Many years ago I came across the idea of using affirmations as a form of prayer developed by the practitioners of Religious Science called affirmative prayer. Affirmative prayer combines the power of affirmations with the practice of prayer. When you pray using affirmative prayer, you are not asking something outside of yourself to give you something. Instead, you are claiming your good as if it has already come to you. Hence, affirmative prayer, like affirmations, is always stated in the present tense.
Here are the five steps of affirmative prayer, as described on the Science of Mind website:
Affirmative Prayer
Science of Mind uses a five-step affirmative prayer called spiritual mind treatment. The five steps are:
1. Recognition—know that God is all there is.
2. Unification—know that you are one with God.
3. Declaration—state your word for the circumstance you want to manifest.
4. Thanksgiving—give thanks for your word being acted upon by the Law of Mind.
5. Release—“And so it is!”
There is no beseeching to or urge to compel an outside entity in spiritual mind treatment. As Ernest Holmes states in The Science of Mind:
Effective mental treatment is propelled by a consciousness of love and a realization that the Creative spirit is always at work….A treatment should be given in a calm, expectant manner and with a deep inner conviction of its reality, without any fear or any sense that the human mind must make it effective. The work is effective because the Law is always in operation.
People who practice affirmative prayer on a daily basis have reported profound changes in their lives. For example, when I was in the depths of a life-threatening depressive episode, I composed an affirmative prayer that I shared with the twelve members of my support team and asked them to say it with me for thirty days. Here is the affirmative prayer I shared with them.
With help from God, I am reborn to a new life. I have learned the lessons that the anxiety and depression came to teach and thus have fully and freely released these symptoms from my body/mind. They are replaced by inner peace, emotional stability, vitality, wholeness, wellness and joy. My brain chemistry is stabilized and in perfect balance. I am healed and made whole. Thank you spirit for healing.
This prayer may have saved my life, because seventy-two hours after the group and I started reciting it, my symptoms began to lift. Within ninety days I experienced a full healing. Try affirmative prayer for yourself, and let me know your results.