Prayer

A woman who did not believe in God went into labour. A couple of hours later she was oblivious to everything in the delivery room, unaware of how many people were there or what was going on. She was in another very deep space, and started repeating the words, 'Oh God, Oh Jesus'. She prayed for help when it was most needed. Many people turn to prayer in times of great need, almost unwittingly.

Other people have faith every day - they consciously believe in something or some One; and when they pray they have a direction in which to focus their thoughts. Faith is like love - it's either in you or not, to a varying degree, and some-times it is hidden deep within.

Someone might ask, 'How can you believe in God  - and who has ever seen Him?' Yet this same person might believe there are 'wormholes' in space, because scientists have calculated so - although nobody has ever seen one. Some people acquired faith in childhood, because it was all around them and they felt it too. Other people find faith suddenly, it hits them like a thunderbolt; while others feel a shimmer of faith within them and seek to expand the light.

Prayer is a way of contacting and tapping into higher spiritual knowledge, a connection to higher realms, the means by which we connect to the heavens and God. It's an interface between us and the universe, a way in which the small voice may be heard. We give thanks, or ask for miracles. People reach for the intergalactic telephone every time grace is said at dinner, either alone on the private line or with the family making a conference call. Jesus said we should ask for our daily bread, ask for forgiveness for our trespasses, and that we be delivered from evil. This many people still do: asking for a rise at work, forgiveness for doing what is known to be wrong, and protection from the hard world outside.

Throughout the millennia, all over the world, people have sought help, and some have had their prayers answered. In 1997, the American magazine Newsweek published the results of their prayer survey: 87 per cent said God answered their prayers.

In scientific experiments involving humans, sceptics can always say that psychosomatic influences are involved; The human mind imagines things. This can't be said with plants. It is, then, interesting to know that when plants are prayed for - to grow healthy and lush - they respond positively.

Author of the book The Power Of Prayer on Plants, Revd Loehr, carried out 100,000 measurements on 27,000 seedlings, resulting from 700 experiments involving 150 praying people. He concluded that plants that had been prayed for, in relation to the control groups, germinated earlier, grew faster and with more vigor, had a better chance of survival, and had more resistance to insects.

Since the 1960's there have been around 3000 scientific trials exploring the possibility that the human mind can affect living matter at a distance. In 1990 Daniel Benor reviewed 131 trial reports in a paper entitled Survey of Spiritual Healing Research. The subjects influenced during the trials included humans, mice, plants, red blood cells, fungi/yeast enzymes and bacteria.

The positive results of the trials were found in fifty-six cases to have less than one chance in a hundred of being due to chance, and in additional twenty-one studies the chance was between two and five chances in a hundred. In scientific terms these are significant results, and show that the mind can influence living matter.

Reference: The Fragrant Heavens / Valerie Ann Worwood…...Read More....Prayer - 2