Word for Today - 20 May 2025
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“The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.” James 5:16 NIV
Prayer and your RAS
To understand how prayer is powerful and effective, look at it from a neurological perspective. At the base of our brain lies a cluster of nerves called the reticular activating system (RAS), which monitors our environment. We are constantly bombarded with countless stimuli vying for our attention, and it is the job of the RAS to determine what gets noticed and what goes unnoticed. For example, you download a new ringtone for your cell phone. You’re sure that you’ve never heard it before. But after downloading it, it seems like everybody else has the same ringtone. It’s not that lots of people went out and downloaded it when you did. It’s the simple fact that when you downloaded that ringtone, it created a category in your RAS. That ringtone went unnoticed by you before you downloaded it because it wasn’t important to you. Once you downloaded the ringtone, the RAS recognized it as relevant. Prayer works that way. When you pray for someone or something, it creates a category in your reticular activating system. And now you notice everything related to those prayers. A pastor writes: “Have you ever noticed that when you pray, coincidences happen? And when you don’t, they don’t? It’s more than coincidence, it’s providence. Prayer creates divine opportunities. But prayer also sanctifies the reticular activating system and enables us to see the God-ordained opportunities that are all around us all the time. And once we see them, we have to [activate our faith and] seize them.” Prayer is the portal to God’s kingdom and through which His blessings flow to us. So, pray each day.
Prayer and your RAS
To understand how prayer is powerful and effective, look at it from a neurological perspective. At the base of our brain lies a cluster of nerves called the reticular activating system (RAS), which monitors our environment. We are constantly bombarded with countless stimuli vying for our attention, and it is the job of the RAS to determine what gets noticed and what goes unnoticed. For example, you download a new ringtone for your cell phone. You’re sure that you’ve never heard it before. But after downloading it, it seems like everybody else has the same ringtone. It’s not that lots of people went out and downloaded it when you did. It’s the simple fact that when you downloaded that ringtone, it created a category in your RAS. That ringtone went unnoticed by you before you downloaded it because it wasn’t important to you. Once you downloaded the ringtone, the RAS recognized it as relevant. Prayer works that way. When you pray for someone or something, it creates a category in your reticular activating system. And now you notice everything related to those prayers. A pastor writes: “Have you ever noticed that when you pray, coincidences happen? And when you don’t, they don’t? It’s more than coincidence, it’s providence. Prayer creates divine opportunities. But prayer also sanctifies the reticular activating system and enables us to see the God-ordained opportunities that are all around us all the time. And once we see them, we have to [activate our faith and] seize them.” Prayer is the portal to God’s kingdom and through which His blessings flow to us. So, pray each day.