dear friends,
i’m happy to talk about dreams, and freedom. i have an idea. we can pray together everyday in subject “the dreams” with texts from bible + helpful points. i already have this programm in my notebook.
it can be like this.. send you everyday one text or two..max. with some helpful points.. and you take half an hour daily to pray with this text, and share our feelings in comments. in the first time i can send you the method to pray that most of you know it already…etc.
if you like it. please send me comments that you want me to do it. if i find 3 or more comments i’ll begin it.
jesus with you
Fadi, give it a shoot. It is worth a trial. At least it may stimulate some of us to do some personal prayers.
Comment by Antonius Armanious — January 23, 2006 @ January 23, 2006 9:49 pm
Hi Fadi,
I don’t want you to missunderstand me, but I don’t like the idea of changing this site from discussing different topics to spiritual guiding through prayers.
Let’s keep our personal spiritual activities and prayers aside. I think that non of us is in the right place to lead this.
PS: To everyone, I have lots of comments to write but I am very busy these days.. So I will try to catch up with you guys as soon as I can…
Thanks!
Miena
Comment by miena — January 23, 2006 @ January 23, 2006 10:20 pm
Hi fady
و دى عايزة كلام؟؟؟ طبـــــــــــــــــــــــــــــعا
this is a GREAT idea and i think all the topics in this side is a way of praying,
i can’t separate between what we share here and all day long and my prayers.
I think this will improve our ability to put GOD in every thing we do…
And I already give the idea of praying here, all of us befor…
I am waiting Fady..
Comment by Nadine — January 23, 2006 @ January 23, 2006 10:36 pm
Let me do some act of unity. First when I read your proposal Fadi, I’d this sequence of thoughts:
1- Fadi got something deep inside him that he wants to share, that he wants take out of his heart to give it the poeple he love.
2- But you know what? Fadi is Fadi, have always been our stimulating, inovative and trusted friend. So Fadi said so and so…..so we say AMEN.:D But this is not good for some persons of the group who will be affected by whatever thoughts he tries to tell and will be more hearing for Fadi’s voice rather than god’s voice; specially that we are not having an oportunity to share face to face what we lived.
3- The third, I know how much some of the persons in the group are in real need to find something to stimulate them to talk to god and here him. And as god is always there we can trust him of directing our noble intentions for the good of others, one moer thing that sharing here in the blog can help all of us to hear how can god tell different voices from the same word.
4- The forth thought, I’ve no time to give a dialy comitment to such a thing.
5- The last thought encourage him and let god complete our imperfections.
At last I just want to say some kind of proposal if you like it so let’s try it. Why don’t we do something like this but weekly and not based on the same idea, and not by the same person. Let’s try to share more the different voices god is telling us and not just one voice. Our diversity gives us our real richness and value. Hope you all like the idea.
At last I just want to say, I understand you Fadi very well and trust you, I understant you Miena and trust you, and I understant you Nadine and trust you.
Sorry if I’m being very straight forward and sometimes provocative, but I do all of this out of my love for you all.
Comment by Antonius Armanious — January 24, 2006 @ January 24, 2006 12:21 am
dear fadi,
you are reading my mind,i though that we need to do this,and i said it on a comment of “help me overcome my unbelief” .thank you sooo mush, i really need this
Comment by rasha hani — January 24, 2006 @ January 24, 2006 12:38 am
hi All,
… If all of you remember, I was kind of responsable of such things before… And now i am sure you are wondering why I am adopting a different attitude… I told you before: be wise in everything you choose, evenif, as tony said before, it seems righteous. Here are some of the reasons that makes me feel uncomfortable about this idea.. or to be honest reject it… I understand how fady is trying to give some help… He is enjoying something and he wants to share it with us…. BUT this is a part of my concern:
First of all, thanks Tony for being understanding. and thanks again because you read my comment and take it seriously. I would like to explain more…. When I said I don’t like the idea, of course it was not because Fady proposed it
Following any directions for personal prayers is one of the most dangerous things that you can ever do…. it is not prayers, it is a way to inplant ideas inside your mind… I am saying this from my own experience… You will never feel this, it works amazingly… If you don’t believe me; I mean when I said it’s from a personal experience, you can dig in psychology specially in the area of brain washing…. I know that none of us, including Fady, think about it this way… What I am saying is, we can easy stray in a wrong direction.. Thats why in our relation with God, we have to be careful…..
