A week or so ago, I started a new thread here to discuss prayer, how it is effective and how we could help Japan through it. It was moved to the Prayers and Healing pages (which I'd already posted on).
Now that thread has started to become a discussion about prayer, rather than purely a place to post our prayers for Japan, so I thought I'd try again back here....
I am about to go away for a week, so can't write much. But here is a link to just one example (of tens of thousands), where understanding, scientific prayer has made a difference:
[url]Fire on the mountain[/url]
[COLOR="Teal"]...While all these spiritual ideas calmed me, I still didn’t feel I’d seen the face of God in that fire yet. I began to wonder, if God was not in the wind or fire, but in the still small voice, what was that voice saying to me? These words from the textbook of Christian Science, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, immediately came to mind, “There is no power apart from God. Omnipotence has all power and to acknowledge any other power is to dishonor God.” For me, that was the face of God. I knew in that moment that no matter what else happened or what the results of the fire were, I would not dishonor God by acknowledging another power.
Within hours, what became known as the “Willie Fire” was the top priority among fires in the United States. Throughout that night and for the next several days my conviction of God’s power and presence held. Several days later, when we were allowed to check on our property, we saw an amazing sight. Everything on the west side of the highway was completely destroyed (no homes were on this side, only trees and vegetation). Everything on the east side, where our cabin was located, along with 70 other threatened properties, remained green and untouched.
I will try to add while I'm away, but meanwhile over to you all...
Love and peace,
Judy
Hello Judy,
I definitely agree that prayer can make a difference! 🙂
A couple of months ago, in Australia (where I live), we were experiencing catastrophic weather in several parts of the country, culminating in a massive tropical cyclone heading straight for northern Queensland. Predictions in the news were getting more and more dire - it was rated as a category 5 storm, the most destructive, and some suggested it would be the worst on record.
While I'm situated a long way from that part of the country, I knuckled down that night in prayer, and I know many, many others - of all faiths, within Australia and around the world - did too. I remember praying with many different ideas from the Bible, looking into the accounts of Christ Jesus especially to try to learn a bit more of what he must have understood about God.
There's the well-known story of Jesus calming the storm, for instance (see Mark 4:36-41). We're told he was sleeping peacefully in the back of the boat, right in the midst of this raging tempest, all the while his disciples were panicking and fearing for their lives! He was just completely unafraid and untouched by any of it. Then, when the disciples woke him up in desperation... well, as I've heard it described once or twice, instead of joining them in their fear, Jesus invited them into his peace - the consciousness of God's all-power and goodness (or, as he put it, the kingdom of heaven) that he already had within him. And with a few simple words of rebuke, the storm was gone, and that Christly calm was everywhere. That really made an impression on me, and I opened my own thought to knowing that all the people in north Queensland were safe, too, in this "secret place of the most High" (see Psalm 91).
There were plenty of other ideas I prayed with that night, and I participated in another online forum in which many wonderful thoughts and prayers were being shared. At first, the next morning, it was tempting to think none of this had worked; the storm still hit Queensland, and hard. But then the remarkable good news started to filter through. The storm had made landfall almost exactly in between the two largest cities in the area - Townsville and Cairns - so the major population centres were spared the worst of it. By the time it made its way inland, it was weakening rapidly and was quickly downgraded in severity. Although there was much damage to property and the rainforests, people quickly pulled together to help each other - and even to look after the rainforest wildlife, which I thought was a lovely touch. Most remarkable of all, there were no deaths or even serious injuries caused by the cyclone (one reported death, but not as a direct result of the storm), and several people who'd been missing were found alive afterwards!
I would say humankind in general is only just beginning to understand what prayer can do, when it's based on a conviction of God's - divine Love's - all-power that overrides all fears and threats of danger and destruction, as it did for Christ Jesus. We've clearly got more to learn and to demonstrate. But there's so much evidence that prayer DOES work - and the more it's put into practice, the more our world will see tangible, indisputable, healing results.
All love, Charis
Prayer is an act as substantial, or even more so actually, than physical action IMHO. In this short post I'll just mention that I have found it hard explaining to children when their nightly prayers actually showed no effect. Of course, I know they had some kind of effect, but not the solution prayed for.
Sometimes I guess, prayer, and by that I really mean any practise such as mantras too, "don't work" unless there are enough people doing them, with enough Light being released. Otherwise we'd have a problem-free world. So we all need to get better at it?
V