Prayer

The Mightiest Force in the World

Frank C. Laubach

• Publisher: Burtyrki Books
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781839742965
• Topic: Théologie et religion
• Subtopic: Religion

While handling the tough assignment among half a million hostile Moros, Laubach experienced a most extraordinary breakthrough of the sense of the Lord's presence as he prayed. Prayer was for him "the mightiest force in the world."

IV — PRAYER EXPERIMENTS

Spiritual Explorers

THE ELECTRICAL WIZARD Steinmetz said the greatest discoveries of the twentieth century would be in the realm of the spirit. He is right—and ONLY those who pray will make these discoveries. Heaven knows that we need these discoveries now, for we are in the midst of a war to control men’s minds. Some of us are tingling with the zest of adventure, for over every hill and around every corner new breathtaking surprises greet our eyes. Adventuring in prayer is exciting fun. God is THERE ahead of us when we walk out in His direction, and God loves surprises and endless variety.

In the Alchemy Stage

In the realm of the spirit it is not easy to determine what is truth and what is superstition, because spiritual facts are more difficult to count and hold steady than most physical phenomena. Much of our data concerning spiritual matters is in the same stage as chemistry and medicine were when they were still called “alchemy.” Three centuries ago the technique of checking and cross checking physical phenomena had not been developed, and so truth and error were intertangled. We are in that stage yet in many matters of religious experience. Our checking and rechecking of spiritual data is still crude. These data need tests all their own. You cannot put a pin through prayers nor hold them under a microscope, nor dissect them on an operating table. Each of us must go into the laboratory of his own soul, try most of his experiments alone, and exchange notes with other men who are trying similar experiments. Since there is but one witness to the inner experiment, it is liable to faulty observation, faulty memory and unconscious distortion. Words may not mean to the reader what they meant to the writer of the experience.

What Results Are Visible

Some results can be seen by all men. If prayers are miraculously answered, if divided wills become integrated, if bad men become saints, if the lame walk, or the blind see, we have external evidence which is plain to us all. We need to devise better tests to show what results come from praying for others at a distance. The evidence on this question is verifiable. All doubts will be ended not by argument but by experimentation under test conditions. The next few pages suggest some fresh ways of testing intercessory prayer.

More Trained Experimenters Needed

A large number of the men who have been trained in scientific method, and who are experimenting with intercessory prayer, must exchange their findings. Only so can we sift the true from the false, and at last describe the laws of prayer for others with greater accuracy. That this field is too sacred to be subjected to experimentation is untrue. The opposite is the truth. Is prayer as vital as the Bible and the church say it is? If so, then everybody needs to be made sure beyond the shadow of doubt. Prayer is too sacred NOT to be given to the entire human race.

New Names for New Facts

Like all discoverers of new things, we shall have to NAME what we discover. In one of the Camps Farthest Out we had great fun suggesting names for the golden bath of love and prayer which surrounded us all week. “You have been swishing prayers at one another and the world all day,” the leader said. “You know how it feels; now let us name it!” They made many suggestions like these:

“Flash prayers, scatter prayers; let prayers flow around people or through them; whisper prayers, throw a halo of prayer or a prayer cloak around people; envelop them in prayer, help Christ inside people, hold people and Christ together

Many people think Glenn Clark’s Broadcasting Prayer and Love is the truest description of the beautiful experience.

The Camp Broadcasts

Under the leadership of Glenn Clark a hundred or more people form circles, or horseshoes, or a V, like the outstretched arms of Christ, and hold hands while they “broadcast.” Dramatizing prayer in this fashion induces everybody to participate and stimulates imagination. They imagine their circle transferred to Washington, where it encircles the White House, with the President seated in the center. Then the leader says:

Lord, use this circle as a great funnel through which Thy love can flow to the President. Use us to make him hungry and thirsty for Thy guidance in the vast problems he confronts. Use us to help him hear Thee and do Thy will for the world. We lift him with our hands to Thee and leave him there in Thy presence.

