Frequently Asked Questions About The Abundance Prayer

Questions People Ask:

Table of Contents

What is the greatest benefit of the prayer?

Isn’t it natural to worry if we care deeply?

How do we know if we are doing the prayer correctly?

What if we can’t picture or feel the energy?

What is the recommended use?

Do we need this prayer if we are already praying effectively?

Why pray with our hands?

Do we need a name for God before we can use the prayer?

If we have a serious illness or problem, how do we use the prayer?

What if we have a serious need such as a lack of money for necessities?

Can the prayer include the dead?

Does the prayer help us to meditate?

Is the prayer holistic?

Is the prayer ecumenical?

Did Christ pray like this?

Is the prayer effective in schools?

What is the greatest benefit of the prayer?

We tend to live our lives from the past, from a belief in scarcity, in fear and worry. The Abundance Prayer helps us to live in the now, in God’s abundance, creating a better world and a better future.

The more we live in the present, the more our awareness of the God within grows: ‘In him (Christ) we live and move and have our being.’

Back to Top

Isn’t it natural to worry if we care deeply?

We can make the mistake of thinking that worry is normal. Worry, however, is negative energy that poisons our whole system. In addition, we communicate it automatically, poisoning those we love.

The Abundance Prayer is a powerful alternative to worry. By creating sacred space, we allow God’s energy to flow, bringing healing and transformation to the people and situations that concern us.

Back to Top

How do we know if we are doing the prayer correctly?

There is no right or wrong way. It is important to make the prayer one’s own while at the same time including the essentials. Using our hands to gather in our energy, feeling the power of God in our hands and using that power to create sacred space for God’s love to flow.

This can be done slowly and silently taking as much time as we wish to give it. Or we can do it in fifteen or twenty seconds.

Back to Top

What if we can’t picture or feel the energy?

Not being able to picture the light of Christ or feel his energy in our hands does not pose a problem. It is enough to create the sacred space and to sense that the light and energy of Christ are flowing to those we are praying for.

Back to Top

What is the recommended use?

Use it first thing in the morning, and last thing at night.

Use it as introduction to our other prayers to create sacred space for those prayers to be more effective.

Use it whenevera negative thought or feeling arises.

Use it at any time to pray for a personal need or the needs of others.

Back to Top

Do we need this prayer if we are already praying effectively?

What makes our prayers ineffective are the negatives we bring to them: unforgiveness, greed, envy, guilt, fear, worry, anxiety etc.

The value of the Abundance Prayer is that it helps us to create space that is free of those influences, space for our prayers to have a greater quality. So the use of this prayer, pushing out the particular negatives that trouble us, will always be helpful at the beginning of our prayers.

Back to Top

Why pray with our hands?

Hands play a central role in our lives. They are an extension of both the mind and the heart and they also integrate and harmonise mind and heart.

Christ used his hands to still the storm and to convey healing power to the sick.

The priest uses his hands in the prayers of the Mass, as does the minister in the prayers of a Service. The hands are also used in the prayer of Charismatic Renewal and in the Pentecostal Churches.

Hands are one of the principal ways of receiving and of giving love. As infants we were totally dependent on our mother’s hands.

In the Abundance Prayer we use our hands to hold those we wish to pray for in the embrace of God’s love flowing from our hearts.

Back to Top

Do we need a name for God before we can use the prayer?

The Hebrews, in Old Testament times, had profound awe and reverence of God's name, Yahweh. In the New Testament St. Paul expresses the same awe and reverence for the Holy Name: "At the name of Jesus every knee should bow in heaven, on earth and under the earth, (Philippians 2:10)."

If we bring an attitude of awe and wonder, love and reverence to our use of God's names, then we grow in the awareness of how infinite God is in every way: in love, goodness, truth and beauty.

Some people, for whom names for God have no meaning, are able to use the Abundance Prayer by relating to God as an infinite ocean of love: "God is love, and anyone who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in them" (John 4:16)

Back to Top

If we have a serious illness or problem, how do we use the prayer?

Having created the sacred space, we picture the illness or problem in the space. We picture the light of Christ filling it and the energy of Christ flowing to it.

We picture the illness or problem getting smaller. At the same time we are aware of the abundance Christ gives getting larger and larger. The Abundance Prayer thus gives us a new and empowered perspective on the illness or problem.

Back to Top

What if we have a serious need such as a lack of money for necessities?

First, we picture the desired result as already achieved: Then we create the sacred space for God to be abundant. "Anything you ask and pray for, believe that you have it already" (Mark 11:24).

And so by visualising and by creating the sacred space, we become partners with God in bringing about extraordinary change.

Back to Top

Can the prayer include the dead?

Praying for the dead is an important part of Catholic tradition but not part of Protestant tradition.

Grief, the pain of loss, is caused by the dead person being totally severed from our relationship. When people hold a dead person between their hands in the Abundance Prayer they often reestablish a sense of connectedness.

Not only does their grief begin to heal but they also feel that the dead person is at peace.

So even if praying for the dead is not part of our tradition we may still find it beneficial to use the Abundance Prayer as a means of healing our grief by establishing a sense of connectedness with a loved one who has passed on

Back to Top

Does the prayer help us to meditate?

The Abundance Prayer develops two central values: wonder and gratitude. As our sense of wonder grows we are drawn into the world of mystery.

Back to Top

Is the prayer holistic?

Christ invited us to pray with our whole heart and soul, our whole mind and strength, in other words, to pray with our whole person or holistically.

The Abundance Prayer is holistic because it engages all our gifts: body (hands), intellect, will, imagination, feelings and spirit.

Back to Top

Is the prayer ecumenical?

The most fundamental belief of Christians, shared by all denominations, is that God is a Trinity of Persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The Abundance Prayer is ecumenical because it unites all Christians in devotion and love for theTrinity.

Back to Top

Did Christ pray like this?

One could say that Christ was doing the Abundance Prayer as he hung from the cross. His arms were open to embrace all people of all times with the infinite mercy and compassion that flowed freely and abundantly from his open heart.

One could also say that Christ continues his prayer in the person of the priest in the Catholic Mass or in the person of the Minister in the Protestant Service.

The minister or priest is standing in the shoes of Christ, doing what Christ is doing. The invitation from Christ to everyone present is to come and stand in his shoes and be one with him and the minister or priest in bringing his compassion to the world.

Back to Top

Is the prayer effective in schools?

Children from the age of five upwards love the Abundance Prayer. They feel they are doing something to help when they use the prayer.

Teachers who use it report great benefits. The whole culture of the class changes.

The experience of being partners with Christ makes children more focused, more receptive, easier to teach and kinder towards one another. Other benefits include a growing sense of security and identity.

Children, young people and students can derive immense benefit from the prayer by picturing their studies, their work and their future between their hands in the sacred space, allowing the light and love of Jesus to flow to them.

Back to Top