Prayers and effects on health and diseases?

As a health care professional, this article published in Christianity Today website this month (May 2009) is very interesting to me.

In this article, the authors looked at the effects of Christian prayers on the health and disease outcomes of patients.

Click here to read the article:
http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2009/may/27.43.html?start=1

What the authors did were to analyze many of the studies that had been done before; and I am surprised that there are so many studies on such issue! Click here to view a table of some of the studies analyzed by the authors:
http://home.comcast.net/~gregfung/summarytable.html

From that table itself, you can see the effects of prayers from many of these studies were at best, inconclusive; with some favored positive outcomes after patients received prayers; others no; still others - negative effects!

This article is a real honest discourse, and its findings may surprise you. It is worth your time to read.

What I've learned personally from this article is that: let's treat prayers with a sense of reverence and awe, remembering we are entering into conversation with the Holy God.

Let's not treat prayers as some sort of magical wand that you swing around and zap! you got your desired results. That's plain selfishness.

Let's not treat God as a vending machine as alluded in the article.

Let's not be presumptuous and let's be very very careful of what you promise to your patients, to your relatives, to your friends!

Let's not reduce prayers into some sort of formula or routine to be chanted.

Let's treat prayers with some degree of mysticism, knowing that God cannot be fully known by our limited human understanding. Our God is a sovereign God, and He does what He pleases. Let's be careful lest we elevate our position to a little god, usurping His throne in our hearts.

In the very first place, I personally don't agree with some of these studies, especially in the STEP study as described in the article. I don't agree the way the study was conducted - randomizing some patients to receive prayers, with some do not. As an evangelical Christian, that's ethically not right; no one should be deprived of prayers. This study should not have been done at all.

As described in the article, God cannot be subjected into scientific research.

C.S. Lewis, as described in the article, said it quite humorously:
"Simply to say prayers is not to pray; otherwise a team of properly trained parrots would serve as well as men for our experiment."

In conclusion, I echo what the authors said:

"In all this, we discover that our obsession with whether prayer works is the wrong question. We know prayer works. The real question is, are we prepared for God's answer?"

For those who like intellectual treatise, you can also go to the authors webpage where they described in more details some of the articles that they have analyzed (but that's more technical). Click here:
http://www.intercessoryprayerstudies.com/

Enjoy your reading.

20 Ways To Wake Up Your Quiet Time

This article is from http://www.navpress.com/magazines/archives/article.aspx?id=1.103.9

20 Ways To Wake Up Your Quiet Time
Pam Farrel

Behind closed doors, many of us yawn through our quiet times. Somehow, our routine time with god slowly and quietly degenerates into a boring, predictable rut. As spiritual cataracts grow over our sleepy eyes, we may grow disinterested and frustrated. Such seasons demand a fresh view of the creator. Like any good relationship, quiet times with god need a little variety. Instead of rolling over and hitting the snooze button, try one of these ideas for your next quiet time.

Note: Below are the few that I find helpful. For full article, click on the link above to access the article.

WRITE A LETTER TO GOD about your life. Give it to a friend to mail hack to you in three months. In the letter, talk to God about the areas of your life that are bothering you. Write about how you'd like to grow and what attribute of His you'd like to see more clearly.

WRITE OUT AND PERSONALIZE Scripture by inserting your name into promises relevant to your life or current struggles. For example, I would personalize Ps. 84:11 in this way: "No good thing does God withhold from Pam when she walks uprightly." Many of the Bible's promises come to life and seem more powerful and relevant when personalized in this way Spend some time meditating and praying over verses that you personalize. I once copied a set of verses and strung them together as a personalized love letter from God's heart to my own. I have it framed and hanging in my room. Those personalized verses help me keep a trig view of God.

