Does Prayer Influence External Events?

Last Updated on February 23, 2024 by The Unbounded Thinker

N.B – (I wrote this article on feb 2019: thus, my current idea about prayer might be different. But proceed to read because it is a powerful perspective on prayer you must know).

Since I was a kid, I’ve been praying to Infinite Intelligence/God for blessings because I believed prayer can change things. However, recently, I started thinking that prayer might be purely psychological as I realized that the main effects of prayer are mental. In other words, I became sceptical about the impact of prayer on external events.

People pray for peace, but war prevails. People pray for the sick, but unfortunately, some of them die. Some students pray to God to help them pass their exams, but they fail terribly, and terrorism continues although millions of people pray to God to end it. As such, I struggle to confidently assert that prayer directly influences things outside of ourselves.

While I may harbor skepticism regarding the influence of prayer on external events, I’m always interested in ancient prayers. I’ve studied the religious practices of several ancient cultures and realized that most of them were prayerful. The Akamba, Greeks, Arabs, Egyptians, and many other cultures prayed to God to bring rain, kill their enemies, and protect them. I wonder why ancient cultures firmly relied on prayer to change things.

Did they witness prayer influence external events or did they just believe that their gods heard their prayers?

It’s reasonable to believe that God can hear us and change external events because God is everywhere and has power over everything, and it is difficult to disprove the power of prayer over external events because our understanding of the relationship between Infinite Intelligence/God and the physical world is limited.  

Therefore, although I have reservations about the impact of prayer on external events or things outside of ourselves, I still advise people to pray. Maybe Infinite Intelligence programmed us to pray because prayer attracts favourable circumstances or it attracts spiritual power that enables us to change things.

Anyway, we’ll never really know how prayer works, but we must pray to be on the safe side. Maybe prayer can change things when we pray without ceasing.

Experience is the best teacher. Commit yourself to a life of prayer and make your own conclusions regarding the impact of prayer on external events. This is the best way to know if prayer changes things outside of ourselves. Something tells me that your prayers might change things if you do so. Maybe, like other things, prayer works if you dont give up.

I wish you all the best on your journey of discovering the power of prayer.

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