We decided to get some to try. You put it in water. You can use as much or as little as you want. Flip It. Tip It. Sip It. with MiO. I tend to like not quite a full squeeze in 16.9oz of water. Some people like as much as two squeezes in the same amount.

MiO has six delicious flavors: Berry Pomegranate, Strawberry Watermelon, Fruit Punch, Mango Peach, Sweet Tea and Peach Tea.

I like drinking water, but not so much plain water. I like a little flavor in my water. I will sometimes buy those powder packets to put in water but that tends to add to much flavor so I have to not use the whole packet and some taste powdery. MiO is really great because it is liquid and you can add as much or little as you want. Brilliant.

I really am liking it. United States of Tara is an American dark comedic television drama. It is about the life of Tara (Toni Collette), a suburban housewife and mother coping with dissociative identity disorder (also at one time called Multiple Personality Disorder). Whenever she is stressed, she transitions into one of her alternate personalities: wild and flirty teenager T; 1950s housewife Alice; and male, loud, beer-drinking Vietnam vet Buck.

Max: “Is Mom here?”
Marshall: “Yeah. I mean, Mom’s here…but I’m not sure ‘Mom’s’ here.”

I would love to think that there are not many people who still believe that you can “pray the gay away.”

None of the ex-gay “research” involve scientific method- it’s theological/philosophical wishful thinking posing as science.

George Rekers is one of the United State’s most prominent anti-gay activists. He, along with James Dobson, founded the Family Research Council, a large anti-gay organization whose initiatives have caused incalculable suffering. He encourages parents to send their young teens to discredited and harmful rehabilitation camps so they can be “cured” of homosexuality.There are so many people that have been emotionally and even physically harmed and traumatized by these camps. It is just so horrible.

Now guess who was caught hiring a young male prostitute to accompany him on vacation? Not hard to guess it is? It was George Rekers. He claims he simply hired the sex worker to help him carry his luggage.

EX gay – an oxymoron. One of the head of Exodus – the large ex gay group – Michael Bussee finally came out after 20 years there, and then married his boyfriend.

I believe the bible sets up a petitioner to readily accept prayers as “unqualified” or unfit to grant.

Let’s take a look at a few qualifications for prayers to be answered according to the bible.

Prayers can be denied if the petitioner is tangled in sin

Psalms 66:18, James 5:16, 1 John 3:21-22

It Has been said that Christians will pray for an end to AIDS, poverty, teenage pregnancy and the like, but God really chooses not to do anything about those things because the nation as a whole must repent. If most of the United States is Christian wouldn’t God gladly provide an end to at least one of those things? But there is a problem the average Christian is still sinning. I can help to think about a hymn I sang in church.

What can wash away my sin?
Nothing but the blood of Jesus;
What can make me whole again?
Nothing but the blood of Jesus.

Refrain

Oh! precious is the flow
That makes me white as snow;
No other fount I know,
Nothing but the blood of Jesus.

According to the Bible Christians are washed by the blood of Jesus and being washed their sins now and forever have been washed clean just as if they had never committed those sins in the first place.  That being the case when God looks on a Christian he sees them as clean.. But if sins become a hinder to prayer …then God really does not consider them clean. And if God can see sin then none of us can expect to be clean or unblemished by sin to expect that god will answer any prayer prayed by a believer

Prayers can be denied if prayers are selfish.

James 4:3

Barry’s mother told him growing up that everyone everyone has a motive to doing anything that they do.  Technically there is nothing a human can say or do without a selfish motive. Even when a person prays for a healing to an illness or a tragedy there may be selfish reasons why they may go to prayer

Less financial help from the church
Less unwanted attention
Not see a friend struggle and lessening a supportive roll
and so on

I realize that not all of prayer are selfish in nature but I would say that most of them have selfish motives behind them

When most of our prayers are selfish in origin, how many of them can we expect an answer from?

Prayers can be denied if they are not in the “Will of God”

Today with the ethical and social issues Christians must have a hard time decided which position to take concerning “God’s Will”. Granted some issues you can understand why they may not be included in the “Will of God.”

For example:

Let say that a man is standing trial for the murder of a Christian pastor’s wife. Let say that the pastor prays with extreme diligence that the man be convicted of the crime when the man is in fact innocent. We would not expect that those types of prayers would be in the frame work of the “Will of God”, now would we?

But when we discuss the “Will of God” we must discuss the Calvinist point of view. Calvinists believe that every thing is under God’s control and will. That all events are the “Will of God”

The Holocaust….The Will of God
The World Trade Center Collapse…..The Will of God
Chernobyl…….The Will of God
and the recent
Japanese Tsunami….The Will of God

With these events(and many others) being in the “Will of God” how can so many Christians actually know what God really wants so that they can pray as with in the ” Will of God”?

