To Pray Successful

Thought Conditioners from Norman Vincent Peale
Mark 11:24 reads: "What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them."

To pray successfully, you must employ affirmation and visualization. Form a picture in your mind, not of lack or denial or frustration or illness, but of prosperity, abundance, attainment, health. Always remember you will receive as a result of prayer exactly what you think, not what you say. If you pray for achievement but think defeat, your words are idle because your heart has already accepted defeat. Therefore, practice believing that even as you pray you are receiving God's boundless blessings, and they will come to you.

Commentary: Some commentaries about prayer talk about asking God for what's in your heart. Peale says you will get what you think. Many times our hearts and our minds are not in the same place - we think one thing, but feel another. There's a line in the Chorister's prayer that goes like this - "Grant that what we sing with our lips we may believe in our hearts, and what we believe in our hearts we may show forth in our lives..." While we all pray sometimes asking for guidance because of that conflict within us, I believe, when we are asking for something specific, that we need our mind, our heart and our mouth to be as one.