Showing posts with label hard times. Show all posts
Showing posts with label hard times. Show all posts

Monday, October 7, 2013

Is this still the home of the brave and land of the free? Why has the Government shutdown? What the HELL is REALLY GOING ON?

It's trending: #governmentshutdown 

It's reality: #government #shutdown

Is this still the home of the brave and land of the free?  Why has the Government shutdown? What the HELL is REALLY GOING ON? 

Let's cut through the bull shit and ask two basic questions: 

QUESTION #1: 
What's the take on our current situation? 

The U.S. government began its first step in #federal #government #shutdown over 17 years.  In common terminology this can be defined as 800,000 federal employees jobs might come to an end.  

Cause:
#Conservatives & #Obamacare
OR
#Obamacare & #Conservatives 

Really?
Yes!

The back story:
The shutdown was spearheaded by tea party conservatives who backed a House bill tying continued government funding to a one-year delay of the Affordable Care Act and the repeal of a tax to pay for it.

*A side question we must stop and ask - despite our opinion, preconceived ideas, or emotional state is, Why?

A) Why are tea party conservatives backing a house bill tying continued government funding to a one-year delay of the Affordable Care Act ( #Obamacare ) and the repeal of a tax to pay for it?  

*This has to be bigger than myself, family, my son / daughter being without insurance!  It's has to be bigger then than my 27 year old friend with cancer  getting turned down multiple times by insurance companies because of a preexisting condition.  

I don't think we can afford not be that selfish and small minded.  I know that sounds harsh, but often emotions blind us from discovering the answer.

B) Why, the Affordable Care Act? ( #Obamacare ) What's not being said?
.... .... .... I don't know.... .... 

The Obama administration accelerated its push attempting to persuade individual Americans to sign up for the most extensive overhaul of the U.S. healthcare system in 50 years, even as the program's foes in Congress fought to delay its launch with the threat of a federal government shutdown.
The new online health insurance marketplaces at the heart of President Barack Obama's Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare, are set to open on Tuesday. The marketplaces, or exchanges, will offer subsidized health insurance to low-to-moderate income families in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.
On the eve of the launch, Vice President Joe Biden and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius urged millions of uninsured Americans to ignore the battle in Congress and instead focus on the access their families need to medical services.

"Come Tuesday, Americans will be able to see for themselves that the Affordable Care Act isn't actually about Washington politics," Biden wrote in an opinion piece printed in local newspapers including the Des Moines Register in Iowa and the Birmingham News in Alabama. "It's about regular people shopping for insurance they can finally afford, and purchasing security and peace of mind along with it." By E.J. Dionne (Real Clear Politics) 

E.J. that pulls on my emotional strings but does not answer the, Why?

What's next?
Roxana Tiron with the #Bloomburgpost said, "Congressional leaders have scheduled no further negotiations on spending legislation, raising concerns among some lawmakers that the shutdown could bleed into the more consequential fight over how to raise the U.S. debt limit to avoid a first-ever default after Oct. 17."

What the HELL!!!???!!! 
The #american #fatcat eats it's food and sleeps warmly at night; while, many hard working, ass-kicking american workers are sent home hourly - over the #affordablecareact or #obamacare?

What's the presidents response,
Obama said yesterday he wouldn’t negotiate under the threat of a government shutdown or a default on the U.S. debt.  “You don’t get to extract a ransom for doing your job, for doing what you’re supposed to be doing anyway or just because there’s a law there you don’t like,” Obama said at the White House yesterday.
Obama immediately labeled it a "Republican shutdown." He said by closing much of government an out-of-control faction of House Republicans was putting the nation's fragile recovery at risk of an "economic shutdown."
"They've shut down the government over an ideological crusade to deny affordable health care to millions of Americans," Obama said in a Rose Garden speech, surrounded by people he said were dependent on the new health law.
"None of us want to be in a shutdown," Cantor, R-Va., told reporters. "And we're here to say to the Senate Democrats, `come and talk to us."
There has to be better ways to run the government than to get to a standstill like this.... ....


The cost to the American people.... 
Truth be told, we can't measure the total cost....  

We can guess and project. 
*if you play this out far enough it may begin to look like a Hollywood doomsday movie.