Prayers can be denied if they lack Faith

Mark 11:24, James 1:6-8 and 5:15

With in the Bible, Jesus does talk as if all you need is faith and God will intervene for you. All you need is faith the size of a mustard seed. Have you seen the size of a mustard seed? That is one small seed.  But if you have faith that size you can move a mountain. So, all you should need to do is pray for that mountain to move to the right and it should move to the right. When that out come does not happen what do most Christians do?

They end up blaming themselves. “I didn’t have enough faith”  or “Is there something wrong in my life?”

This becomes a guilt spiral ….The next time you pray you wont step that far out of the limb.  You will pray for something a little more “reasonable” and when that pray goes unanswered you will aim a little lower….to the point that you are not out on the limb at all you are clinging to a tree trunk hoping that at least this simple pray has a chance of succeeding.

People get to the point that people will pray only offer non-falsifiable prayers or prayers that are self-fulfilling.

Non-falsifiable prayers are prayers that you can not test whether or not that God had answered them.

“God, please be with them”
“God, please bless them”
“Lord. please be with them”

Self-fulfilling prayers are prayers that basically rely on the person who is praying

“God, please give me wisdom to know what to do”
“Lord, Give me strength”
“Lord, encourage me in my walk”
“Lord, allow me to read my bible more”
“Lord, help me live a proper life”

This causes the Christian to search for evidence of answered prayers that they can produce themselves. It is their experience in their lives that deprive them of the ability to have the faith of a child that is required, according to the bible, to answer prayers. In is the many tragedies, many unanswered prayers,  many setbacks and our may disappointments that causes a person have faith in the impossible through answered prayers

Prayers will be answered if they are within God’s Power to do so.

Quickly the Christian will pipe in stating that everything is within God’s power. But what about two Christians praying for contradictory things.

Two boys praying for the affections of the same girl
Two athletes on opposing teams praying for the championship win
The farmer praying for rain while the baseball player prays for sun.
Two out of work men praying they will get the same job to provide for their families
Two mothers praying for their children serving on opposite sides of a war.
Two businessmen praying for the same business deal to save their failing companies

Half of all of these prayers, will go unanswered and all because it is impossible for God to answer both prayers.

Some prayers will never be answered

That’s right there are somethings you will never get an answered prayer for

Never die.
Never get sick.
Never experience pain
Never experience hard work

According to the Bible those things are the problems of the supposed fall into sin by Adam and Eve.

Genesis 3:8-19

Prayer supposedly can lessen the effects of those things but not eliminate it.

You will die.
You will get sick.
You will experience pain.
You will have to work hard.

No amount of prayers will ever change that. That is something that God simply, according to Christians, will not change no matter how much you pray for things to change.

Final thoughts

Although I have not covered all of the qualifications for answered prayers, I want to conclude this with a few thoughts.

Christian prayer is obviously weighed in a way to expect unanswered prayers causing a downward spiral of  guilt.

Something of a note of interest……

A 2006 “Study of the Therapeutic Effects of Intercessory Prayer (STEP)” led by Harvard professor Herbert Benson was by far the most comprehensive and rigorous investigation of third-party prayer to date. The STEP, commonly called the “Templeton Foundation prayer study or “Great Prayer Experiment”, used 1,802 coronary artery bypass surgery patients at six hospitals. Using double-blind protocols, patients were randomized into three random groups, but without measuring individual prayer receptiveness. The experimental and control Groups 1 and 2 were informed they may or may not receive prayers, and only Group 1 received them. Group 3, which tested for possible psychosomatic effects, was informed they would receive prayers and subsequently did. Unlike some other studies, STEP attempted to standardize the prayer method. Only first names and last initial for patients were provided and no photographs were supplied. The congregations of three Christian churches who prayed for the patients “were allowed to pray in their own manner, but they were instructed to include the following phrase in their prayers: ‘for a successful surgery with a quick, healthy recovery and no complications’. Some participants complained that this mechanical way they were told to pray as part of the experiment was unusual for them. Major complications and thirty-day mortality occurred in 52 percent of those who received prayer (Group 1), 51 percent of those who did not receive it (Group 2), and 59 percent of patients who knew they would receive prayers (Group 3). Some prayed-for patients fared worse than those who did not receive prayers.

Anthony Collao, 18, who is understood to have been straight, was punched, kicked and beaten with a pipe. He died after two days on hospital life support.

Four teenagers – Alex Velez, 16, of the Bronx, and Nolis Ogando, Christopher Lozada and Luis Tabales, all 17 and from Queens, were arrested after Saturday night’s incident in Queens.

Witnesses told the New York Daily News that the party, in a disused warehouse, had been hosted by two gay men.

It was claimed that the suspects had stormed in shouting anti-gay abuse and refused to pay an entry fee.

Sources said that college graduate Mr Collao then left the party with a friend, fearing trouble.

But he was chased by the gang, pinned against a car and “beaten to within an inch of his life” with punches, kicks and a metal pipe, witnesses said.

One of the suspects, Christopher Lozada, was reportedly found wearing the victim’s baseball cap, while the others were covered in blood.