In a way, the title of the chapter is deceptive because what I’ll be talking about isn’t really prayer in a strictly defined sense of talking with God but in a broader sense of making yourself available to God to use in the life of another person.

It was from Louise Eggleston that I first heard about subconscious prayer. She told just how she used it. I sat spellbound for an hour eagerly hoping that she’d just keep on talking, the story she told was so fascinating.

I’ve had the opportunity to use it several times in working with people who didn’t respond to any other type of prayer. It is a type of prayer that should be used with discretion, generally only when all else has failed to bring a response. I’ll point out one of the dangers concerning the use of it later. But first let me tell you of a personal experience I had in using subconscious prayer.

My husband had died and my daughters and I had moved to Indiana where I was to teach in a church-related college. My youngest daughter who was seven years old had started taking money which belonged to her sisters.

She’d also take money from my purse. I simply couldn’t make her understand that it wasn’t hers to take and use. I prayed about it in all the ways that I could think of, and nothing seemed to work. Also, she’d gotten to the place where she hated to get up in the morning. It was difficult to get her into decent clothes and get her off to school in the morning. Then she began simply taking over the conversation whenever people came to talk with me. She was terribly obnoxious, and I thought of asking my mother if she could take Susan to live with her for a while. When I confided in a friend, she suggested that I take her to a psychiatrist, but somehow there was that within me that knew Susan would respond if only I could find the right way to pray for her. Then I remembered Louise Eggleston’s subconscious prayer and decided to try it.

That night after I was in bed I plumped the pillow up, took pencil and paper and asked God to give me the right words to say to Susan’s subconscious mind. I was still for a long time.

Then the first thought which came to mind was, “Mommy loves you.” Did I ever have to wrestle with that one. I knew that deep down I must love her, but somehow I’d buried the love under a lot of criticism, anger, frustration, hopelessness, and impatience. Finally, and it took quite a while, I became willing to uncover it and use that love. So with a feeling that I’d throw away those negative attitudes I’d held about Susan, I wrote on the paper, “Mommy loves you.” Then the next thoughts flowed and I wrote them down, “Fran loves you; Kay loves you; God loves you; Jesus loves you. You’re going to be loving and gentle and kind and patient like Jesus.” That was all. That didn’t seem like much, but I knew that if I used that for at least a month, something had to happen for good in Susan.

I set the alarm clock for three o’clock and went to sleep. Now there’s no magic in three o’clock, but I knew she’d be fast asleep then. When the alarm rang, I turned it off, switched on the light, and sleepily tried to read what I’d written earlier. When my eyes focused enough, I called quietly, but aloud three times, “Susan Elaine Kimmel.” This was to attract the subconscious mind of Susan. Now, she was in her room and I was in mine with the door shut. Then I repeated what I’d written three times, set the alarm for six when I had to get up, switched off the light, and fell asleep. At six I got up, dressed, slipped over to the college chapel lounge, and met with a group of students who came to pray together five mornings a week. When I returned home a little after seven, Susan met me at the door. She was dressed for school and welcomed me with a cheery, “Breakfast is ready!” and led me into the dining room. Sure enough, there was the table beautifully set and I saw sausage, scrambled eggs with parsley sprinkled on them, orange juice, toast, jam, and tea. Need I say that I was stunned? I couldn’t believe my eyes.

What was before me was too good to be true. I looked into Susan’s little upturned, shining face then enveloped her in a big hug. “Oh, Susan, this is wonderful. Everything looks marvelous.”

The subconscious prayer had worked and had worked overnight. It had far exceeded my expectations. But, just to make sure that the thing was clinched, I set the alarm for three o’clock for the next twenty-nine days and read the message to Susan’s subconscious. Some five years later, I could say that only once did she slip back into the old habits, but I got the message out and for three nights read it to her, and she’s been fine since then.

A woman heard me tell this story at a prayer lab, and she immediately identified her son with Susan. She began to use the subconscious prayer. I returned to her city a year later and was asked by her to relate the story to the group at the prayer lab. I did, and then the woman told how she’d been using this type prayer for months and hadn’t seen any results until about three months before our meeting.

Since then, there’d been steady progress in her son. She said that she’d use the prayer until she felt her son was completely free from the anxieties and problems he had. We could but rejoice with her that at long last her son was responding.