A partial federal government shutdown would cost the U.S. at least $300 million a day in lost economic output at the start, according to IHS Inc. (IHS) That’s a fraction of the country’s $15.7 trillion economy, and the effects probably will grow over time as consumers and businesses defer purchases and expansion plans.  During the partial government shutdown, many essential government operations will cease. 
Which operations (jobs) will stop?  
Internal Revenue Service call centers will close and more than 90 percent of Environmental Protection Agency workers will stay home. National parks and museums will be shuttered.
Other services will continue uninterrupted. Social Security and Medicare benefits will be paid. U.S. troops will remain at their posts around the world and will be paid under a bill Obama signed yesterday. Air-traffic controllers and airport security screeners will keep working.
The shutdown comes on the first day of enrollment in the exchanges mandated under the health-care law at the heart of the fight. Enrollment will continue today even as the government shuts down, because it’s paid for out of mandatory funding not affected by the lapse, U.S. officials said.

Glimpse of a global prospective:
Abroad, U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron, whose Conservative Party is a traditional Republican ally, said the U.S. political crisis poses a threat to global growth.
“It is a risk to the world economy if the U.S. can’t properly sort out its spending plans,” Cameron told the BBC in Manchester today. In Korea, the finance ministry said it could make investors more risk averse and fuel capital outflows from emerging markets.


QUESTION #2: 
What's our plan of response; 
despite, the unknown outcome? 

I'm not going to sit on my butt while, the future is decided by someone that I don't know or trust with my life.  I hope some has guts to state the truth unbiassed & not swayed by money....  .... 

For now my response is to hold fast to my constitutional rights and do the best I can to provide a future and hope for my family and the community in which i live.

President Obama made a true apples to oranges comparison yesterday when he tried to equate the failures of the Obamacare rollout to the glitches Apple experiences when it rolls out a new iOS.
OBAMA: "Consider that just a couple of weeks ago, Apple rolled out a new mobile operating system. And within days, they found a glitch, so they fixed it. I don’t remember anybody suggesting Apple should stop selling iPhones or iPads — or threatening to shut down the company if they didn’t. That’s not how we do things in America. We don’t actively root for failure. We get to work, we make things happen, we make them better, we keep going."
Apple kind of has a track record. I don’t know, a $400 billion company that sort of works. And the U.S. government has a record of the Public Housing, DMV and Postal Service... income makers? I think not! 
Although the American people have witnessed the failure of government over and over again, most people remain hopelessly optimistic that things will somehow improve. We have witnessed failure, but very few people are actively rooting for it.
Glenn Beck said this about President Obama, “He’s not just comparing Apple to the rollout of Obamacare. He is also comparing himself to Steve Jobs. He’s Steve Jobs.”
Unlike President Obama, Jobs was known to put projects on hold that were not up to his standards. For example, the Mac program of the early 1980s was not rolled out late and over budget because Jobs refused to release something that was flawed.
Does anybody really believe that if [Obama] could come up with a system that could beat the American healthcare system we had, is anyone going to fault him? If the President could actually come up with a system that beat the healthcare system, but he would have to be such a genius.
Given the number of failed socialized medicine experiments we have seen throughout history, President Obama and his team would have to be pretty brilliant to figure out a way to avoid the typical pitfalls of such a program.
Let’s put this into perspective and ask an honest question or two, 
If, Obama [and his team] are smarter than every communist country, every socialist country, and smarter than anyone who has ever run anything in Canada, anything in the Netherlands, anything in England, Cuba, China, Russia, anybody North Korea, South Korea.... Why, can't it be explained it to the American people?  Why, is it all wrapped around emotional heart stringed stories? 
They can’t even make the first step of sign up smooth. Come on!
Perhaps the largest problem with the President’s comparison, however, is his failure to remember that Apple is a private company with shareholders and customers who can take their business elsewhere, if/when they are unhappy with a product. Obamacare, on the other hand, is a law of the federal government that Americans are forced to abide by.
Steve Jobs, if he was so clueless that he took an iPad or iPod and said, ‘release it’ and the architect of it and came out and said, This thing is a train wreck. This thing is going to bankrupt the company… As a shareholder, I would root against Steve Jobs. In fact… I would give it just a few days and I would sell my stock.
But in this scenario, we can’t sell our stock. We’re trapped. We can’t opt out. We’re illegal, if we don’t have it at birth now. So, we can’t sell our shares.