GO ON A PRAISE WALK. Thank God for everything you see. Take the opportunity to look closely at God's creation, praising Him for His creativity and the beauty of the world He's crafted. After hiking for a while, find a quiet spot to read one of the many psalms that describe His creation. Isaiah 40 and Genesis 1 are two other chapters that will help you focus your heart and mind on God's creative character.
SPEND YOUR ENTIRE TIME WITH GOD SINGING and praising Him. Church hymnals and books of choruses are great resources to enliven your quiet time with personal worship. You might even try creating a song of your own!WRITE OUT a Phil. 4:8 list. What is lovely to you, worthy of praise, excellent, etc.? Hang the list in a place where you tend to be grumpy, such as above the washer and dryer or on the dashboard of your car for that frustrating commute!

PRAY IN A POSTURE you don't normally use. Try praying on your knees, prone, or standing with your face to the heavens and your hands raised in worship. It's amazing how simply changing your posture before God can change your attitude and help you experience Him in new ways.

PRAISE JESUS FROM A TO Z. For example, "Jesus, You are amazing ... Jesus, You are beautiful...." This activity will challenge you to think deeply about who Jesus is and why you love and serve Him. As you praise Jesus using each letter of the alphabet, spend some time meditating on each word you use to describe Him. Thinking deeply about Him is more important than racing through each letter of the alphabet as fast as you can.

WRITE OUT YOUR PRAYERS TO JESUS. You might write them in a journal, or purchase special stationery for these precious letters, as you might do if you were sending a letter to someone you have fallen deeply in love with. At the end of the letter, sign your name, just as you would a normal letter. Something powerful and deeply intimate happens when you record your thoughts and prayers in a letter to Jesus.
REREAD THE NOTES OF THE SERMON from the previous week. If your pastor is doing a series and you know what Scriptures he'll be addressing next, read ahead in the passage to be covered next Sunday. This will prepare you to think more deeply and listen better during the next sermon, as well as helping you remember and apply truth. Find a verse in the text that has helped you grow, and write a note to your pastor thanking him for his sermon and insight on the passage.

READ YOUR FAVORITE HYMN. Spend some time meditating about each of the hymn's verses and its overall message. Find the passage in the Bible that the hymn was based upon, and think about how the hymn describes and reflects that truth. Spend some time researching how and why the hymn was composed. What were the circumstances? Your pastor or worship leader might know about a particular hymn's origin. Your Christian bookstore may also carry books that detail the history of certain hymns. If you're able to locate such information, think about how the hymn reflects the author's response to God during his or her circumstances.

SPEND A PERIOD OF TIME FASTING from food, TV, or a hobby to spend more time with God. If you're able, combine your fast with a day at a quiet retreat center, the beach, the mountains, or even tucked away in a library to reflect upon God's Word and His hand in your life.

HAVE A QUIET TIME WITH ONE OF YOUR CHILDREN or grandchildren. This would probably include reading a passage from the Bible out loud. You can give children a powerful peek into your relationship with Christ by inviting them to share your regular time with God. As you ask them questions about what they see in the passage, you'll teach them to think more deeply about God's Word. Their responses and observations may surprise you, stretch you, and enrich your own perspective.

WRITE ABOUT YOUR RELATIONSHIP WITH GOD from a different point of view. Think about how someone else would describe your walk. For example, my teen son might say, "My mom has a radical walk with Jesus. She really got pegged (convicted) by this verse." Several friends from the mission field explained how this activity helped them communicate the parable of the sower to the tribe they worked with. In their translation work, they described the seed that grew as the one that fell on "mulchy" soil. In that tribe, the best heart is one that resembles a compost pile. When you consider your walk and God's Word from the perspective of another, you will think differently, cross cultural barriers, and gain a fresh view of god.

MEMORIZE ONE OF THE PRAYERS of the Bible, such a Mary's prayer in Lk. 1:46–55. Then act the prayer out as a soliloquy.

WRITE OUT A LIST of theological questions you'd like answered. Choose one and begin researching it. "God, what is in your heart toward women?" was a question I had that led me on an exhaustive study of all the women in the Bible, and all the verses with the words woman and women in them.

ABIDING DAILY

Remember, the purpose of all these ideas is to enhance your relationship with God and your intimacy with Him during your quiet time. The goal is to abide ever more in Him. As Fern Nichols, the founder of Moms In Touch, says, " If you seek to abide in the vine daily, you never know what day He might choose to change you life forever." Enjoy the adventure!