#20-Fake Praying During Prayer Requests

If you go to a church with more than 50 people you know that prayer requests can become a pretty time consuming thing within a church service. Not to mention that they require a lot of focus to mentally register each and every prayer request that is said over the pulpit. We hear requests from all degrees of importance praying for Jim Smith's friend's dog to the enigmatic "special unspoken" request to a church parishioner actually being seriously ill in the hospital.

This happens weekly to bi-weekly. And therefore quite monotonous. And therefore most of the time it's a chore. And therefore most of us lose the sincerity to pray meaningfully for all these prayer requests. So naturally after trying to pray seriously for 10-15 seconds, we drop our head and mumble sweet nothings acting like we really care, but sadly we really don't. During this time we may even verbally mumble and fake pray with complete clear consciousness to look around with our eyes wide open evaluating the church setting.

Of course the occasions when the fake prayers become real are when they directly effect us, a family member, or a close friend in the church.

Another factor which plays into the sincerity of our prayer is when we mind wrestle over whether or not our prayer will make a difference. There is the one side of our brain that tells us that if God wants to heal "so and so" he will do it whether we pray or not. Surely God wouldn't refrain a healing from a poor stranger because I who did not even know the stranger did not pray for that person?

And then there is the guilt side of our brain which sees the answer of whether or not a prayer request will be answered by God if we do pray with urgency whereby God heals "so and so" if enough people seriously pray and the necessary amount of serious prayers is fulfilled (probably like 30 serious prayers needed) which releases the healing from heaven onto earth.