Questions I'm asking myself:

- Since this problem had to start years ago, why aren't there multiple solutions and / or options? 

- What are my personal options as the government shutdown continues and Obamacare rolls out?

Is this still the home of the brave and land of the free?

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

Share your thoughts with me.

Check out my blog’s:
   

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Wednesday, October 2, 2013

What the HELL? Government shutdown?

It's trending: #governmentshutdown 


It's reality: #government #shutdown

Let's cut through the bull shit and ask two basic questions: 






QUESTION #1: 
What's the take on our current situation? 

The U.S. government began its first step in #federal #government #shutdown over 17 years.  In common terminology this can be defined as 800,000 federal employees jobs might come to an end.  

Cause:
#Conservatives & #Obamacare
OR
#Obamacare & #Conservatives 

Really?
Yes!

The back story:
The shutdown was spearheaded by tea party conservatives who backed a House bill tying continued government funding to a one-year delay of the Affordable Care Act and the repeal of a tax to pay for it.

*A side question we must stop and ask - despite our opinion, preconceived ideas, or emotional state is, Why?

A) Why are tea party conservatives backing a house bill tying continued government funding to a one-year delay of the Affordable Care Act ( #Obamacare ) and the repeal of a tax to pay for it?  

*This has to be bigger than myself, family, my son / daughter being without insurance!  It's has to be bigger then than my 27 year old friend with cancer  getting turned down multiple times by insurance companies because of a preexisting condition.  

I don't think we can afford not be that selfish and small minded.  I know that sounds harsh, but often emotions blind us from discovering the answer.

B) Why, the Affordable Care Act? ( #Obamacare ) What's not being said?
.... .... .... I don't know.... .... 

The Obama administration accelerated its push attempting to persuade individual Americans to sign up for the most extensive overhaul of the U.S. healthcare system in 50 years, even as the program's foes in Congress fought to delay its launch with the threat of a federal government shutdown.
The new online health insurance marketplaces at the heart of President Barack Obama's Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare, are set to open on Tuesday. The marketplaces, or exchanges, will offer subsidized health insurance to low-to-moderate income families in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.
On the eve of the launch, Vice President Joe Biden and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius urged millions of uninsured Americans to ignore the battle in Congress and instead focus on the access their families need to medical services.

"Come Tuesday, Americans will be able to see for themselves that the Affordable Care Act isn't actually about Washington politics," Biden wrote in an opinion piece printed in local newspapers including the Des Moines Register in Iowa and the Birmingham News in Alabama. "It's about regular people shopping for insurance they can finally afford, and purchasing security and peace of mind along with it." By E.J. Dionne (Real Clear Politics) 

E.J. that pulls on my emotional strings but does not answer the, Why?

What's next?
Roxana Tiron with the #Bloomburgpost said, "Congressional leaders have scheduled no further negotiations on spending legislation, raising concerns among some lawmakers that the shutdown could bleed into the more consequential fight over how to raise the U.S. debt limit to avoid a first-ever default after Oct. 17."

What the HELL!!!???!!! 
The #american #fatcat eats it's food and sleeps warmly at night; while, many hard working, ass-kicking american workers are sent home hourly - over the #affordablecareact or #obamacare?

What's the presidents response,
Obama said yesterday he wouldn’t negotiate under the threat of a government shutdown or a default on the U.S. debt.  “You don’t get to extract a ransom for doing your job, for doing what you’re supposed to be doing anyway or just because there’s a law there you don’t like,” Obama said at the White House yesterday.
Obama immediately labeled it a "Republican shutdown." He said by closing much of government an out-of-control faction of House Republicans was putting the nation's fragile recovery at risk of an "economic shutdown."
"They've shut down the government over an ideological crusade to deny affordable health care to millions of Americans," Obama said in a Rose Garden speech, surrounded by people he said were dependent on the new health law.
"None of us want to be in a shutdown," Cantor, R-Va., told reporters. "And we're here to say to the Senate Democrats, `come and talk to us."
There has to be better ways to run the government than to get to a standstill like this.... ....


