Does Prayer Influence External Events?

Since I was a kid, I’ve been praying to Infinite Intelligence/God for blessings because I believed prayer has power over external events. However, my recent contemplation on prayer made me wonder whether prayer influences external events. I started thinking that prayer might be purely psychological as I realized that the main effects of prayer are mental.

Prayer eliminates mental disorders, such as intense anxiety and severe depression, because it makes us believe that God is taking care of everything.

However, I’m not sure if prayer affects external events. People pray for peace, but war prevails. People pray for a safe journey but still die in accidents. Some students pray to God to help them pass their exams, but they fail terribly, and terrorism continues although millions pray to God to end it. For this reason, it’s hard for me to firmly claim that prayer affects external events.

Although I highly doubt if prayer affects external events, I still wonder why many ancient cultures prayed. 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 external events.

Did they witness prayer influence external events or did they just believe that their gods heard their prayers and could change external events in their favor?

It’s reasonable to believe that God can hear us and change external events because Infinite Intelligence is everywhere and has power over everything. Besides this, it’s 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.  Moreover, it’s hard to disprove that prayer cannot change external events because sometimes we experience coincidences after praying.

Therefore, although I doubt whether prayer affects external events, I still advise people to pray. Maybe Infinite Intelligence programmed us to pray because prayer makes circumstances work in our favor. Perhaps prayer attracts God’s power and gives us the ability to change external events.

Anyway, we’ll never really know how prayer works, but we must pray to be on the safe side. Maybe prayer can affect both our psychological health and external events when we pray sincerely, or in spirit.

What are your thoughts on prayer? Is it purely psychological? Does it influence external events? Feel free to air your ideas on prayer in the comment box below.

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