Posted on: 6th August 2025

How do we know prayer works? And is that the right question?

The first answer is that we don’t know – that is, in the contemporary sense of rational knowledge. We believe that God is at work, and as we observe, we believe that we are seeing God’s hand at work. It cannot be proved, but experiencing a storyline in our life or in the lives of others rings true. Narration of such stories may encourage others, with trusting hearts, to become prayerful too.

This could be regarded as a kind of Christian naiveté, but – so what! In this childlike spirit, we note ‘results’ from our prayers, whether instant or progressive. In this faith, we experience a relationship with God through delay or through answers. 

We are in the land of ‘promise – trust’, which is solid ground or an anchor of the soul – whichever metaphor you prefer! Perhaps, where our immediate experience is nothing more than the fresh insight which often comes through adversity, we might say, with the theologian P.T. Forsyth**, 'Our soul is fulfilled even if our petition is not'.

Little Prayers, by Amy Carmichael**

'Sometimes we are very much disappointed with ourselves because we cannot pray proper prayers, only little ones that hardly seem to be prayers at all. I have been finding much comfort in the little prayers of the Gospels. They could not be more little. 

There was Peter "Lord, save me", and the poor mother's, "Lord, help me", and sometimes even less, no prayer at all but only the briefest telling of the trouble, "My servant lieth at home", and less than that, a thought, and a touch, "She said within herself, if I may but touch…". Again, we hear of just a feeling, "They were troubled", and a cry, "They cried out for fear" – that was all, but it was enough.

Often in the throng of the day's work and warfare, there will not be time for more than a very little prayer – a thought, a touch, a feeling, a cry – but it is enough; so tender, so near, is the love of our Lord.'

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Some may have a call to emphasise prayer and, in so doing, inspire and equip others, but the New Testament never suggests it is a specialist ministry for a few experts.

God does not require the gift of fluent articulation or long prayers. We need to find ways of encouraging those who consider themselves inarticulate. Every Christian is valued by God wherever and whoever they are, and is potentially:

• A ‘priest’ – by prayer to bring people and places to God and God to people.
• A ‘missionary’ to express Christ’s life in character, presence, deed and word.
• A stone in their pond to make ripples wherever they are!!

By John Simkins, Otley Prayer Network

**The Soul of Prayer [1916]
** The Edges of His Ways [1955]