PRAYER WORKS

In Philippians 4:6-7 (NIV), Paul instructs the Christians in Philippi: “Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”

In other words, Paul says that we should trade our anxiety for peace by means of prayer. This could either mean that prayer calms us down (prayer as placebo) or it could mean that prayer causes God to change troubling situations (prayer as power).

While prayer is certainly calming, if that is all that prayer offers us, then what advantage does it have over the myriad other ways we can calm ourselves? If prayer is interchangeable with deep breathing, stretching, exercise, marijuana, alcohol, and taking a break, then why would Christians be commanded to prioritize prayer over whatever calming habits they prefer?

And if prayer doesn’t work, then perhaps reducing our anxiety is a bad outcome. Maybe it is productive to be anxious in threatening situations! The only way that Paul’s command makes sense is if he believes that prayer changes things. Which naturally causes us to ask: is Paul right? Does prayer work in any meaningful way?

Academics have constructed double-blind studies to investigate the effectiveness of prayer, but with mixed results. Some studies report positive outcomes for prayer, some report null results, and some actually report negative outcomes.

Why such widely varying results? Because prayer studies are ridiculously difficult to construct, as highlighted in a 2006 article from the now-defunct humor website Scrappleface:

A team of scientists today ended a 10-year study on the socalled “power of prayer” by concluding that God cannot be manipulated by humans, not even by scientists with a $2.4 million research grant. The scientists also noted that their work was “sabotaged by religious zealots” secretly praying for study subjects who were supposed to receive no prayer.[1]

In other words, there are too many uncontrolled variables when studying prayer, and the most devastating is that it is impossible to know that those in the control group are actually receiving no prayer. If someone has a genuine need in their life and one of their friends or family members is a praying person, then the research subject is almost certainly receiving prayer independently of the study.

If the Bible is to be believed, then even one person praying with faith is a huge confounder. Prayer isn’t like tug of war where having twenty people pray for you is better than having two people pray for you. Just one person’s prayers can bring about a miracle. It reminds me of the story of Elijah as recounted in James 5:17-18 (NIV):

“Elijah was a human being, even as we are. He prayed earnestly that it would not rain, and it did not rain on the land for three and a half years. Again he prayed, and the heavens gave rain, and the earth produced its crops.” How many farmers were praying for rain while Elijah’s prayers kept the land in drought? More than one, that’s for sure. And yet the Lord granted Elijah’s request and denied the others. Why? Because unlike in the doubleblind prayer studies, quantity of prayer is far less significant than quality of prayer.

When it comes to prayer, God decides. In a sense, He is The Independent Variable. What if, as the humor article suggests, God simply chooses not to be our lab rat? God is not a mechanism like gravity. He is a Person. And He seems disinclined to overwhelm humanity with His inescapable reality. As Pascal observes in the Pensées, “There is enough light for those who desire only to see, and enough darkness for those of a contrary disposition.”[2] In other words, because God desires faith and not slavish obedience, He does not make His presence so undeniable that Richard Dawkins has no choice but to bend the knee. Perhaps we should not be surprised that it is difficult to quantify the effects of prayer to such a God. Double-blinding may work with humans, but God is well known for knowing things — even secret things. One might say it is one of His specialties.

Instead of double-blind studies, we must turn to testimony.

Academic studies that examine answered prayer are very different from academic studies that seek to control prayer. Perhaps my favorite is: “Study of the Therapeutic Effects of Proximal Intercessory Prayer (STEPP) on Auditory and Visual Impairments in Rural Mozambique,” a study in which some researchers actually whipped out audiometers and visual charts on people with sensory impairment who were in line to receive healing at a ministry event, and then measured them again immediately afterwards.[3] In the researchers’ words, “… improvements were statistically significant across the tested populations. Generally, the greater the hearing or vision impairment prePIP [proximal intercessory prayer, that is, the laying on of hands and praying in faith], the greater the post-PIP improvement.” Prayer certainly worked for those villagers. Another academic, Craig Keener, has documented similar stories in his massive multivolume work, Miracles: The Credibility of the New Testament Accounts. [4] It’s full of credible, well-documented stories of answered prayer from every corner of the world.

This should not be surprising because it is the testimony of believers throughout the ages. Ask your friends: almost all Christians can tell you about a time that God answered prayer.

And this should not be surprising because Jesus taught His disciples to “always pray and not give up,” and even said that prayer can move mountains.[5]

So yes, prayer works. Prayer may sometimes calm us, and that is to be treasured when it comes. But prayer is not merely or primarily psychological. Prayer enlists the unlimited power of the infinite God to our cause.

Sometimes, of course, He rejects our requests. That is not a limitation of prayer but a fundamental feature of it. As C. S. Lewis argues in “Work and Prayer” from God In The Dock, “When [prayer] ‘works’ at all it works unlimited by space and time. That is why God has retained a discretionary power of granting or refusing it; except on that condition prayer would destroy us.”[6]

Not only does prayer work, but without God being able and willing to refuse it, prayer would work too well! If God always answered every prayer instantly and fully the world would be in a state of absolute chaos as children prayed for the ability to fly, teenagers prayed for their crushes to love them, everyone prayed for more promotions than organizations have the ability to supply, and the families of the elderly kept praying for them to pull through the latest medical crisis so that they wound up living to be hundreds or thousands of years old. As Garth Brooks once sang:

“Sometimes I thank God

For unanswered prayers

Remember when you’re talkin’

To the man upstairs

That just because he doesn't answer doesn't mean he don't care

’Cause some of God’s greatest gifts

Are unanswered prayers.”[7]

And so prayer works but not always. And when God does not answer our prayers, we can be confident that it is because He has a better plan than the one we are proposing. And so we can have peace — either God will change the circumstance or the circumstance is serving some purpose currently beyond our ken that will make sense in eternity.

And so to return to the beginning, we would do well to heed the words of the apostle: “Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”[8] ❖

[1] Ott, Scott. “Prayer Study: Humans Fail to Manipulate God.” ScrappleFace, 31 Mar 2006, web.

[2] Pascal, Blaise. Pascal’s Pensées. Trans. T. S. Eliot. New York, NY: E.P. Dutton, 1958, f. 149.

[3] Brown, C. G., Mory, S. C., Williams, R., & McClymond, M. J. “Study of the therapeutic effects of proximal intercessory prayer (STEPP) on auditory and visual impairments in rural Mozambique.” Southern Medical Journal, vol. 103, no. 9, 2010, pp. 864–869. https:// doi.org/10.1097/SMJ.0b013e3181e73fea

[4] Keener, Craig S. Miracles: The Credibility of the New Testament Accounts. Ada, MI: Baker Academic, 2011.

[5] Luke 18:1; Matthew 21:21-22.

[6] Lewis, Clive Staples. “Work and Prayer.” In God in the Dock. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1970.

[7] Brooks, Garth. “Unanswered Prayers.” No Fences. Capitol Nashville, 1990.

[8] Philippians 4:6-7, NIV.

Glen Davis has served as the advisor to Chi Alpha Christian Fellowship at Stanford University since 2002. He has a wife and two children, he loves anime and fantasy novels, and he is ordained with the Assemblies of God. He maintains a blog at theglendavis.com.