Does Prayer Really Work? Here are some thoughts

Author: Eleana Rondón

Prayer :

Prayer is one of the oldest human practices and is still present. Whether you are a Christian, Muslim, Hindu or spiritual person, prayer can be a powerful way to connect with your higher self and get closer to yourself.

In this article, we will explore why prayer is important and answer common questions like why do we need to pray, how we should pray, and what to do if praying is not working.

Understand why prayer is important

Prayer is a way to connect with God, yourself, and the universe. It means communicating with your higher self. Prayer helps you to discover your true nature.

Prayer is important because it brings clarity and peace to your life by connecting you with God. Daily prayer makes us experience relaxation, happiness, and positive thinking.

 That helps us achieve our goals because we have become stronger spiritually.

Why do we need to pray?

Prayer is a practice that allows you to focus on what is meaningful in your life while helping you get through tough times.

When you pray, you connect with the highest part of yourself, a part of the universal consciousness. In other words, it means talking to your spirit guide, the part within you that knows everything about you and the universe.

When we pray for something, our mind goes into a relaxed state where we become more aware of our thoughts and feelings. It allows us to see things clearly and make better decisions.

Prayer for protection

If you feel an uncomfortable sense that something unexplainable is wrong and you feel off it could be negative energy sent from someone else to bother you. To protect yourself you imagine yourself inside of an invisible shell like an egg filled with light and you imagine or pray that everything negative sent to you by someone else bounces off your shell and returns to them 5 times more.

How should we pray?

One important yet subtle shift in thinking that can change everything is in our point of view. God is with us always, but He/She/It is inside of us. He is the energy that creates our world. It is a co-creation. So it is good to avoid thinking God is outside us. He is not a Santa Claus figure but instead a part of us and we are a part of God. I like to think He is my co-pilot but She also sits in my same seat. Can’t get much closer than that. We are partners. Because we have free will we can allow Him to share our earthly lives and to create experiences together. We create so we need to watch how we think because thoughts have power for positive and for negative. Actually we do not realize how much power we have as being connected to God, the Source. There are many stories of people who let God take the wheel with amazing results.

And we don’t have to pray for things as that can show that we believe we do not and may never get what we are asking for. Instead thank God for this life and all we receive in it. Our thoughts for something have already activated the energies to receive it. Be thankful that it is on its way to you.

Prayer does not have to be complicated. It can simply be saying thank you for what you have in your life or asking for guidance to handle a situation. You can even pray silently by just thinking about these things!

What matters is to focus on what you are saying and do it from the heart. Act as if whatever you pray for is done and has happened. Believe it, and be grateful to the universe for its help in making it so. Say thank you.

Prayer for a Friend

If you have a friend who is sick or going through hard times you can close your eyes and imagine the issues of your friend leaving them, think as if it is done and they are well and give thanks to the universe for helping your friend. As they say, believe it is done.

Who is God?

“I said, ‘You are gods, sons of the Most High, all of you.” (Psalms 82:6).

This earthly experience is actually a co-creation exercise. We are creating our lives along with our creator together. So we are not praying to a Santa Clause figure, and this is very important. We have the power, not something or someone else, to make the world we want. This play we are in is very good at hiding that from us.

God is you. You have all the power and potential of God within you because God is the source of all energy, matter, life, and consciousness.

God has given us this power by creating us in his image with a mind that can think for itself. We use our minds to create things on Earth. We can do the same in heaven and beyond if we choose to do so.

Society taught us to believe that there is something out there called “God” who has more power than anyone else. Truth is you can find God within yourself: As above, so below, as within, so without, as the universe, so the soul.

If God is inside, why do we have to pray? Prayer is like a channel: we need it to connect with that inner power.

How does prayer work? Here is why prayer is powerful

Everything is constantly in motion and vibrating at the atomic and subatomic levels

Here is something interesting: everything in the universe is of matter and energy. The matter is composed of atoms and molecules. Energy makes atoms and molecules constantly revolve around themselves, vibrating and creating life.

