Is the power of prayer effective?

Superstitious people believe that the power of prayer is in the most magical text. A set of words spoken at certain gestures, and even better - in combination with icons, talismans, and charms, can result in miraculous recovery, a happy outcome, or a way out of the difficult situation. Such people believe that this is a kind of spell, like Starik Hotabych's "trah-tibidah-tibidoh." Then it turns out that everyone can utter ritual words - a devout believer, doubting, even an atheist, and the result will be the same: will work.

However, most religions claim that ritual phrases uttered without a religious feeling remain empty words. Only the power of faith makes them effective. Prayer is only an oral expression of aspirations for God. Remember the episode from the Gospel, when a sick woman, seeing Jesus Christ surrounded by a crowd, thinks: "It is worth me to touch only the edge of His garments, how I will immediately be healed." So it happened, although she did not utter any magic formulas. The Lord said to her: "Your faith has saved you." Note: no prayer, no appendix to clothing (the Shroud, icons, bones in crayfish, not a pilgrimage to the Pochaev Lavra), but faith.

Why do we say "power of prayer"? In the mouth of a believer, it is a manifestation of the aspiration for God, the Appeal to Him. What help can you ask Him for in this world? On the recovery of the body? This problem should be addressed to doctors. About the happy outcome of the case? We ourselves can influence its result. The Heavenly Father does not affect what is happening in this world, the world of dead things. And this is shown many times in the New Testament: The Kingdom of God is not of this world. His kingdom is a spiritual world, where He works miracles.

Let's see when the power of prayer manifests itself in the Scriptures. Now Peter, seeing Jesus walking on the water, says: "Command me to come to You." The Lord says: "Go." Peter goes out of the boat and goes to Christ (his soul rushes to God) on the water (on the unsteady abyss of this world). But since a strong wind blows, waves rising (earthly passions), Peter got scared (succumbed to temptation), fell into the water and began to sink (he began to lose faith). Then he cried: "Lord, save me!".

And in this short exclamation the whole power of prayer was revealed. Christ came up, gave him his hand and said: "Why did you doubt, the faithless?". Thus, the Appeal to God is a request to strengthen our spirit, to free us from fear of the hardships and passions of this world, to strengthen our faith if it fades. But the religious appeal also reveals our desire to come to God, demonstrates our aspiration for Goodness and our aspiration to break out of the bondage of evil, to be cleansed of sins, sickness of the soul. We cry after the father of the demon possessed by the demon: "Lord! Help my unbelief "(Mar. 9: 23,24).

But for our words to be heard, we must try to live according to God's commandments, as it is written, "Draw near to Me, and I will approach you." The power of the prayer "Our Father" appears only in the mouth of someone who is really worthy to call God their Father in Heaven, who strictly follows the commandments given by Jesus Christ in the Sermon on the Mount. Therefore, in the early Christian tradition, ordinary believers could not utter the Lord's prayer, they gave it a special ritual to the one entering the "Servants of God."