Prayer Really Works

Let’s learn how you can tap into your very own reservoir of GodJuice and get it working for you and pray for your mental and physical health in a way that’s scientifically proven to work. 

Over the decades, a number of scientific experiments have been carried out by medical researchers to test the therapeutic effects of prayer. (The following quotations are from ‘Healing Words’ by Larry Dossey, MD, which cites a number of these experiments.)

In the first experiment, researchers at the Spindrift research lab in Oregon used an alcohol rinse to half-kill a mold culture they were growing. Then, they put a string down the middle of the culture dish, and asked half their volunteers to pray in a ‘directed’ way for side A of the mold, (i.e., requesting a specific outcome) and the other volunteers were asked to pray in a ‘non-directed’ way for side B, (i.e., simply requesting whatever outcome would be best, without specifying it.) 

Nothing much happened on side A, but the mold on side B started multiplying very fast, and quickly sprang back to life. 

In repeated experiments, the Spindrift researchers found that: “prayer works, and that both methods are effective. But…the non-directed technique appeared quantitatively more effective, frequently yielding results that were twice as great, or more, when compared to the directed approach” (emphasis mine). 

Hold on to that piece of information; I’ll explain its relevance to your life and your issues in a minute. But before I do, let me tell you about a second experiment, this time conducted at the University of Redlands in 1951. 

A group of 45 volunteers with a range of physical and mental issues were divided into three groups, of 15 people each. The first was called: ‘Just-Plain-Psychology,’ the second: ‘Just-Plain-Prayer’ and the last group was called: ‘Prayer Therapy Group’. 

In the first group, no one mentioned religion or prayer, it was just straight-up psychotherapy, as the patients in this group had indicated they wanted. 

In the second group, no one mentioned therapy. It consisted of a bunch of practicing ‘true believers,’ who already thought they knew how to pray, and that prayer was all they needed to get well. This group spent every night for nine months praying that God would cure them of their specific illness or emotional problem (emphasis mine). 

These results puzzled and even disturbed many ‘religious’ people at the time – but by the time you are finished reading this book, they’ll make perfect sense. 

The first thing to remember is that you can’t force God to give you exactly what you want. That’s why non-directed prayer – where you pray for your general good, as opposed to a specific outcome – is far more effective than asking for something concrete. 

The second thing to remember is that God only sends you your illnesses as a wake-up call, to get you to change or fix something in yourself, life, relationships or beliefs. 

Groups I and III were actively working on themselves, albeit in different ways, and were making changes in response to their illness or issue. To put it another way, a large majority of them successfully got the message that God was sending them via their illness, so the illness itself was no longer required.