That is the musica universalis or music of the spheres that Pythagoras spoke about. He called it “music” because movement is coessential to sound.

But what does this have to do with prayer, you may ask?

Well, the ancient sages understood the power of sounds to create. That is why they came up with mantras or words of power.

In this sense, a specific sound, word, or combination of words can influence the mind, the body, and the spirit. They can activate certain parts of the brain or aspects of the consciousness.

Prayers work similarly to mantras because they also employ the power of words. That is why Christian mystics had spiritual trances and mystical experiences while praying.

In other words, praying can put you in a condition where you are more likely to connect with higher states of consciousness.

It can reach the point of affecting three-dimensional matter. For instance, there is anecdotal evidence of Christian mystics levitating during prayer.

However, if you want this to happen, you must be focused and immersed in prayer.

Why praying is not working

Praying can work or not: it all depends on you. There are many reasons why prayers may not seem to work. Here are some of them

Lack of faith or doubt

One of the main reasons prayer may not work is the lack of faith or doubt.

In many religions, faith is an essential aspect of prayer, as your belief in a higher power makes your prayers effective. If one has doubts or lacks faith, their prayers may not be as effective as they could be.

But why?

When we say faith, it does not mean blindly hoping something will happen. It means knowing something will happen.

The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines the word “faith” this way;

“to believe that (someone or something) deserves to be trusted

His parents have always had faith in him.

We had faith in her ability to succeed.”

A child has faith his parents will be back by dinner because they always do. You have faith in your friend helping you because he never lets you down, etc.

Faith is a force. You create it in yourself when you experience the divine. The more you have mystical experiences, the more faith in God you will have.

And when you apply this force to your prayers, your words become more powerful.

Free will

In many religions, there is a belief that humans have free will, which means they can make choices and decisions that can impact their lives.

Sometimes people make choices that may not align with their prayers, leading to an outcome different from what they hoped.

For example, you may ask God to give you money, but you are doing the things that make you poor. The universe may show you many opportunities to make more money, but you ignore or reject them. In that way, we can be our own worst enemies by sabotaging the ideas that we say we want. Do we really, really want them? People can be afraid of both failure and success.

You are asking for things that are not what you need

There is a law of cause and effect, and everything happens for a reason, even if we do not understand it.

Remember, we are souls living a human experience. Our purpose here is to learn. If we have to experience an unpleasant situation, it is a learning experience for our souls.

Some experiences are ugly and painful but necessary, and we do not realize it. We need to see the bigger picture.

For example, if someone has a disease like cancer, there is a chance they will get better. If that happens, you can see how this experience made them stronger.

If they do not get better and need to pass away, we may not see it, but that learning deeply impregnated his soul. It will help that person be strong and wise in his next life (click here to read our article on reincarnation).

That does not mean you should not pray. The positive energy you send will help that person who is sick. But understand that everything happens for a reason.

Conclusions | How should we pray?

We must understand we do not know the experiences our souls have to undergo to become wiser. Instead of asking God to give us what we want, we should ask for wisdom, patience, and strength to continue our paths.

So, how should we pray? We need to reframe why we are praying. Instead of praying to get material things, we should do it to connect with God.

Prayer vs. meditation.

Also, if you have difficulty seeing the bigger picture, you may want to complement praying with meditation. Praying is to talk to God while meditating is listening to God

 (click here to read our article about meditation).

Here is a beautiful example of how we should pray:

“God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,

 courage to change the things I can,

and wisdom to know the difference.”

What should I do if prayer does not work?

As we have seen in this article, prayer does work, but not because of supernatural phenomena. Instead, it needs some simple things from us: a silent mind, deep concentration imaging what we wish to happen, and a faithful heart with the understanding that we are not praying to anything outside of us but to the creator that is already inside of us and thanking Him as if the results have already happened. Strive to develop these things.

“Seek the Kingdom of God above all else, and live righteously, and he will give you everything you need” (Matthew 6:33).