YOU WANT TO PRAY, GO AHEAD AND START PRAYING. DO AS THE BIBLE SAID, CLOSE YOUR DOOR AND PRAY TO GOD. When Jesus told us to close our doors, I am sure He didn’t mean the physical door. He meant that these prayers has to be very personal between you and God. It is not something that you share with others and it is not something that should be driven by others.. It has to be from you… If you need help and guideness, go and ask you spiritual father.. I am not degrading from Fady here, I am trying to protect myself, him, and all of you… Sometimes we do have this spiritual enthuthiasm to help other but our minds take us beyond our limits… and there is where it becomes destructive!!!
I am sorry for being out of order here.. I am kind of brainstorming… One thing you may ask, so what about the book of prayers ” Agpeya” , what makes it different from this? The “Agpeya” is a collection of Psalms and very few of personal prayers… The church choose it because they are the words of God… You can meditate in it as long as you can.. but noone is giving you directions how to contemplate in them… If you don’t like it, start with your own personal prayers… Beleive me it a matter of will, you want it you will find time to it… If you don’t , you will not… it won’t be nayone who will push you tp pray
Comment by miena — January 24, 2006 @ January 24, 2006 4:54 am
Let me speak up my opinion here.
First, I would like to thank Fadi for this initiative step.
Second, I like the idea and I’ll support it even on a narrow-based group of participants.
Third, I think it should be out of this blog as the main aim of this blog is to be as an online magazine for our thoughts and articles. So, we can do this on the PeaceMakers group or if you want it to be public, we can do it on a parallel page out of the magazine main page.
Forth, this’s not considered as brain washing unless we consider our camps, journee, praying times, etc as brain washing. It’s a praying time, so: 1. Everyone free to take it or leave it, 2. Guidance give text and points and we are free how to use it and leave our soul to guide us.
Fifth, lets learn from our faults. If we agree to begin this, we should specify 2 factors:
1. a period (for example, weekly for 3 months)
2. a program and objective to reach after this period (for example, self-discovery or Jesus live discovering, or whatever). I don’t prefer randow prayers.
Sixth, I like multi-guidance idea of Tony. But it’ll lead us for random prayers that I don’t see it very helpful.
Comment by ikhnaton2 — January 24, 2006 @ January 24, 2006 7:38 am
Hi Rami,
I think you missunderstood me ..
Again, what I said is that this kind of technique is known to be used in implanting ideas inside people to control them….
AND I SAID ALSO THAT NON OF US MEANT IT TO BE LIKE THIS…
However, my conclusion is the following:
My relation with God should has the first priority… If you follow God under the influence of someone, you are messing up your relation with God.. Beleive it or not, it is more dangerous than that!!! Tony made it very clear when he said:
” But you know what? Fadi is Fadi, has always been our stimulating, inovative and trusted friend. So Fadi said so and so…..so we say AMEN.:D But this is not good for some persons of the group who will be affected by whatever thoughts he tries to tell and will be more hearing for Fadi’s voice rather than god’s voice……”
I absolutly agree with that…. What I don’t agree is the following:
Give it a shoot!!!
The spiritual way is NOT science research, where you can try something and if it doesn’t work out, you will go a different way…
Again, I am NOT against anyone here, you heard my advice. You are free to take it or leave it.
Comment by Miena — January 25, 2006 @ January 25, 2006 1:53 am
Dear all, I’ve been trying to articulate my idea about the conversation going here for 2 days now but still feel that I cannot express it well. I posted 2 posts concerning a related topic but still feel there is something I didn’t express. I’ll try to add it here:
and the last part, now I could express all what I wanted to say. I can sleep calmly.
1- It is about guiding of spiritual prayer. I diffrentiate between 2 types of guiding, guiding that is trying to tell you some kind of phylosphical, theological…idea. And guiding towards understanding gods teaching in the bible, which is always clear and very simple guiding may be placed if any. The first type of guiding does not agree with praying and it is more suitable for studying. And all through my personal prayers in like 10 years, I can remember nothing of such a kind of guiding. The second point I want to add concerning guiding, it is usually placed to help you getting more deep in biblical script, if you do need it. And it is not placed to medidate in it.
2- It is about our personal spiritual life. The most important thing in our spiritual life is our personal relation with god that is stimulated by our own will, because it the ever lasting relation. But does this means that spiritual life shared with others is a wrong thing, no it is not. And it is very demanded by a lot of poeple in certain stages or their lives. It has the role of activiating our spiritual life from time to time, but it is never the base we build on our spiritual life.
At last I gonna consider this comment Part III
Comment by Antonius Armanious — January 26, 2006 @ January 26, 2006 3:15 am