The Efficacy of Prayer

Does prayer really work?

I was reading an essay recently on the "efficacy of prayer" and it really brought some things to light that I had been struggling with myself. One of the things it talked about was empirical evidence. You might say, "well that’s great, but give me the context."

Here it is: I pray for our church to grow. One year later, the church has grown 20%. Was it my prayer that made this happen, that provided for the causality of this result or simply time and coincidence (a word I should write an entirely different post on)? How can I prove that it was, or even on the other hand, that it was not?

The author continues and mentions an experiment we might try: We could gather a group of 'prayer warriors' together and have them pray over every person in Hospital A and have no one pray over those in Hospital B. If we did this at several locations and tallied up healings, we could prove or disprove the efficacy or effectiveness of prayer.

This brings up several points:

First, it is impossible to stop people praying for whomever and whatever they want as it is a personal choice and most times done in solitude and silence.

Second, what sort of motives are displayed in such actions, as if we decide who deserves our prayers and who does not?

Thirdly, should we discover scientifically that prayer "worked," how dare we treat something as sacred and holy as communication with the Creator, who at this point would undoubtedly exist in our minds, as something or someone to be tested?

Where is the problem with all this?

The problem is that we treat prayer as a time to place requests. We ask for things because the Word says that if we ask we will receive, yet we forget that we are being allowed the privilege of communicating with the Creator.

The author writes that prayer is either one of two things: “Prayer is either a sheer illusion or a personal contact between embryonic, incomplete persons (ourselves) and the utterly complete person.

However, he also trudges on to provide for another great point. Assuming prayer was communication with God, “Can we believe that God ever really modifies his action in response to the suggestions of men?

It may seem this is the case in several Bible passages such as the requests of Moses and Abraham, but should we accept that this is possible, several church beliefs would therefore be held in question such as the idea of pre-destination or pre-determinism, omnipotence to an extent, and possibly even omniscience.

There are numerous things I left out that may be added later on, however, for the time being will remain veiled

So where does all this land us?

I have an answer but I would rather hear yours.