How To Increase Your Prayer Power
By Mary Saurer-Smith
Practice # 1. Acknowledge God as your Divine Source of formless Good.
This does not mean that God suddenly favors you and gives you special rewards because you show gratitude. It means that God is Divine Mind, the Source of your intelligence, and that the substance at the center of Divine Mind gives it consciousness and creative power. Your mind is an energy field and the formless substance of Divine Intelligence provides you with the awesome ability to think, to compare, and to consciously create images and ideas that support your desires whether for yourself or others. The potential for manifestation of the good that you desire is your formless good. Divine Intelligence empowers you to be both a witness and a participant in your own life story and your journey of life; a co-creator with God.
Practice # 2. Acknowledge the constant Presence and Availability of God (that you cannot be separated from God).
Because the perpetual flowing of the Holy Spirit into your consciousness is your direct link to the Being and Consciousness of the Source, it also empowers you to communicate directly with God. Your concept of God does not matter, only your acceptance that the Holy Spirit is in you. You can withdraw your conscious attention from God or give your conscious attention to God, but you will never find that God withdraws Divine substance from you. You commune with God by the simple act of giving your attention to inspirational thoughts of God and doing the activity of consciously focusing your thoughts on the reality of God—whatever that means to you. This activity temporarily alters the vibration of your conscious aspect of mind, and you find your awareness drifting upward to produce an altered state of consciousness in you.
Practice # 3. “Seek first the Kingdom of God”.
Do this by closing the door of your mind to all outer sensations and distractions, so that you can be intimately alone with God, your confidante and counselor.
In order to let the inner peace fill your entire consciousness, and before you begin to speak your prayer, you would seek first to experience the nurturing quality and beauty of the Divine Presence. This is not done simply by decision, but by conscious receptivity to the reality of God. When you have a need to “talk” to God, your experience of receptivity might be delayed until you “get it off your chest”.
We go to God in prayer about many things, and sometimes just to experience a prayer consciousness for starting our day. But very often we go to God when we are in grief and feeling a sense of loss or confusion, or a need of some kind. And just as it is with an effective grief counselor or empathetic friend, we find we can objectify the burden by describing how we feel and talking about what has stimulated this disturbance in our minds. In the telling, a sense of intimacy with your listener is established. Your sense of intimacy with God IS a prayer consciousness. Telling about your situation changes it from the feeling stage, into words that identify it more realistically. God is a good listener and even an active listener if you’re paying attention to the Divine responses. There is nothing you are forbidden to say to God, and your sense of guilt or fear will never interfere with the results of your prayer unless you keep holding onto them after you have told them to God. Even if you take them back after prayer, it is important to have given them to God at some point during the prayer. Sometimes a confession or the telling of the story is needed to settle the subconscious down in order for the vibrations of your consciousness to move into a stage of peaceful receptivity. This is a personal and private issue between the praying individual and God.
The longer you stay focused on just staying in the inner peace at or near the crown of your head, the more you will lose consciousness of the outer. With continuation you will lose consciousness temporarily of your concerns and human situations, and in that moment you will know that God is always available to help you; to commune with you, to nurture and console you, to strengthen and advise you.
Practice # 4: State your Prayer or Desire in any way that you choose, believing that your thoughts, feelings and desires are being known to God as you think them.
There is a difference between the “telling” of your situation, and the prayer itself. The actual prayer is the end result that you desire for yourself or for the subject of your prayer. The Holy Spirit is your energy link to the Source of your being; so once you have finished your preliminary communication of the current situation to God, you are free to state the outcome that you desire. You don’t have to accept or understand this in order to pray. Just trust in the power of prayer and talk to God with an attitude of trusting that you are heard.
Practice # 5: Ask for guidance to know what to do in order to contribute to your desired outcome.
This is the receptive/listening stage of your prayer. It means that after your statements and desires are offered, acknowledge in thought or word that you are now receptive to God’s guidance in the matter. Then wait in the silence for a moment (as if listening for a response). Ideas, visions, impressions, or urges might come. If they are from Spirit they will be harmless to all concerned. Be receptive to these ideas from the Holy Spirit with an unspoken commitment to follow through with any constructive ideas that you might receive in regard to your prayer.
Practice # 6: Offer gratitude for the awesome privilege of communicating directly with God. This is to give thanks for the ongoing opportunity to pray.
You can liken this final step to the way that you would say thank you to a counselor who had given you time, a listening ear, nurturing support, and a few options or ideas to consider. You wouldn’t think of leaving the counselor’s presence without an expression of gratitude. It is not required by the counselor, but it is an emotional closure for you; a bonding experience for the two of you and an acknowledgment of the help you received. This step makes you feel closer to God even when the prayer is over. It increases your awareness that you are not alone.
Practice # 7: Follow Through with action.
Do your part to contribute to a desirable outcome by the application of ideas that come to you while in prayer or soon after. A necessary condition of mind for the most effective prayer and prayer consciousness is to trust that you have received the right outcome. This includes not only the communication part of your prayer, but your follow-through as well. A counselor would call it an “assignment”; your part to do.
After the prayer, be sure to follow through with any insights or ideas that come to you as action ideas. The first step produced by prayer is the “feedback” you received from God. If no ideas came, there is nothing you are to do about it at this time. But if ideas did come, acting on them is a creative action that contributes to a desirable outcome. Your response to the ideas you receive in prayer has power to alter the course of Divine Order for you. In other words, your own involvement or lack of it might circumvent or produce certain “lessons” that relate to your prayer. After following through, release your concerns about it. Trust in the outcome, knowing that the actual result is Divine Order for that situation. A point of Divine Order is not a restraint. It is a stepping stone in the right direction that presents you with new choices, opportunities and options that you might not have encountered without prayer.
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