More on the Healing Power of Prayer

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Read and be amazed! There are significant results in studies that show prayer can change your life....God is not so far away that you can't reach out to Him, right now, and find hope.The Healing Power of Prayer

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Modern research shows that prayer does indeed improve the likelihood of

recovery from illness, and can even help with conceiving a child. By Grady, Research and Education, A.R.E. Clinic

Most

people these days feel that prayer and spiritual attitudes have the

potential to improve health. An informal poll conducted by ABCNews.com

shows that — out of more than 33,000 responders — about 90% said they

believed in the ability of prayer to heal.A huge amount of research

has been accumulated in the last decade to validate this belief. New

research is reported every month, and even somewhat conservative,

mainstream medical magazines, such as JAMA — the Journal of the American Medical Association — are publishing articles on the power of faith and prayer.

Edgar

Cayce often spoke of the healing power of prayer — if the prayer is

done rightly. Correct prayer, he said, involved surrendering one's will

to God, so that the person praying might become an open channel for

God's will to be done in the Earth. The idea is that, as God is

all-knowing and all-loving, He will guide the person into better

pathways — to the extent the prayed-for person is willing to allow. A

typical prayer according to this style might be, "Let Thy will be done

in and through my friend, so that they may know Thy blessing."

The latest research shows that prayer is helpful for people when

they give their consent to be prayed for, and that it is also effective

if the recipients of the prayer are completely unknowing. The A.R.E.

Clinic, which routinely uses prayer as a healing aid, has regularly

advised its patients that prayer be performed as an adjunct therapy for

all surgeries. A recent report from doctors in North Carolina shows

that heart surgery patients who have people praying for them appear to

recover better than those who don't. Some of their patients were also

treated with healing by touch. In all, a total of 150 people were given

prayer or healing touch, and for this group there was a 25% reduction

in deaths and complications.

The A.R.E. Clinic has also shared many stories of how prayer can

influence the course of birth — from conception, through pregnancy and

the formation of the unborn child, to the delivery. Last month,

researchers conducting a joint project between Columbia University and

the Cha Hospital of Korea reported that women undergoing in vitro

fertilization were more likely to conceive if a group of strangers

anonymously prayed for them. The nearly 200 Korean women involved in

the study were divided into test and control groups. All procedures

were the same, except that the test group was unknowingly receiving

prayer from people in the US, Canada, and Australia. The results showed

that the women who were prayed for were 24% more likely to conceive.

It

seems that all types of conditions can benefit in some way from prayer.

A psychiatrist in San Francisco decided to test the power of prayer on

critically ill AIDS patients. During the study, 10 of 20 patients

received prayer. By the end of the study, all 10 of the prayed-for

patients were still alive, while four of the unprayed-for had died.One

of the largest tests of prayer on the healing process involved about

1,000 heart patients who had been admitted to the critical care unit of

the Mid America Heart Institute, in Kansas City, Missouri. These

patients were secretly divided into two groups; half were prayed for

and half were not. All of the patients were followed for a year, after

which a third party scored their health. The results? The patients who

received the prayer had 11% fewer heart attacks, strokes, and

life-threatening complications.

Stunned by the results, a skeptical doctor who participated in the

study said, "This study offers an interesting insight into the

possibility that maybe God is influencing our lives on Earth."

One way to describe prayer is that it is "an application of faith."

But what if a person is not feeling very faithful? What if they are

depressed, struggling with a belief in the goodness of God?

A study published in August showed that older patients who said they

felt "abandoned or punished by God" had a 19–28% increase in the risk

of dying. This study included nearly 600 people aged 55 and over who

had been hospitalized between January 1996 and March 1997. One doctor

involved with the study said, "Those people are in trouble — and

doctors need to know about it. This study is important because it

identifies specific religious conflicts that may lead to poorer health

and greater risk of death."

In his readings, Edgar Cayce often addressed issues of prayer and

faith, linking both ideas to health and the conception of children.

Prayer and faith are acknowledgements of the true reality of the soul. In his advice for a person with cancer, he said:

"There should be kept, to be

sure, a hopeful, constructive attitude as to the body's material and

physical welfare, as well as in its spiritual application and spiritual

attitudes. For each soul should gain that understanding that whatever

may be the experience — if there is NOT resentment, if there is NOT

contention, if there is NOT the giving of offense — it is then for that

soul's own understanding, and will build within the consciousness of

the soul itself that which may bring the greater understanding of the

spiritual in the physical body."