PRAYER POWER

You are dealing with the most tremendous power in the world when you pray.
The secret of prayer is to find the process that will most effectively open your
mind humbly to God. Any method through which you can stimulate the power of
God to flow into your mind is legitimate. An illustration of a scientific use of
prayer is the experience of a man who opened a small business--as he
characterized it, "a little hole in the wall" in New York City years ago. He had one
employee.
In a few years they moved into a larger room and then into extensive quarters. It
became a very successful operation. This man's method of business as he
described it was "to fill the hole in the wall with optimistic prayers and thoughts."
He declared that hard work, positive thinking, fair dealing, right treatment of
people, and the proper kind of praying always get results. This man worked out
his own simple formula for solving his problems through prayer power. The
formula is: (1) Prayerize, (2) Picturize, (3) Actualize.
By "prayerize" my friend meant a daily system of creative prayer. When a
problem arose, he talked it over with God simply and directly in prayer.
Moreover, he conceived of God as being with him in his office, in his home, on the
street, in his automobile, always nearby as a partner. He took seriously the
Biblical injunction to "pray without ceasing." He interpreted it as meaning that he
should go about every day discussing with God in a natural, normal manner the
questions that had to be dealt with. He did not often kneel to offer his prayers but
would, for example, say to God, "What will I do about this, Lord?" or "Give me a
fresh insight on this, Lord."
The second point in his formula of creative prayer is to "picturize." When either
failure or success is pasteurized, it strongly tends to actualize in terms equivalent
to the mental image pictured. To assure something worthwhile happening, first
pray about it and test it according to God's will; then print a picture of it on your
mind as happening, holding the picture firmly in consciousness. Continue to
surrender the picture to God's will--that is to say, put the matter in God's hands--
and follow God's guidance. Work hard and intelligently, thus doing your part to
achieve success. Practice believing and continue to hold the picture in your
thoughts.
Do this and you will be astonished at the strange ways in which the picture comes
to pass. In this manner, the picture "actualizes." What you have "prayerized" and
"picturized" "actualizes" according to the pattern of your basic realizable wish
when conditioned by invoking God's power upon it, and if, moreover, you give
fully of yourself to its realization.