The big circle is then taken in imagination across the Atlantic, to London, and thrown around the Prime Minister of England, where the same prayer is repeated; then to Moscow, and thrown around the Kremlin in Russia; then to China, to India, to Japan, to Germany, and so on to the men and the countries which seem most in need of God’s wisdom and help.{6}

Glenn Clark’s camps have seen miraculous happenings during and immediately following their prayer broadcasts, and have been convinced that mass broadcasting changes the very course of history.

Objects for Which to Pray

There are prayer priorities with which we must enlarge our prayers while we continue to pray for our friends, our relatives, and ourselves.

All the following people need to be flood-lighted with prayer: The President of the United States and Congress, especially the Senate; the Prime Minister and Parliament of England, Russia’s Premier and leaders, China’s leaders, delegates at every peace conference, Japanese, Germans, church members and the clergy of Christians and Jews, the missionaries, motion-picture leaders, radio broadcasters, all kinds of slaves and oppressed, Negroes, Americans of Japanese ancestry. We must pray for illiterates, for all teachers, mothers and fathers, for understanding between capital and labor, for human brotherhood, for cooperatives, for the enlargement of people’s minds to world vision, for business ethics and for a Christian economic system, for returned soldiers, for children and youth, for wholesome literature, for victims of liquor, drugs and vices of all kinds; for educators and better education. We must pray for hatred to vanish and love to rule the world; we must pray for more prayer, for it is the world’s mightiest healing force. Doubtless, this long list omits some of your own prayer priorities. Each of us must pray about the themes which he considers most vital, for prayer is valueless unless heart and faith are in it.

Pray with pencil and paper at hand. When God sends a thought, write it down and keep it visible until it can be carried into action. Pray for individuals by name. Vital prayers always suggest things to be done. Indeed, prayer and action must be mates, or both are weak. The mightiest men and women on earth are strong in prayer and strong in deeds. These are the only unbeatable combination.

Glenn Clark, in his I Will Lift Up Mine Eyes, tells us how to write out thoughtfully our deepest soul’s desires and offer them up to God, and make them a burnt offering in a fireplace. Many who do this say it is uncanny how exactly and completely God answers those prayers. This technique has no magic influence with God, but it does aid our own thinking to be more definite and careful. Many of us are not sure what we think until we have written it down. Most people do not think complete thoughts, but have their heads full of splinters and slivers of thought—broken like a shattered pane of glass. Their prayers, like their thoughts, are usually in splinters. Writing out our thoughts forces us to make them more complete. This does not mean they should be complicated. The clearest thoughts are often written so tersely they snap like a whip. Many perfect prayers can be flashed in ten seconds.

Flash Prayers

To join in the “Praying Ten Million” one need not leave home nor neglect his business. Everybody in every ordinary day has hundreds of chinks of idle wasted time which may be filled with flash prayers ten seconds or a minute long. Here are illustrations of such moments:

Upon awakening in the morning.

In the bath.

Dressing.

Walking down stairs.

Asking the blessing at table.

Leaving the house.

Riding or walking to work.

Entering the elevator.

Between interviews.

Preparing for lunch.

And a hundred more chinks all day long

until crawling into bed and

Falling asleep....

Traveling People as Experimenters

The thousands of people in the United States who travel for religious or charitable purposes, those who sell goods wholesale and retail, insurance men, government officials, soldiers, could make an immense contribution to human progress if they prayed for the strangers around them. Fanner Bees in the trains!

It is especially exciting for two persons traveling together, as nuns do, to experiment and share their results.

Experiments in Trains and Restaurants

Some of us who travel much have hundreds of days when we can sit behind people in street cars, trains, stations, restaurants, concerts or lectures, and pray at the backs of their heads with our eyes open to see how many of them show signs of being aware.

Some time ago, I was looking at a man sitting by an open window half a block away. I shot a rapid fire of prayer at him, saying three or four times a second: “Jesus, friend,—Jesus is coming to you.” In thirty seconds that man put his head in his hands and bent down over his desk, as though in prayer. Flashing hard and straight prayers in a street car while repeating “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus” usually makes some of the people near you act as though they had been spoken to. If they do not respond the first time, you can return again and again, until they show signs of being “tuned in.” ...