The cost to the American people.... 
Truth be told, we can't measure the total cost....  

We can guess and project. 
*if you play this out far enough it may begin to look like a Hollywood doomsday movie.

A partial federal government shutdown would cost the U.S. at least $300 million a day in lost economic output at the start, according to IHS Inc. (IHS) That’s a fraction of the country’s $15.7 trillion economy, and the effects probably will grow over time as consumers and businesses defer purchases and expansion plans.  During the partial government shutdown, many essential government operations will cease. 
Which operations (jobs) will stop?  
Internal Revenue Service call centers will close and more than 90 percent of Environmental Protection Agency workers will stay home. National parks and museums will be shuttered.
Other services will continue uninterrupted. Social Security and Medicare benefits will be paid. U.S. troops will remain at their posts around the world and will be paid under a bill Obama signed yesterday. Air-traffic controllers and airport security screeners will keep working.
The shutdown comes on the first day of enrollment in the exchanges mandated under the health-care law at the heart of the fight. Enrollment will continue today even as the government shuts down, because it’s paid for out of mandatory funding not affected by the lapse, U.S. officials said.

Glimpse of a global prospective:
Abroad, U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron, whose Conservative Party is a traditional Republican ally, said the U.S. political crisis poses a threat to global growth.
“It is a risk to the world economy if the U.S. can’t properly sort out its spending plans,” Cameron told the BBC in Manchester today. In Korea, the finance ministry said it could make investors more risk averse and fuel capital outflows from emerging markets.


QUESTION #2: 
What's our plan of response; 
despite, the unknown outcome? 

I'm not going to sit on my butt while, the future is decided by someone that I don't know or trust with my life.  I hope some has guts to state the truth unbiassed & not swayed by money....  .... 

For now my response is to hold fast to my constitutional rights and do the best I can to provide a future and hope for my family and the community in which i live.


President Obama made a true apples to oranges comparison yesterday when he tried to equate the failures of the Obamacare rollout to the glitches Apple experiences when it rolls out a new iOS.
OBAMA: "Consider that just a couple of weeks ago, Apple rolled out a new mobile operating system. And within days, they found a glitch, so they fixed it. I don’t remember anybody suggesting Apple should stop selling iPhones or iPads — or threatening to shut down the company if they didn’t. That’s not how we do things in America. We don’t actively root for failure. We get to work, we make things happen, we make them better, we keep going."
Apple kind of has a track record. I don’t know, a $400 billion company that sort of works. And the U.S. government has a record of the Public Housing, DMV and Postal Service... income makers? I think not! 
Although the American people have witnessed the failure of government over and over again, most people remain hopelessly optimistic that things will somehow improve. We have witnessed failure, but very few people are actively rooting for it.
Glenn Beck said this about President Obama, “He’s not just comparing Apple to the rollout of Obamacare. He is also comparing himself to Steve Jobs. He’s Steve Jobs.”
Unlike President Obama, Jobs was known to put projects on hold that were not up to his standards. For example, the Mac program of the early 1980s was not rolled out late and over budget because Jobs refused to release something that was flawed.
Does anybody really believe that if [Obama] could come up with a system that could beat the American healthcare system we had, is anyone going to fault him? If the President could actually come up with a system that beat the healthcare system, but he would have to be such a genius.
Given the number of failed socialized medicine experiments we have seen throughout history, President Obama and his team would have to be pretty brilliant to figure out a way to avoid the typical pitfalls of such a program.
Let’s put this into perspective and ask an honest question or two, 
If, Obama [and his team] are smarter than every communist country, every socialist country, and smarter than anyone who has ever run anything in Canada, anything in the Netherlands, anything in England, Cuba, China, Russia, anybody North Korea, South Korea.... Why, can't it be explained it to the American people?  Why, is it all wrapped around emotional heart stringed stories? 
They can’t even make the first step of sign up smooth. Come on!
Perhaps the largest problem with the President’s comparison, however, is his failure to remember that Apple is a private company with shareholders and customers who can take their business elsewhere, if/when they are unhappy with a product. Obamacare, on the other hand, is a law of the federal government that Americans are forced to abide by.
Steve Jobs, if he was so clueless that he took an iPad or iPod and said, ‘release it’ and the architect of it and came out and said, This thing is a train wreck. This thing is going to bankrupt the company… As a shareholder, I would root against Steve Jobs. In fact… I would give it just a few days and I would sell my stock.
But in this scenario, we can’t sell our stock. We’re trapped. We can’t opt out. We’re illegal, if we don’t have it at birth now. So, we can’t sell our shares.
Is this still the home of the brave and land of the free?

