The Prayer That Gets Results

Ernest Holmes

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The Prayer That Gets Results by Ernest Holmes

Throughout the ages people have prayed, and you and I know that no sincere
prayer was ever uttered without helping the one who gave it. We know that
faith has done more than any other one thing to keep hope alive. We know that
always in times of stress people have turned to God. But we really want to
know something beyond this. We want to discover the secret of prayer as an
effective force which actually can accomplish definite results.

You and I are not too concerned about the particular method anyone uses,
because we know that all the different pathways of faith lead to one conclusion.
And so we respect and have the deepest admiration for every man's religion.
But, being curious and wanting to know a little more of the why and the
wherefore, we cannot help being interested in trying to find out just what
happens when someone actually does pray effectively. We want to know more
about the prayer that gets results.

Recently I read an article in a popular magazine, written by a minister, who

said that when he was a boy his mother was very ill and in a hospital. She had
tubercular kidneys and the doctor who attended her told his father that there
was nothing further that could be done through medical science.

Now this man was a very simple but a very sincere person, with a deep
spiritual conviction. He went to the bedside of his wife and knelt down and
prayed. He sort of argued with God and in his prayer he told God that he and
his wife were eternally united, that the children needed her and he needed her
and that he didn't believe the time had come for her to leave this world. It was
a simple prayer, uttered by a simple mind, and yet, as a result of this prayer
the miracle of life took place, the woman was actually healed. She was restored
to her family and lived to rear them.

It wasn't until years later that the mother told her son of this most remarkable
prayer. She said that when her husband was praying she felt a new surge of
life sweeping through her, as though she were receiving an electric shock.
Something seemed to stir in her physical being as well as in her mind and
when her husband rose from praying he said to her, calmly but sincerely, that
he knew his prayer was answered, he knew that she would be restored to
perfect health. And she was.

We can pass this incident off as one where God interfered on behalf of a certain
man and performed a miracle for him. And we would be right enough in
believing this because of the result---the woman actually was healed. But we
shouldn't pass the matter off as loosely as this; it is a too superficial analysis.
Neither should we think of it merely as one of those rare instances where a
Divine Power and Intelligence responded to this man in a way that it would not
respond to someone else. In other words, while in his prayer the man, in a

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sense, argued with God, we can hardly believe that the Divine Intelligence is
moved to act because of human arguments.

There is more to it than this. For no matter what method this man used, he
was not arguing with God; he was really arguing with himself, and in that
moment, through his argument, his own mind rose to a place of complete
acceptance. It transcended the condition that confronted him. It rose above all
human limitations and accepted the simple fact that the God he believed in
would answer his prayer and restore the woman whom he loved to perfect
health.

We cannot believe that all the laws of nature, whether we think of them as
mental, physical or spiritual, instantly changed to comply with this man's
request. But we can believe something even more important, that in some way,
during the prayer this man uttered, a deep conviction came to him, a complete
faith and confidence that his wife would be restored to normal health.

And when we compare this man's prayer and its answer to the teaching of
Jesus, we find that this man was complying with a condition Jesus laid down as
necessary to effective prayer, to the prayer that gets results, when he told his
followers that when they prayed they should believe that they had already
received an answer to their prayer.

Apparently Jesus laid no restriction or limitation on faith other than this, that
our prayers should be so formed that they comply with the nature of God. In
other words, this man was not praying that he could influence people or cause
them to do what he wanted them to do, for this would interfere with other
people's rights. He wasn't praying that he should become a powerful figure
among men. Rather, he got down to a deep fundamental cause underlying
everything -- God is life, and he was praying for more life; God is love, and he
was praying for a deeper love; God is peace, and he was more completely
entering into that peace. He wasn't praying that the whole nature and order of
the universe would change to suit his ego and give him such a dynamic
personality that it would paralyze everything it contacted. No, this man was a
humble, sincere, simple soul and he merely said: God, make perfect the life
that you have given me; restore my wife to health because I know everything
is possible to You.

When we analyze the prayers that have been answered we always discover
that they were answered in such degree as the one praying was praying aright,
and in such degree as his prayer caused his own mind to come to a complete
acceptance of a Power greater than he was, in the availability of a Law of Good
which is all-powerful, and in the immediate response of a Divine Presence to
his personal need.

Nothing can be more simple than this and so far nothing has ever proved more
effective.

Are your prayers and mine simple and direct?

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Are they deep with feeling, and, above everything else, in our prayers or our
affirmative meditations, do we reach a place where we completely abandon
ourselves to faith?

For this must be the secret.

You and I need never concern ourselves with any arguments or controversies
about whether or not we are right or wrong in our prayers. We do not have to
go into abstract discussions about the nature of God. This is all right for
philosophers and logicians, and I have no doubt that perfect logic and clear,
straight thinking would lead us to the same conclusions.

But, the Divine Intelligence is not moved by our intellectual attainments. The
Law of Good never asks us what is our background. Rather, it comes softly and
silently to the believing mind as though the great Giver of life were merely
waiting our acceptance; as though the Law of Good automatically moves in to
fulfill the secret desire of the sincere soul and the secret ambitions of the
simple heart. This is the starting point of effective prayer.

We are not laboring with a God who is unwilling or a Power that is reluctant,
and, in a certain sense, it seems to me we are not trying to convince anything
in the universe but ourselves. For certainly prayer is an act of the mind. It is a
movement of our own thinking or consciousness within ourselves.

And so it doesn't seem strange to say that there are certain techniques for
prayer. By a technique for prayer, is meant that there are certain ways or
methods for prayer that are more effective than others. For if what we really
convince is our own minds, then the tools we use are thoughts, whether we
choose to call them affirmations of the Divine Presence or denials of evil.

The technique for effective prayer is something that convinces the one who is
uttering the prayer. We could go into long arguments about this and project
extensive and perhaps profound theories about it, until we became lost in a
maze of words and philosophies and perhaps theologies, but we would only be
holding an intellectual argument with ourselves. The best way is to approach
the matter simply and directly, and see what we can do to convince our own
inner thoughts.

If we can arrive at the assurance that when our thought is changed, something
good will happen, we are on the right track we shall have the courage to go on.

If our prayers today do not reach a place of complete faith we can know this--
every right affirmation we have made, every meditation of our heart and mind
that tends to bring us to a more complete acceptance, is storing up within us a
growing sense of certainty that must and finally will overcome every
obstruction. For, you see, the obstructions are within us, they are not outside.
If they were outside we couldn't cope with them.

But since they are within and since they are things of thought, we can handle
them. Perhaps it would be well for us, then, to formulate a program which we
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know we can carry out and for us to take definite time each day to get away
from the pressure of the conditions around us and get quiet and become
peaceful, and in the solitude of our own thought quietly affirm the presence of
the good we desire.