Prayer Works?

In these last days of apostasy, I am hearing non-believers express that prayer is just speaking into the air, what you want, and the words cause things to happen. It is a new age teaching that our words have power.

This is the reason I don't like the phrase, often used by Christians, "prayer works." 

When I hear phrases like this I go back to the word to see if there is any validity to them.  And, sometimes I look at who is using these phrases.

When the secular world, who do not love Christ, are using the same phrases  that believers use, I get concerned that the words that are spoken were so generic that even the secular world can be happy with them.

We live in an age when the theology in the churches has been so diluted to placate the non-believer, that it lacks the power of Christ to convict or train properly.

Pagan religions can live with the phrase "prayer works."  Even the secular schools are teaching children to just speak something and that alone can make it happen. If the children can have a positive attitude, they can get anything they want.

Words do not have power, they are just words.  We can say anything we like, but if we do not put feet to our words, they are meaningless.  As believers our words have no power, it is only Christ Who has the power to hear our words and answer our requests, according to His will.

The "Power of Positive Thinking" is a book written by Norman Vincent Peale, an heretic that believed in  the power of ones own mind to make things happen.  It is the worship of self, in the worse way. 

When we like to think all we have to do is say something, and it comes true, we are indulging in Shamanism and other forms of paganism. 

If satan can get us to believe we are the power over our own destiny through our words, then he has created an idol in our mind. 

God is not a puppet, prayer is not the vehicle through which we command God, and it matters very much who we pray too. Praying into the air is nothing, praying to ourselves is nothing and praying to false gods is nothing. 

Prayer only works if we pray to the One True God, and if what we pray is in His Will. And so we should be saying instead, "God works when we pray, but only if we pray in His Will, and, the only way to know His Will is to read His Word."

James 4:3 "You ask and do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your pleasures."

To believe in positive confession is a form of divination. We must evaluate everything we say and especially anything that is popular, very likely brings wrong thinking.

Luke 6:46 ""Why do you call Me, 'Lord, Lord,' and do not do what I say?"

1 Corinthians 10:14 "Therefore, my beloved, flee from idolatry."