The Power of Prayer

The Biology of Belief

Time magazine has come around this week- again, in publishing an article confirming the long-held relationship between prayer and healing. These secular purveyors of all stories that are fit to print found,"Here's what's surprising: a growing body of scientific evidence suggests that faith may indeed bring us health. People who attend religious services do have a lower risk of dying in any one year than people who don't attend. People who believe in a loving God fare better after a diagnosis of illness than people who believe in a punitive God. No less a killer than AIDS will back off at least a bit when it's hit with a double-barreled blast of belief. 'Even accounting for medications,' says Dr. Gail Ironson, a professor of psychiatry and psychology at the University of Miami who studies HIV and religious belief, 'spirituality predicts for better disease control."

Surprising? Not to God's children, who know that while His common grace extends to all His human creatures- believer and non-believer alike ("the rain falls on the just and the unjust"), we realize that He will respond particularly to the prayers of the saints to bring healing- physical and spiritual. The book of James tells us that "the effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much" (James 5:16). What may confuse some who read that passage in James, is the seeming guarantee of healing by prayer...you know like the ones helped along by cash contributions seen on certain TV networks. They quote the half-brother of Jesus verbatim; "Is anyone among you suffering? Let him pray. Is anyone cheerful? Let him sing praise. Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer of faith will save the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up. And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven (Ja. 5:13-15).

What the Bible does teach is that a prayer of faith and perseverance are the keys to healing and the acknowledgment that the healing comes FROM God and at times THROUGH man and medicine. Furthermore, God may not heal our loved one or ourselves when sick or immediately, because He is sovereignly working another or better plan for His glory and our- your good.