“I’m manifesting a new job in 2026.”
“I’m manifesting a quick end to the unrest in Iran.”
“Let’s manifest solid growth in our church this year.”
Manifest was the Cambridge Dictionary word of the year in 2024. Since 2020, public figures and influencers have been writing articles and social media posts that encourage women to “manifest anything you desire.” In other words, just picture your best life and bring it to pass, whether it requires a husband, a cure for your cancer, or a profitable new business.
I was asked recently, “What’s the difference between prayer and the practice of manifestation?” I had to look it up, of course, and discovered that to “manifest”1 is to “attempt to attain something desired by thinking or focusing intensely on it, especially as a spiritual or self-help practice.” It involves visualization and affirmation as one imagines achieving something, with the notion that imagining it will make it happen.
It should come as a surprise to absolutely no one that in our era of expressive individualism, we have come up with a “spiritual practice” that does away with the middleman (who in this case happens to be the God of the universe) and puts the emphasis on the force of our own will. However, I wonder if even firm believers in the efficacy and necessity of prayer have become susceptible to the practice of manifestation in the way we frame our prayers.
I wonder if even firm believers in the efficacy and necessity of prayer have become susceptible to the practice of manifestation in the way we frame our prayers.
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As co-creators with God, certainly, we are invited to make plans and then work to achieve our goals. The difference comes with our posture toward the end result. In prayer, we present our desires under the proviso, “Your Kingdom come, Your will be done.” There is no formula for achieving an answer from God, and God will not be manipulated.
When our prayers to God are offered with white-knuckled control over the outcome, we are trying to usurp God’s sovereignty, omnipotence, and omniscience, three of God’s incommunicable attributes (traits God does not share with his creation). Genuine prayer, instead, celebrates our creaturely limitations and exalts God’s right to call the shots.
Counterfeit prayer keeps me in the driver’s seat.
Genuine prayer acknowledges my dependence upon a good God who can do what I cannot, and whose vision for me is far greater than I can ask or imagine.
Holding You in the Light,
Genuine prayer acknowledges my dependence upon a good God who can do what I cannot, and whose vision for me is far greater than I can ask or imagine.
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- From dictionary.com ↩︎
Living Our Days 
Bullseye! My take on this is that it’s not new but quite ancient. It’s satan’s old whispers in our ears that we can be gods. I think the acronym for prayer ACTS is way better than manifesting. Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, Supplication.
T.Austin-Sparks summed this up long ago – “Only that which was the energy of Christ, the wisdom of Christ, the power of Christ, will remain. God is not using your energies and my energies. He is calling upon us to use the energies of Christ. God cannot set His seal upon anything that is of man.”
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