Proof that Our Prayers Are Effective

Six sources of evidence that prove our prayers truly reach their intended destination and have a positive consequence.

Photo by Elisabeth Wales on Unsplash

Have you ever wondered if prayer actually helps in the way it’s intended? It’s a question many people ask. We pray that our mother overcomes her health crisis. We pray that our cousin has a smooth transition back home after death. We pray for a solution to our neighbor’s financial struggles. But how do we know if our prayers are heard or effective?

Said another way, do our prayers really go anywhere, reach their intended destination, or have any consequence? This article is about the evidence I’ve found that suggests that they do. In fact, the evidence suggests that prayers are like heat-seeking missiles that find their target and effectively accomplish what they’re intended to achieve.

Not surprisingly, the best evidence I’ve found that our prayers achieve their intended goals comes from my investigation of life after death. Here are six sources that offer compelling evidence that our prayers have an impact.

Number One: Mediumship

A great deal of persuasive evidence that prayers are effective can be found in readings with mediums. As an investigator, not only did I have hundreds of readings with mediums, I also witnessed hundreds of other people’s readings. Many of these took place during medium demonstrations where a medium gave random readings to audience members from a stage.

In both my private readings and the public readings I witnessed, a lot of people in spirit expressed gratitude for the prayers made on their behalf. Skeptics can attempt to dismiss these messages by saying, “Well, how hard is it for a medium to guess that their clients prayed for their loved ones in spirit?” True, it’s not hard; but mediums typically repeat the exact words that were used when these people prayed, me included. Spirits also frequently provide the location where the person said the prayer.

I witnessed one reading where a spirit thanked his wife for praying for his smooth transition soon after he died. The husband’s spirit said he was present when she prayed while looking at his photograph on her nightstand before going off to sleep.

My father once thanked me during a reading for praying at his gravesite. The medium conveyed the exact words of my prayer that day, “Thank you for showing me by example that a man can lead with his heart in his relationships.”

Number Two: Out-of-Body Experiences (OBEs)

I’ve had the privilege of interviewing both men and women who’ve had frequent out-of-body experiences. This is when a person’s consciousness leaves his body while still alive. In most cases, this occurs randomly at first. For some, it’s a one-time event. Still, a few people have learned to self-initiate leaving their body, so they are able to induce the experience by following a few steps. Consequently, they’re able to have multiple experiences.

In a typical OBE, the person’s consciousness lifts outside his physical body so he can see his body lying in the bed (or on the sofa). The more often a person has an out-of-body experience, the more he grows to overcome his fears of not being able to return to his body, which allows him to travel further and further away from the body with each experience. Before the person knows it, he’s traveling around the room (in the first experience), outside the walls of the bedroom (in the second or third experience), and then outside of the house altogether (once the person is confident he’ll return to his body regardless of the distance he travels).

Eventually, people travel into the spiritual realm during their out-of-body experience. While in the spiritual dimension, many out-of-body experiencers have seen prayers traveling by them. Various people have expressed, “I saw prayers going by me. I knew they were prayers. They appeared like shooting stars.”

When pressed on how they knew that what they were seeing were prayers and not stars, they explained that there’s a knowing when your consciousness exists in that realm. You have an insight that exceeds the normal confines of our human mind inside a physical body.

When I interviewed William Buhlman, an out-of-body experiencer who learned to initiate OBEs since his first one in 1972, he said this about the power of our thoughts.

“Once [I left my] body... the first thing I learned after the overall shock of, ‘Oh my God, I continue’ is that, ‘Oh my God, my thoughts are powerful.’

And what are prayers if not thoughts?

Number Three: Near-Death Experiences

I’ve had the wonderful opportunity of being able to investigate evidence of life after death from several different sources. One of the things that’s always fascinated me is that each area of evidence confirms the other. They don’t contradict one another. They actually parallel one another.

Just like people who have had multiple out-of-body experiences, people who have had near-death experiences travel into the spiritual realm. And some of these near-death experiencers have seen prayers traveling by them. One person described them as, “Little balls of light and love.”

I interviewed Dr. Eben Alexander, who is a neurosurgeon who had a near-death experience. Here’s what Eben said about prayer based on his near-death experience.

“…and it was then that I became aware of the power of prayer. Because I sensed these arcs of beings, everyone kneeling, many clothed, holding candles, and there was this murmuring coming out from them. And there were thousands of them [prayers] going off into the darkness... and that energy was building these beautiful, brilliant clouds that were kind of bubbling me up and bringing me back up to this realm...

