Prayer will keep you strong always

Prayer is always a divine connection between us and God and it connects us directly with higher power in the universe which we call as God in various forms. Although I don't know who said “more can be achieved by two hands working, than by 100 praying.” It is an irrefutable fact. In the history of mankind, prayer, to any god, has never been proven to work. That some believe (somewhat), is not proof. Prayer has the same efficacy as crossing your fingers; it is not consistently reliable and you would not bet your life on it.

For you 'believers' my challenges to you is this: There is nothing you can get or achieve by praying to your favorite god, that I could not get by praying to a small flat rock. It all depends on who is engaging in the prayer. The Bible says that "The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working." (James 5:16) One righteous Christian’s prayers can be as strong as 100 sinful Christians'. In fact,is it said that one righteous believer’s prayers may even be stronger than 100 fearful believers'.

I believe one person’s prayer can be more powerful than many others. It depends of the faith exerted by the prayer offered. I think a fervent prayer offered by a parent on behalf of a child may be far more powerful than the prayers offered for a person you don’t know or care for. I’m thinking about the social media prayer requests that generate a lot of “I’ll pray for you responses”.

Moreover, I imagine that many of those are quick prayers with little thought or feeling put into them. Contrast that with a sincere prayer of a faith filled person with deep connections to the person/event being prayed for. If prayer operates by faith, then the more faith filled prayer is more likely to be effectual than the one said on a whim.

Remember the story of Elijah the Tishbite in 1 Kings 17 and 18 who "prayed fervently that it might not rain, and for three years and six months it did not rain on the earth. Then he prayed again, and heaven gave rain, and the earth bore its fruit." (James 5:17-18) It's likely that the King's special assistant Obadiah prayed for rain along with those fearful prophets he hid in a cave (1 Kings 18:3-14), but nothing happened until Elijah came to the rescue.

A study showed that sick people had the same recovery outcome whether or not someone was praying for their recovery, but only if they were unaware someone was praying for them. If they were told that someone was praying for them then their outcome tended to be slightly worse. Perhaps then it is better that only one person pray for a sick person, than 100, so less harm is done. Imagine a parent who has provided everything needed for a child to survive, perhaps some situations forced the parent to provide a lower quality or lesser degree of benefit, but the child got what was needed when it was most needed.

Now imagine that parent not hearing from the child for weeks, months maybe years on end. Then one day the kid calls. The parent is thrilled and even though the kid needs help the parent is ready and willing to help even though there has been no communication for a long time. The child has affirmed the dependence and the parent is assured that they are still the person somebody can depend on. God is listening, call home.

Finally during the wilderness journey, hundreds of Israelites might have prayed when fire from God raged among them and destroyed the outskirts of the camp because of their incessant complaints. Nothing happened until "the people cried out to Moses, and Moses prayed to the Lord, and the fire died down" (Numbers 11:2). Where as the atheist believes that, there is not God and therefore no prayer is required. He thinks that prayer does not work at all as has been scientifically shown. It matters not whether you pray to Jesus, god, Mary, your dead uncle or a rock. The results are exactly the same for those that pray and those that don’t. It’s just the Law of Averages at work here.

And it is not the number of people who are engaged in prayer that matters but the spiritual standing of the people before God .Even David, who is divinely identified as a man after God's heart, said: "If I had cherished iniquity in my heart, the Lord would not have listened." (Psalm 66:18) But certainly, the prayers of righteous people are effective and efficacious.

The reality, however, is: the prayer of a righteous person avails much, but it is not as strong as the prayers of 100 righteous people. The Lord Jesus promises to be present when more than one person congregate in prayer "For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them." On the human level, do you think the petition of one person can carry more weight that one with a thousand signatures? It depends on who that one person is and who make up the thousand. When a prince approaches his father with a request, it carries a lot more weight than a thousand people who are not related to the king. Cheers!