There is a danger, of course, in talking to the subconscious of someone, as no doubt, you’ve already perceived. It’s this: We don’t always know what is best for another person, and we need to be extremely careful in what we say to the subconscious. We need to be in a prayerful attitude and ask God to bring into our minds what would be best to say to the person. We may want to manipulate others to make situations convenient for ourselves and so we must guard against this kind of thing happening. After all, it may be we who need changing. So always ask for more light into your own motives and ask God to align them with his will.

We can deceive ourselves into thinking that a situation would be better if another person would change. We tend to think that we don’t need to change. However, as you begin to keep yourself in a state of openness Godward, he will begin to reveal to you just what and how you yourself, need to change, and then he’ll give you the power to do so.

If you want to use the subconscious prayer, look into yourself first and be prepared for the kind of purging such as I experienced when I knew I hadn’t been feeling or showing love to Susan and had to battle that one out.

Ask God to reveal to you your own responsibility in the situation or with the person and wait. Then take whatever thoughts come to you and say, “Thank you, Father. Please expand them,” and wait. You’ll be shown what you need to do or not do. Ask that if you’re to help the other person by using the subconscious prayer that the desire within you will be increased to do so, and if you’re not to, that the desire will be decreased. Perhaps you’ll know just then if you’re to use it or not. Perhaps you won’t know for a few days, but keep reminding yourself that God is increasing or decreasing the desire according to his will. When you get the answer and if it’s that you aren’t to help the other person by using the subconscious prayer, just say, “Thanks for showing me your will.” But if the desire has increased within you, take pencil and paper and ask God to bring thoughts to your mind for you to write down and then wait.

As the thoughts come, write them down and then check them against what you know of the love and understanding of Jesus. Is there any sentence that sounds as though it couldn’t have been spoken by Jesus? If so, ask God to clarify what he means. You will eventually receive just the right words to speak into the subconscious of the person. Then when vou know that the person’s asleep and can’t hear your voice, call his full name three times and read aloud three times what you’ve written. Do this only once a day. During the day when you think about the person remember not to worry but to say,

“Thanks, Father, for him.” Use the prayer only until you feel led to stop it. The woman in the prayer lab had used it for some nine months before she began to see any results.

Results sometimes come quickly and sometimes come slowly. One woman used it on her husband, who was an alcoholic and discovered that it was upsetting him and causing him to drink more. But when she talked with me, she discovered why. In her zeal to help him, she had typed six copies of what she was reading into his subconscious and had given them to praying friends, who were as zealous as she and who took turns during the night to read the message aloud. The poor man was being bombarded all night long with suggestions. He awakened every morning more exhausted than when he went to bed. I pointed this out to the woman and recommended that she alone speak to his subconscious and only once a day. When she did this he began to become more relaxed without having to use alcohol. The woman also began to see what she could do to change herself into a less judgmental and a more loving person. I haven’t heard from the woman in several years, and I assume that her problem has worked out satisfactorily. Somehow I’m the first to hear if it hasn’t and the last to hear if it has.

I have one last suggestion concerning the subconscious prayer. It can be tied in very well with the healing-of-the-memories prayer. I’ve used it here with excellent results.

When I became pregnant for the third time, I was angry! I didn’t want another child:

Two children were enough. I was angry with myself, with my husband, and with the unborn child. During my pregnancy I often said, “I don’t want this child. I don’t want to be pregnant. I don’t know how I can ever love this child.”

When Susan was born, my anger had cooled down a bit, and I was glad to welcome her into the family. However, the damage had been done, and I didn’t realize it until years later when I heard someone tell of experimenting with hypnosis and regressing a subject back to the time in the womb. The subject could repeat conversations that the mother had had.

The experimenter and subject verified this.

Then I thought of all the times I’d said I didn’t want Susan, and I began to wonder. how I could ever undo what I’d done. I’d been using the subconscious prayer for several years and I’d been using the healing-of-the-memories prayer for some years, but suddenly I saw how I could combine the two and bring release from the past to Susan. I began using the combination, and it seemed to work. Whereas Sugar had so often clung to me for reassurances of love, now she was able to make friends with others and to enjoy such things as overnight camping with girls her own age. She became independent of me, capable of directing her own life without constantly looking to me to see if I approved of what she was doing.

I’ve never told Susan that I used the subconscious prayer and the combination of it with the healing-of-the-memories prayer. Perhaps she’ll read this book one day and learn about it. I believe that she’s the delightful, free person she is today because I was led to pray in certain ways for her — ways that are quite unusual but ways which have proved to be very practical.