Dedicated to gossips in mid-week prayer meetings everywhere.
Do you have a bit of gossip?
Say a prayer.
Have Joneses had a toss up?
Say a prayer.
Say it loudly in a meeting
Tell them all who has been cheating
And about the wife he’s beating
Say a prayer.
Is your story nice and juicy?
Say a prayer.
Is your neighbor loosey goosey?
Say a prayer.
Wear a most self-righteous look
Name the names of who partook
No, don’t write it in a book!
Say a prayer.
Finding sin within your campers?
Say a prayer.
Know who church revival dampers?
Say a prayer.
…or if you are not a man
At request time raise a hand
And we’ll find someone who can
Say a prayer.
And when it shall come to pass that thou shalt eat thy breakfast or begin any trip or shall be called upon to “close us out in a word of prayer” by thy pastor (if thou shalt be lucky enough to not be a women) that thou shalt heed the words which are written in this book that thy prayers and thy fundy cred be not hindered.
For when thou prayest thou shalt in no wise use words that have ever been used before in a prayer. For God shall only hear and answer prayers that are as different from each other as one snowflake is from another. And in the day that thou shalt use a prayer that has been ever said or written then shalt the Lord tell you that he’s already heard this one and ignore you as if you were a tattooed heathen or an Episcopalian.
And if when thou prayest thou shouldest have a creative lapse wherin thou canst not think of what to say next then shalt thou throw in the word “Lord” as a filler. For the Lord doth dearly love to hear his name used as punctuation and never wearies of it. And if thou art really stuck adding a few “Father God’s” or “Good God Almighty’s” might work too.
For when Our Lord taught his disciples to pray he gave them only an outline example which he never really expected them to use except as they might modifying it extemporaneously with much verbal clutter and a meandering purpose. Go and do thou likewise.
Independent Baptist Book of Everlasting Rules and Requirements, p 3
Fundamentalists love the Psalms — especially the ones that involve praying down destruction, despair, and dental catastrophes upon their enemies. Having ones posterity cut off is also a sure crowd-pleaser.
It’s well enough to contemplate the psalms about the Good Shepherd or the beauty of a creation that proclaims the glory of a powerful God — if you’re a namby pamby, happy clappy, flowers and sunshine type, that is. But if you really want to get your righteous blood pumping there’s nothing that can compare to the joy of praying for liberals, Democrats, and compromisers to have their children left fatherless and their wife made a widow. And it’s all Biblical! Sorta.
Everyone would do well to step lightly around the fundamentalist who is armed with imprecatory parallelisms — especially if they value their jaw teeth and would like to avoid being smitten on the hip and thigh.
“We’ll be praying for you”…who knew it was such a threat?
There are a select handful of verses that any fundamentalist worth his sanctified salt can quote by heart. Among these is Psalm 66:18 “If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me.”
The fundamentalist interprets these words to mean that even though a person is saved and has God as his Heavenly Father that any misstep will shut God’s ears to him and leave him without aid or succor in his time of need. Keeping “short accounts” with God is the only way to be sure that He’s listening when we call. (I recommend trying this with your kids too, it’s loads of fun to ignore their cries for help until they remember why you’re mad at them and apologize. Take that, kids!)
Did you fail to walk a mile to return the sixty-three cents that a clerk accidentally undercharged you? Don’t even think about praying for your daily bread until you confess and forsake. Did you have a moment of weakness and curse at a crazy motorist on the freeway? Good luck invoking Divine help if you should crash your car!
The rules of this breakdown in communication are unclear. If a person commits a sin at sixteen and then forgets about it, will God not hear him when he is sixty? Must each sin be named specifically and be brought for forgiveness or is a blanket request of “forgive us for all the other stuff we forgot” sufficient? Best to hedge your bets and repent as much as possible just in case.
The old account may have been settled long ago but according to fundamentalists, we’re still running up quite a tab. Confess early and often.
In Christianity it is widely acknowledged that periods of quiet reading, prayer, and meditation are a good thing for a person’s spiritual state. Fundamentalist, of course, take it one step further and declare that if you fail to do devotional exercise every single day that your fate will be to “shrink, shrink, shrink.”
Fundamentalists love the stories of the grooves worn in George Muller’s floor. Or was that Praying Hyde? Or perhaps John Knox? It’s anybody’s guess. But the real point is that a young man who sleeps in and disregarded his devotions just one time will be without the proper weapons to do battle with spiritual wickedness in high places — or a magazine cover at the grocery checkout line, whichever comes first. A little sleep, a little slumber and before you know it not reading the daily dose of Proverbs will allow an errant copy of Ladies Home Journal to bring him to the very brink of ruin.
Fundies reverence the tales of those who read the bible through multiple times a year. They praise the stories of missionaries and pastors who would rise at 4:00 a.m. (somehow what time they went to bed never gets mentioned) and pray for hours until callouses form on the supplicant’s knees. But strangely, none dare call it asceticism.
A silly blog dedicated to Independent Fundamental Baptists, their standards, their beliefs, and their craziness.