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.


Share your thoughts with me.

Check out my blog’s:
   


We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Thursday, August 4, 2011

Anyone listening - Unanswered Prayers - Pt2

Psalm 4:1-2 NIV
SCRIPTURE
 1 Answer me when I call to you, my righteous God. Give me relief from my distress; have mercy on me and hear my prayer.
OBSERVATION
Have you ever felt as if God is not listening?  As if you’ve been rejected by Him for some unknown reason? Reflecting on a personal journal entry from 2002; in which, my wife and I journeyed down the road of pain and disappear - as our second child’s heart ceased - I wrote the following, “I had never wrestled with the will of God to the point of anger, rage, pain, and disappear. Now it’s not only my life that is affected by what Your allowing but my wife’s!  I had always thought that You could and would do anything if enough people prayed—but in the midst of our prayers You seemed to choose to remain silent and distant. Are you there? What good are You God - if you will not show up and save the innocent? ..... ...... ...... Where are You to be found in the midst of pain and suffering?” - Trevor L Drinen
During the follow days I attempted to take a global viewpoint on my questions.  This experience led my wife and I through a journey of pain almost to the point of turning away from our faith and to stop believing in the existence of a God that pursues us. 
Many people throughout the world struggle with their faith because of God’s silence and apparent impotence when they cry out to Him in their time of greatest need. What makes these unanswered prayers even more disturbing is the fact that some Christians claim God regularly answers their prayers for things that seem of no consequence. I think of the individuals who prayed to find a parking space as they entered the mall parking lot and,“Thanks be to God!” a space opened up on the front row. Or the professional athlete who points to the heavens after catching a touchdown pass. Or a surfer who patiently waits for the perfect wave.  Does God answer prayers for parking spaces, touchdown passes, and ridable waves, but not for those who have cancer or whose unborn children will die without a miracle?
It was at the low I turned and began to look at Jesus’ outlook on prayer.  It was in the midst of my journey that I discovered that my personal disappointment was the result of unmet expectations. I expected God to save!  I expected God to heal!  I expected God to move on my behalf! .... .... and so have countless others through out time (Example: Jews).
APPLICATION
In the case of prayer, our expectations are shaped in part by Jesus’ words in a handful of passages like Matthew 21:21-22: “Truly I tell you, if you have faith and do not doubt ... even if you say to this mountain, ‘Be lifted up and thrown into the sea,’ it will be done. Whatever you ask for in prayer with faith, you will receive.”
At first glance Jesus seems to be promising here to do whatever we ask, provided we have faith. We read this and other promises like this on the lips of Jesus, and we cannot help but be confused when our prayers go unanswered. When we pray for a friend who is dying or for the safety of our children or for a job to open up for us, we are left confused when our friend dies, we go for months without employment or something happens to our children. Some Christians explain the reason these prayers go “unanswered” or “fail” has to do with the individual praying.  Yes, they placing the blame on you.  Others have gone to the extent of listing several common reasons why prayers may go unanswered.
- You have unconfessed sin in your life - You pray with improper motives - You lack faith
I find this list obscene and offensive! To say that God would have answered our prayers for our unborn child if only I had more fully sought to please God, or if I had confessed my sins, is not only unbiblical, misguided, and cruel. It does not line up with God’s character!  Did blind Bartimaeus, whom Jesus healed outside of Jericho, seek to please the Lord in everything? Did he stop to confess his sins before asking for his eyesight? Yet Jesus healed him (see Mark 10:46-51). Jesus heals because He is holy, not because those He heals are holy. To explain that God does not answer our prayers because we are not holy enough is unbiblical and does not aline with faith built upon grace!  At the foundation of a Christians faith is a Savior gave His life for us “while we were yet sinners” (Romans 5:8), and which teaches that we are saved by God’s grace.
What about faith? What about the power of prayer?  Prayer is an action faith. Faith is the act of trusting that God hears, that God cares and that God is able to act as we cultivate a genuine relationship with Him through prayer. Jesus asks that we pray with faith, that we trust as we pray.

