away” by the Spirit. I don’t think this was necessarily a “Scotty beam me up” kind of transport, but more of a Superman flying Lois Lane kind of thing, because the latter is described in the Book of Mormon.

    2. 2 Nephi 4:25. “And upon the wings of his Spirit hath my body been carried away upon exceedingly high mountains. And mine eyes have beheld great things, yea, even too great for man; therefore I was bidden that I should not write them.”

    Nephi’s talking about his _physical_ body being carried by the Spirit to another physical location, high mountains. IE. like Superman flying Lois Lane. Mountains is plural, so it happened more than once.

    3. 1 Nephi 11:1. ” For it came to pass after I had desired to know the things that my father had seen, and believing that the Lord was able to make them known unto me, as I sat pondering in mine heart I was caught away in the Spirit of the Lord, yea, into an exceedingly high mountain, which I never had before seen, and upon which I never had before set my foot.”

    Again, this was physical. It was a mountain he hadn’t before seen, but he saw it then. He hadn’t before set foot on that mountain, but now he had.

  13. “Kim, why do you say/imply it’s not miraculous if God sets it up beforehand.”

    In a sense, it would still be a miracle in that the prompting a person had to go home, for example, would not be explainable using our current understanding of nature. That being said, is that what miracles have evolved to today? Are modern miracles nothing more than simple promptings

  14. Kim, I don’t think the walking-on-water/rise-up-and-walk miracles have ceased. They are just rarely publicized.

    You occasionally read about miraculous healings in the Ensign. I know a man who had his sight miraculously restored as a boy. His father sometimes tells that story in small groups when appropriate.

    What do you want? Do you want people to go around blabbing about their rise-up-and-walk type of miracles? Those are very sacred to the people who experience them. Those people usually don’t want to brag. They don’t want to create sensationalism. They don’t want to attract sign-seekers to the church who might then request miracles on demand.

    The GA’s have often advised not to discuss them except under prompting by the Spirit.

    The rule of thumb is that you get some of the stories many years later. I’ve been reading some old Leon Hartshorn books from the 70’s, and he quotes GA’s giving talks in the 50’s and 60’s about miracles that happened in the 1930’s and 1940’s. Matthew Cowley had some good stories of great faith among the Maoris which led to miraculous healings.

    I can see why people don’t publish or widely distribute recent rise-up-and-walk type miracles, because then people will be attracted to the church for them and demand them as signs. And that’s not good. Miracles come after faith. (IE, SWK’s “Faith Precedes the Miracle.”)

    Do you really want GBH or other apostles to publicly discuss any meetings with the Savior that they’ve had? If someone has their calling and election made sure, do you expect them to blog it?

    I think the recent Ensign article about Cambodia or Thailand had a story about a miraculous healing. But it happened a while ago, and the name was withheld. If the church publicizes those things, it won’t be long before the outside media comes poking around and sensationalizes it.

  15. no He wouldn’t move anyone home so their HT could meet with them or any other circumstances. I would expect that like everyone else, we have our agency and choice to do what is right. Obviously if the person has repeatedly been skipping out on appointments he does not want to be meeting his HT/VT. He/She knows they had a meeting set up but chose to go out anyway. Being transported back home in time for the visit wouldn’t solve the problem I don’t think.

    Now on the other hand there are 2 instances in my life where I was “moved”. The first one was when my husband was working up in Prince George and I had gone up with 2 of our children over the Christmas holidays to spend a week up there with him. Our trip home had been delayed 2 days because of a snowstorm but it cleared and we left. Halfway home we got blindsighted by the worse blizzard I had ever experienced. Coming from Sask where blizzards are a part of life that is saying something.

    I had never driven that highway alone before, could not see, and there are steep cliffs in much of the drive. At one point after many prayers, I saw the lights of a semi right behind me. I remembered my husband telling me when we lived in Sask that if I ever got stuck in a snowstorm to get behind a semi as they are higher and can see better and they would give me protection.

    He passed me and I got as close to him as I could. We went that way for a couple of hours. Every now and then he would tap on his brakes and I got to know that meant a curve was coming. We got out of the mountains just before Hope and it completely cleared. We came around a curve and the driver veered up a road of the other hill and I turned into the city. The driver honked at me and I immediately turned around to get the name of the trucking company to call them to thank the driver.

    There was no truck there even though I had a very clear unobstucted view of the road he had taken. The kids looked around, we turned around and went up the road he had but there was no truck anywhere. I knew at that point as sure as I was breathing that there had never been a truck in front of us. The 4 of us sat there at the side of the road in absolute quiet then our son piped up “That was Heavenly Father’s hand wasn’t it?” I just said yup and we said prayers.

    The next time was the night before we were to leave for the MTC to take our son there for his mission. I had been away on business and was on the way home. It was raining like crazy and I wanted off the freeway so took an exit off and decided to go through the other cities to get home. Again I was not familiar with the city or the route home from there.

    A large truck was in front of me so followed him for a bit. At one point just a few minutes later he turned into a gas station. As I went past the station I all of a sudden realized I no longer had a lane. I had not seen the sign saying merge left. I noticed a semi trailer coming up on my left and thought I had enough time to scoot in front of him and I almost made it. He had not seen me and caught my back bumper with his front right bumber pushing me across our 2 lanes of traffic onto the oncoming traffic across those 2 lanes then hounced back across the median onto the original lane and was going straight for the middle of the trailer.

    I remember hearing the screeching of the brakes in my ears as he tried to stop. All I could think of was our son at home waiting for me to get home so he could go get set apart by the Stake Pres. My next thought was I was screwing up his mission. My last thought was help me Heavenly Father. Although at that exact moment there were no other vehicles around me (according to witnesses), I felt a large thud on my left side that knocked me onto the passenger seat. But because my hands were clenched around the steering wheel in a death grip, when I landed on the seat, the wheel turned with me. By the steering wheel turning the car wheels also turned and instead of driving straight under the bed of the trailer taking the top of the car off along with my head, I bounced off one of his back wheels.

    Witnesses gave the police statements and all said that all of a sudden my car had veered off a direct path to the right. Although the car was a complete total write off and they had to pull the driver’s door off to get me out, the drivers door was completely unscratched. The front and back fenders had been pushed right in so the door couldn’t open but there was no big dents in it to account for something hitting me with enough force to push me onto the passenger seat.

    Had I been transported to another place by Heavenly Father? No.. I was still in the same car. I would have been happier had I been transported 5 minutes before the accident. But He knew that our son needed to be on his mission and so stepped in.

    Would either of those instances be considered miracles? Both times I would have been happier had He stepped in and transported me out of harm’s way instead of going through it. But if I couldn’t have that then I guess I am happy and blessed that I got what I did get. I have gone over both of those situations in my head a million times over analyzing them, wondering if it was my imagination, was it just fate, did it really happen that way etc.. I guess the human part of me still has a problem with the concept of sometimes things just are.

  16. Bookslinger

    All he wants are answers to the questions he is asking. He isn’t asking for any of the things you think he is asking for. No need to get defensive.

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