Roman Catholics may use religious pictures, crucifixes or rosary beads to help them pray, they may light candles and use incense to help them focus their minds on God. During prayer they may stand, kneel or bow their heads. Orthodox pray while standing and observing icons they may use incense or light candles to help to keep them focused. Quakers sit in a circle surrounding the table in the middle and they sit in silence listening to the outside or listen to a reading from the bible. Pentecostal Christians pray by shouting out prayers or singing them they also use music to help them concentrate and sing.
The repetition of words from a prayer in meditation helps because your mind focuses on those words and it makes you feel like your mind his being taken to a new realm where you can actually nearly feel God’s presence. The Lords prayer is the ‘Our Father’ this prayer is very important to us because Jesus taught us to pray using this prayer. The catechism states “Prayer is a remembrance of God often awakened by the memory of the heart.” The catechism also states that “Prayer is the life of a new heart.”
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Prayer is how Christians communicate with God. They do this for many different reasons for example praying for someone to get better or praying to do well and get through your day. Prayer is a two-way experience between God and another person who is praying, just as an everyday conversation. When asking a question it may not be answered but it will always be heard, a response to a question may not be obvious but you will get a response it could be answered in many ways such as unanswered mysteries, miracles or what you’ve asked for could be done. Some people don’t realise their prayer has been heard. Prayer can be answered through events in your life.
When Christians pray they realise that they must take an active part in what it is that they are praying for. The person in prayer must also be involved and perform things, God can only guide you but you have to act upon this and you must be committed and dedicated to God as in following his path and have faith in him. Basically you cannot just pray for something and get it without doing anything, for example you pray for peace and you have to work for it you don’t just get it. Prayer can help calm a person down and give them strength.
Different types of prayer might influence a Christian during their life like if your praying to thank god for life you would try and make the very best of your life as you will be influenced by prayer. A prayer of thanksgiving for family members should be followed by a Christian showing appreciation to the family simply by being polite and showing good manners, showing appreciation is not only going out of your way to do something in return it can be anything.
Prayer can also influence the life of the Church as well.
Different churches grow used to the more set prayers that they say. Prayer can help the church to grow as a community of believers. Prayer in large groups can influence peace by praying for it and asking for God to guide them, then going against violence by any way possible e.g. protesting, Campaigning, Etc. Prayer makes the community more aware of their responsibility in the world and it pressures people to help and ask god then get guidance from him.
The Roman catholic church set up jubilee 2000 as a result of their prayers together.
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School is not the right place for prayer for some people because some people believe that you have to be in the house of God for your prayer to be heard by God. Others find it pointless praying in school because they are forced to and it isn’t coming straight from the heart of that person. It isn’t the right place either because children are tempted to talk to their friends. When a person is forced to pray this can put them off prayer, mostly because they can’t be bothered and they want to chat to their friends and do something else.
However, I think that people might disagree with this because they believe that God is everywhere and can hear you whenever and wherever they are. Some people think that praying at the start of a day helps them gain strength to get through the day. Jesus said ‘ask and you will receive’. Some people find it a calm atmosphere in assembly and think it is good to pray in because it is nearly as calm as a church.
I would agree for the following reasons. I think most people just get bored of praying in the same way all the time and just don’t like it anymore because they are forced to pray when they don’t want to which also puts them off prayer.
I would disagree for the following reasons because it think prayer can be answered no matter where you are and I think it normally helps you to concentrate more throughout the day.