If then unfulfilled prayer is not the result of my failure to live for Christ, unconfessed sin in my life, or inadequate faith.  Then what are we to make of the fact that our prayers are sometimes unanswered? 
Perhaps the answer is not found in what we do wrong when we pray, but in our failure to understand what Jesus meant when He said that we could move mountains and have whatever we ask for if we pray with faith. When Jesus spoke, He almost always did so using a figure of speech called hyperbole. Hyperbole is an overstatement or exaggeration to make a point. This was the language of prophets and first-century teachers. Our problem maybe within reading His words “hyper-literally” when we need to read them hyperbolically. To read them hyperbolically means we take Jesus seriously, but not always literally.  “Whatever you ask for in prayer with faith, you will receive” (Matthew 21:22). Were these words a promise to be taken literally and mechanistically, or are they a hyperbolic statement inviting Jesus’ followers to pray boldly and with faith? This is the same passage in which Jesus tells His followers that by faith they can move mountains; that might help us to see that it is the latter way in which we are meant to read this passage.  Jesus’ hearers understood that Jesus was speaking hyperbolically when He said, “Whatever you ask for in prayer with faith, you will receive.” I think they understood that Jesus was saying, “Go to God with your burdens! Be bold when you pray! Trust that God hears your prayers! And, in ways you don’t fully understand, God will see you through this situation you face.”
Where does that leave me as I barry my unborn child, deal with the internal pain, and attempt to comfort my wife?  How does God answer prayer? What is the purpose of prayer? What should we pray for? How does God answer prayer?  Why does God answer some prayers and not others? Does God answer prayer? Some, but not all? Sometimes, but not all the time? Or does God always answer prayer and it's just that sometimes God says no. Is prayer more than God listening and answering?  Is God is going to do what God is going to do - if so why pray?  If God can do anything why doesn’t He?  
When God wants something done, God typically sends people. God’s customary way of working in our lives is through what appear to be ordinary ways. Rather than suspending the laws of nature that God created and bypassing the human beings that God created to do God’s work, God typically works through natural laws and through people. In the Bible, this is how God most often worked, and it is how God typically works today. I believe that miracles can happen and do happen. On some occasions, God miraculously and directly intervenes in the world, but most often God works through us, calling and nudging us into action, working in our hearts to be the instruments God uses to answer the prayers of others.  I have come to appreciate the idea that God intends us to be the answer to one another’s prayers to come alongside those who are in need of comfort. How and why?  If God desires a cultivate a genuine growing healthy relationship with His creation, then would He not have His creation do that for each other?  
None of this implies that God never works miracles. God can do the miraculous. But miracles are miracles because they are rare. God’s primary way of working in our world is to influence us and others—giving us peace and strength, wisdom and patience—while using the natural means God created to accomplish God’s purposes. God can work miracles! Is it not a miracles that works through the hands of doctors, the words of counselors, the presence of friends: in other words, miracles happen everyday and for me to place my personal expectations on God is unfair - no matter the pain I may encounter.
God is unfair - no matter the pain I may encounter.
So, if God is sovereign why do prayers go unanswered??  I don’t know.... .... .... does unanswered prayers, unmeet expectations, or the lack of personal understanding bring one to the conclusion that God must not exists?  
Romans 11:11-12 states, “11 Again I ask: Did they stumble so as to fall beyond recovery? Not at all! Rather, because of their transgression, salvation has come to the Gentiles to make Israel envious. 12 But if their transgression means riches for the world, and their loss means riches for the Gentiles, how much greater riches will their full inclusion bring!”
At my point of anger, rage, pain, and disappear I come to trust God holds and sees the bigger picture. 
PRAYER
Thanks for reminding me of: A) who You are B) Your purpose (salvation to all) C) my involvement (faith & action / works). God, thank You so much for Your timeliness guarantees & evidence via Your invisible attributes, eternal power, divine nature since the creation of the world so that all may know you. Trevor

