Affirmative Prayer: The Great Experiment

When I was young, I often sought spiritual help from a state of desperation, praying a prayer of supplication, begging and beseeching a God-power that I thought was outside of me. I used prayer as an opportunity to bring my wants, desires, and needs to God in the form of a sad laundry list of complaints, mostly regarding my sickness, loneliness, or lack. I prayed like that for a long time, until it started to not make sense anymore.

I eventually learned that praying from a place of want, a sense of need, or a feeling of lack, doesn’t get good results. I came to understand that the reason it doesn’t work is because God does not know what any of those things are. How could God understand want, need, or lack, when God is unlimited abundance and infinite Good? How can we expect God to answer our prayers when we aren’t even speaking the same language?

Praying from a place of need (whether it be for money, material things, healing, love, opportunity, etc.) doesn’t work because — just maybe — we don’t actually have needs. I am aware how cuckoo this sounds. Like you, I don’t have to go further than my own community to see humans in need. But if our faith is strong, we know it is our Father’s good pleasure to give us the kingdom (Luke 12:32). God is not aware of any need; our needs are always met IF...we choose to believe that. Our belief is always the key!

When we have a desire, whatever the desire may be, the thing we desire exists already — somewhere, somehow, in some form — otherwise how could we even desire it? Invisible desires exist, even if only in imagination. Whether it be a material thing, wealth, health, joy, etc. that we desire, it is not truly absent from us if we believe that God is never absent from us. How could God be absent if we believe God is All? Whatever and whoever exists, exists in and as God. There can be no separateness. This is what Jesus spoke of when he affirmed: “I and the Father are One” ( John 10:30). Jesus was not the great exception; he was our great example—the master teacher who understood his unity with the Infinite Intelligence of God and demonstrated our true human potential.

The Power of God’s Spirit is everywhere, like an infinite field of energy, and we are in the Presence of this God-Power all the time. We are one with it. Recognizing this Presence is the key to our prayers being as powerful and effective as possible. Focusing our attention on this truth is what grants us access to the Power. This is why the Bible tells us, “Seek the kingdom of God, and all these things shall be added to you” (Luke 12:31).

If we believe that God is our Good, ever present in all forms, visible and invisible, then of what could we ever really want or need? To pray from a place of need is to misunderstand God and God’s spiritual law. Our Good (which is synonymous with God) is all around us, waiting for it to be realized. True prayer is declaring and realizing the truth that everything in our being is God. Our focus must be on God, first, the Source of All, and our oneness with It. We must speak in the language of God’s Truth, from the place of our indwelling Divinity, so there is no confusion. No matter what the world of appearances might look like, no matter what the condition is that sparks and motivates us to pray, we must not be disturbed by it. It is our job to be firmly rooted in our unity with Spirit and affirm our Godly truth—our peace, love, joy, abundance, health, and well-being.

This is why affirmative prayer (also known as spiritual mind treatment) is so powerful. It uses this creative process as a spiritual tool to navigate life. It involves thinking and believing things already are as you would prefer them to be, until whatever perfect God quality you have pictured in your mind has manifested into existence and into your experience. While the methods of affirmative prayer can vary slightly in different churches, the idea is the same, following these main steps:

• Recognizing the omnipresent Spirit of God

• Acknowledging unity with the Presence of God

• Declaring the Divine Truth of the experience (regardless of whether it is visible or not)

• Giving thanks for it all

• Releasing the prayer

This type of prayer is methodical and precise. It is testable. Everyone can analyze through their own consciousness whether they are achieving the outcomes they wish to see. Students of New Thought recognize that prayer is the habit and art of right thinking, of becoming so conscious of the Presence of God within us that we naturally draw to us all the things that are fundamental for a good, abundant life. It is from this place of knowing that we use affirmative prayer as a declaration of truth. Affirmative prayer does not have to be flowery or overly complicated. For instance, my go-to affirmative prayer for health and well-being goes like this:

• I recognize that God is all there is, and God is only Good.
• I understand that I am one with God. My ever-present Good surrounds me.
• Whatever the outcome and truth I wish to experience, I claim it as my good right here and now. I am healthy and happy! All is well.
• I am grateful for all the ways God’s truth unfolds in my experience.
• Releasing this prayer, I let it go, trusting and expecting its fulfillment. And So It Is.

I believe the objective of affirmative prayer is to be so focused on the Presence of God, so unified with Spirit and therefore aligned with our truth, that we cannot help but manifest our highest good and best life experience. It will naturally unfold and be revealed, with no effort on our part because that's the way spiritual Law works. As Jesus taught, it is the Father (the Power) within that does the work.

Our experience is the outcome of our inner vision, what we believe and affirm. Test affirmative prayer for yourself and see!