{"id":53,"date":"2009-08-03T10:27:20","date_gmt":"2009-08-03T10:27:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/prayerplainandsimple\/2009\/08\/to-pray-or-not-to-pray.html"},"modified":"2009-08-03T10:27:20","modified_gmt":"2009-08-03T10:27:20","slug":"to-pray-or-not-to-pray","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/prayerplainandsimple\/2009\/08\/to-pray-or-not-to-pray.html","title":{"rendered":"To Pray or Not to Pray"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>On Saturday morning I was talking to my mom about&nbsp;life and how I am tired of&nbsp;the single life. At hearing this my mom said, &#8220;Well, have you been praying for a mate?&#8221; To this I rolled my eyes, let out a sigh of exasperation and told her what I&#8217;ve told her in times past, &#8220;I&#8217;m not praying for a mate anymore.&#8221; My logic for this is because I have already prayed for a mate and at this point, I feel like my continual praying for a mate would suggest to God that I don&#8217;t believe he heard me the first time&#8211;or the first 12 times. I feel&nbsp;like continually praying to God about my desire for a mate would suggest I don&#8217;t trust Him enough to work in His time the way He wants to. <\/p>\n<p>I want to&nbsp;believe that God heard me the&nbsp;many times I prayed&nbsp;and asked him to prepare a helpmate for me and&nbsp;me for a helpmate.&nbsp;But&nbsp;at the same time, I wonder,&nbsp;&#8220;Should I be praying more about it?&#8221;&nbsp;There&#8217;s alot involved in the&nbsp;process of&nbsp;waiting and praying. But I guess the largest question&nbsp;that I want to pose to the readers about this and about prayer in general is, &#8220;Do you&nbsp;keep praying about a situation? Or do you send one prayer off and just believe&nbsp;that in due time it will come to pass? Or do you pray and start doing things in the vain on those prayers?&nbsp;Thoughts&#8230;&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On Saturday morning I was talking to my mom about&nbsp;life and how I am tired of&nbsp;the single life. At hearing this my mom said, &#8220;Well, have you been praying for a mate?&#8221; To this I rolled my eyes, let out a sigh of exasperation and told her what I&#8217;ve told her in times past, &#8220;I&#8217;m&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":43,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,8,3,6,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-53","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-god","category-life","category-prayer","category-praying","category-relationships"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>To Pray or Not to Pray<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/prayerplainandsimple\/2009\/08\/to-pray-or-not-to-pray.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"To Pray or Not to Pray\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"On Saturday morning I was talking to my mom about&nbsp;life and how I am tired of&nbsp;the single life. At hearing this my mom said, &#8220;Well, have you been praying for a mate?&#8221; To this I rolled my eyes, let out a sigh of exasperation and told her what I&#8217;ve told her in times past, &#8220;I&#8217;m&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/prayerplainandsimple\/2009\/08\/to-pray-or-not-to-pray.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Prayer, Plain and Simple\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2009-08-03T10:27:20+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"nsymmonds\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"To Pray or Not to Pray","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/prayerplainandsimple\/2009\/08\/to-pray-or-not-to-pray.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"To Pray or Not to Pray","og_description":"On Saturday morning I was talking to my mom about&nbsp;life and how I am tired of&nbsp;the single life. At hearing this my mom said, &#8220;Well, have you been praying for a mate?&#8221; To this I rolled my eyes, let out a sigh of exasperation and told her what I&#8217;ve told her in times past, &#8220;I&#8217;m&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/prayerplainandsimple\/2009\/08\/to-pray-or-not-to-pray.html","og_site_name":"Prayer, Plain and Simple","article_published_time":"2009-08-03T10:27:20+00:00","author":"nsymmonds","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/prayerplainandsimple\/2009\/08\/to-pray-or-not-to-pray.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/prayerplainandsimple\/2009\/08\/to-pray-or-not-to-pray.html","name":"To Pray or Not to Pray","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/prayerplainandsimple\/#website"},"datePublished":"2009-08-03T10:27:20+00:00","dateModified":"2009-08-03T10:27:20+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/prayerplainandsimple\/#\/schema\/person\/f960b23e9c3a51222269c557a209b4f2"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/prayerplainandsimple\/2009\/08\/to-pray-or-not-to-pray.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/prayerplainandsimple\/2009\/08\/to-pray-or-not-to-pray.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/prayerplainandsimple\/2009\/08\/to-pray-or-not-to-pray.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/prayerplainandsimple"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"To Pray or Not to Pray"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/prayerplainandsimple\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/prayerplainandsimple\/","name":"Prayer, Plain and Simple","description":"Prayer, Daily Prayer, Simple Prayers, Quick Prayers, Prayer Requests","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/prayerplainandsimple\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/prayerplainandsimple\/#\/schema\/person\/f960b23e9c3a51222269c557a209b4f2","name":"nsymmonds","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/prayerplainandsimple\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/prayerplainandsimple\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/13d\/13ddfa3407d6847bc2fbd32a13b67708x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/prayerplainandsimple\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/13d\/13ddfa3407d6847bc2fbd32a13b67708x96.jpg","caption":"nsymmonds"},"description":"Nicole Symmonds is Beliefnet\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Prayer editor and also covers Christianity. A New Yorker by birth but a Floridian by tenure, Nicole graduated from Florida A&M University with a B.S. in Public Relations and a minor in Sociology. She moved to NY to pursue a career in journalism which started at In Style magazine. There she learned the ropes of magazine reporting, researching, and writing\u00e2\u20ac\u201dand became exponentially more stylish. But what seemed like a deep interest in fashion and entertainment would soon be revealed as merely the vehicle that moved her closer to discovering her purpose, writing and covering matters of the Christian faith. While in her purpose-driven vehicle she can be found traveling between Brooklyn, Manhattan and Queens for life, work and worship, respectively. From fashion to faith and the journey isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t over yet\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/prayerplainandsimple\/author\/nsymmonds"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/prayerplainandsimple\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/prayerplainandsimple\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/prayerplainandsimple\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/prayerplainandsimple\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/43"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/prayerplainandsimple\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/prayerplainandsimple\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/prayerplainandsimple\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/prayerplainandsimple\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/prayerplainandsimple\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}