Anyone listening - Unanswered Prayers - Pt1

Romans 11:1-6 NIV
SCRIPTURE
“ 1 I ask then: Did God reject his people? By no means! I am an Israelite myself, a descendant of Abraham, from the tribe of Benjamin. 2 God did not reject his people, whom he foreknew. Don’t you know what Scripture says in the passage about Elijah—how he appealed to God against Israel: 3 “Lord, they have killed your prophets and torn down your altars; I am the only one left, and they are trying to kill me”? 4 And what was God’s answer to him? “I have reserved for myself seven thousand who have not bowed the knee to Baal.”5 So too, at the present time there is a remnant chosen by grace. 6 And if by grace, then it cannot be based on works; if it were, grace would no longer be grace.”       
OBSERVATION
Have you ever felt as if God is not listening?  As if you’ve been rejected by Him for some unknown reason? Reflecting on a personal journal entry from 2002; in which, my wife and I journeyed down the road of pain and disappear - as our second child’s heart ceased - I wrote the following, “I had never wrestled with the will of God to the point of anger, rage, pain, and disappear. Now it’s not only my life that is affected by what Your allowing but my wife’s!  I had always thought that You could and would do anything if enough people prayed—but in the midst of our prayers You seemed to choose to remain silent and distant. Are you there? What good are You God - if you will not show up and save the innocent? ..... ...... ...... Where are You to be found in the midst of pain and suffering?” - Trevor L Drinen
During the follow days I attempted to take a global viewpoint on my questions.  This experience led my wife and I through a journey of pain almost to the point of turning away from our faith and to stop believing in the existence of a God that pursues us. 
Many people throughout the world struggle with their faith because of God’s silence and apparent impotence when they cry out to Him in their time of greatest need. What makes these unanswered prayers even more disturbing is the fact that some Christians claim God regularly answers their prayers for things that seem of no consequence. I think of the individuals who prayed to find a parking space as they entered the mall parking lot and,“Thanks be to God!” a space opened up on the front row. Or the professional athlete who points to the heavens after catching a touchdown pass. Or a surfer who patiently waits for the perfect wave.  Does God answer prayers for parking spaces, touchdown passes, and ridable waves, but not for those who have cancer or whose unborn children will die without a miracle?
It was at the low I turned and began to look at Jesus’ outlook on prayer.  It was in the midst of my journey that I discovered that my personal disappointment was the result of unmet expectations. I expected God to save!  I expected God to heal!  I expected God to move on my behalf! .... .... and so have countless others through out time (Example: Jews).
APPLICATION
In the case of prayer, our expectations are shaped in part by Jesus’ words in a handful of passages like Matthew 21:21-22: “Truly I tell you, if you have faith and do not doubt ... even if you say to this mountain, ‘Be lifted up and thrown into the sea,’ it will be done. Whatever you ask for in prayer with faith, you will receive.”
At first glance Jesus seems to be promising here to do whatever we ask, provided we have faith. We read this and other promises like this on the lips of Jesus, and we cannot help but be confused when our prayers go unanswered. When we pray for a friend who is dying or for the safety of our children or for a job to open up for us, we are left confused when our friend dies, we go for months without employment or something happens to our children. Some Christians explain the reason these prayers go “unanswered” or “fail” has to do with the individual praying.  Yes, they placing the blame on you.  Others have gone to the extent of listing several common reasons why prayers may go unanswered.
- You have unconfessed sin in your life - You pray with improper motives - You lack faith
I find this list obscene and offensive! To say that God would have answered our prayers for our unborn child if only I had more fully sought to please God, or if I had confessed my sins, is not only unbiblical, misguided, and cruel. It does not line up with God’s character!  Did blind Bartimaeus, whom Jesus healed outside of Jericho, seek to please the Lord in everything? Did he stop to confess his sins before asking for his eyesight? Yet Jesus healed him (see Mark 10:46-51). Jesus heals because He is holy, not because those He heals are holy. To explain that God does not answer our prayers because we are not holy enough is unbiblical and does not aline with faith built upon grace!  At the foundation of a Christians faith is a Savior gave His life for us “while we were yet sinners” (Romans 5:8), and which teaches that we are saved by God’s grace.
What about faith? What about the power of prayer?  Prayer is an action faith. Faith is the act of trusting that God hears, that God cares and that God is able to act as we cultivate a genuine relationship with Him through prayer. Jesus asks that we pray with faith, that we trust as we pray.