“And that’s what I often tell healthcare workers and families of very sick patients in talking about this, ‘Never ever think that the soul of that loved one is not present and that the prayers aren’t getting in... the important thing is the prayers do get in.’ And I don’t care if the patient has already been pronounced, you know, dead in our medical terms, know that that soul is present and aware. And how you treat that, and how you think about that, is very important. And so, prayer does have tremendous power, and it’s very comforting to that soul that is being prayed for.” ~ Dr. Eben Alexander

Number Four: Channeling

Channelers, often referred to as channels, are like mediums because they communicate with spirits, yet channelers typically do not communicate messages from deceased loved ones. Channelers communicate wisdom from advanced spiritual beings. These advanced beings go by many labels: ascended masters, spirit guides, or angels. In fact, channelers typically are communicating with a group entity that might go by one name.

You might be familiar with the channeled teachings of Seth or Abraham. My friend, Paul Selig, who I interviewed on Afterlife TV, is one of the foremost spiritual channels working today. He’s about to come out with his eleventh book, The Book of Innocence. Paul refers to the group he channels as, simply, “the Guides.”

Many channelers have taught us that prayers are effective and always helpful. Here’s a brief look at what the Guides have taught about prayer through Paul Selig. If you enjoy this way of teaching, you might want to check out my interview with him (or his website). Here the Guides are referring to praying for oneself rather than praying for another. They’re teaching the distinct difference between allowing versus demanding while praying, but the reason for this distinction is because praying is effective.

“When you work with prayer, you work with allowance. And the action of prayer need not be a demand, nor need it be affirmative to be applicable to transformation. But the consciousness that you have can be re-formed through prayer. But prayer is misunderstood. Prayer is an alignment to the higher octave through request, and we will say why. There is a difference between saying, ‘Give me the milk’ and ‘May I have the milk?’ The aspect of you that doesn’t know that he is allowed the milk may not take the milk once it is offered because he doesn’t agree to it in energy. Do you understand this?

“So demanding health or balance when you have re-created imbalance so often feels impossible. But asking for it, which means reaching and receiving, gives you permission to move beyond the data and the ways you’ve known yourself in history that may have created the thing to begin with. When we teach you how to be, we don’t make you different than you are. But we do move you to a higher agreement that may be known by you, both in form and field.” ~ The Guides as channeled through Paul Selig

Number Five: Shared-Death Experiences

There are ordinary people—people like you and me—who have had what’s called a shared-death experience. When I say ordinary people, I mean people who have not had a near-death experience, who are not psychics or mediums, who are not channelers, just everyday, ordinary individuals. What does set these ordinary people apart, however, is that they’ve had a shared-death experience. And many have seen prayers traveling to their destinations.

A shared-death experience typically occurs when someone is dying and you somehow get caught up in their afterlife journey. In other words, you experience their transition back to the hereafter.

Nobody really knows why this happens or how to predict it. It’s usually quite random. It’s important to note that it’s not your physical body that’s taken for the ride. It’s your consciousness, your conscious mind that sees, feels, and knows what your dying loved one is experiencing during their transition, almost as if you were dreaming it.

As mentioned, many of these shared-death experiencers have observed prayers traveling in the spirit world just like the people who have had out-of-body experiences or near-death experiences. Their descriptions are also similar: balls of light like shooting stars traveling through the otherworldly cosmos.

Number Six: Dream Visitations

A dream visitation is when a loved one visits you in a dream. We’ll talk more about this in future articles, but it’s when your deceased loved one shows up in a dream to let you know she’s okay, she’s watching over you, and she loves you.

Many people who have had a dream visitation were told by the person in spirit, “I received and benefited from your prayers.” They’ll often repeat the exact words of your prayers to prove it to you. And just like during a reading with a medium, they might say, “I saw you praying by the tree you planted in my memory. Your prayer reached me, and I want to thank you for that.”

Dream visitations are extremely clear and vivid dreams. It’s the type of dream that you’ll remember in detail for decades as if it only happened last night. That’s what makes it different than ordinary dreams. They are common because the dream state is an easier method for spirit to communicate with us. And your loved one in spirit might just give you a glimpse of the hereafter, giving you a view of the millions of prayers traveling toward their intended destinations.

In Conclusion

I’m sure there’s additional evidence that exists to prove our prayers are heard and helpful. These six areas of evidence happened to be the most common in my investigation over the last 26 years. I would love to hear your own stories depicting how you learned your prayers were heard.

A few people have told me over the years that they stopped praying because they didn’t think their prayers had any positive effect. If you happened to be one of those people, I hope this article will encourage you to start praying again.

Thanks for reading this article. I hope you’re enjoying the spring weather.

As I tell my dogs every night before bed, you are loved,
Bob

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Bob Olson is the host of Afterlife TV, author of two books, Answers About The Afterlife and The Magic Mala, and creator of the reputable directory of psychics and mediums, BestPsychicDirectory.com. His newest venture is Bob Olson Connect, where you can read Bob’s articles before they become books.

The audio for this article is in the podcast area.

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