If then unfulfilled prayer is not the result of my failure to live for Christ, unconfessed sin in my life, or inadequate faith.  Then what are we to make of the fact that our prayers are sometimes unanswered? 
Perhaps the answer is not found in what we do wrong when we pray, but in our failure to understand what Jesus meant when He said that we could move mountains and have whatever we ask for if we pray with faith. When Jesus spoke, He almost always did so using a figure of speech called hyperbole. Hyperbole is an overstatement or exaggeration to make a point. This was the language of prophets and first-century teachers. Our problem maybe within reading His words “hyper-literally” when we need to read them hyperbolically. To read them hyperbolically means we take Jesus seriously, but not always literally.  “Whatever you ask for in prayer with faith, you will receive” (Matthew 21:22). Were these words a promise to be taken literally and mechanistically, or are they a hyperbolic statement inviting Jesus’ followers to pray boldly and with faith? This is the same passage in which Jesus tells His followers that by faith they can move mountains; that might help us to see that it is the latter way in which we are meant to read this passage.  Jesus’ hearers understood that Jesus was speaking hyperbolically when He said, “Whatever you ask for in prayer with faith, you will receive.” I think they understood that Jesus was saying, “Go to God with your burdens! Be bold when you pray! Trust that God hears your prayers! And, in ways you don’t fully understand, God will see you through this situation you face.”
Where does that leave me as I barry my unborn child, deal with the internal pain, and attempt to comfort my wife?  How does God answer prayer? What is the purpose of prayer? What should we pray for? How does God answer prayer?  Why does God answer some prayers and not others? Does God answer prayer? Some, but not all? Sometimes, but not all the time? Or does God always answer prayer and it's just that sometimes God says no. Is prayer more than God listening and answering?  Is God is going to do what God is going to do - if so why pray?  If God can do anything why doesn’t He?  
When God wants something done, God typically sends people. God’s customary way of working in our lives is through what appear to be ordinary ways. Rather than suspending the laws of nature that God created and bypassing the human beings that God created to do God’s work, God typically works through natural laws and through people. In the Bible, this is how God most often worked, and it is how God typically works today. I believe that miracles can happen and do happen. On some occasions, God miraculously and directly intervenes in the world, but most often God works through us, calling and nudging us into action, working in our hearts to be the instruments God uses to answer the prayers of others.  I have come to appreciate the idea that God intends us to be the answer to one another’s prayers to come alongside those who are in need of comfort. How and why?  If God desires a cultivate a genuine growing healthy relationship with His creation, then would He not have His creation do that for each other?  
None of this implies that God never works miracles. God can do the miraculous. But miracles are miracles because they are rare. God’s primary way of working in our world is to influence us and others—giving us peace and strength, wisdom and patience—while using the natural means God created to accomplish God’s purposes. God can work miracles! Is it not a miracles that works through the hands of doctors, the words of counselors, the presence of friends: in other words, miracles happen everyday and for me to place my personal expectations on God is unfair - no matter the pain I may encounter.
God is unfair - no matter the pain I may encounter.
So, if God is sovereign why do prayers go unanswered??  I don’t know.... .... .... does unanswered prayers, unmeet expectations, or the lack of personal understanding bring one to the conclusion that God must not exists?  
Romans 11:11-12 states, “11 Again I ask: Did they stumble so as to fall beyond recovery? Not at all! Rather, because of their transgression, salvation has come to the Gentiles to make Israel envious. 12 But if their transgression means riches for the world, and their loss means riches for the Gentiles, how much greater riches will their full inclusion bring!”
At my point of anger, rage, pain, and disappear I come to trust God holds and sees the bigger picture. 
PRAYER
Thanks for reminding me of: A) who You are B) Your purpose (salvation to all) C) my involvement (faith & action / works). God, thank You so much for Your timeliness guarantees & evidence via Your invisible attributes, eternal power, divine nature since the creation of the world so that all may know you. Trevor