Positive Daily Inspiration
Today's Message:
PRAYER HAS THE POWER TO HEAL YOU, AND YOUR WORLD
“Do not fear, only believe.” Mark 5:36
For years, I have seen with my own eyes, prayer heal people of every kind of physical ailment and life problems. In Parade magazine, distributed in newspapers across the country, an article appeared a few years ago, which I agree with completely. It talked about how prayer can heal.
With funding from the National Institute of Health, investigators at Johns Hopkins are studying a group of women with breast cancer, who say a meditating prayer twice each day. At the University of Pennsylvania, neuroscientists are documenting changes in brain scans of meditating Tibetan Buddhists and praying nuns. At Baptist Memorial hospital in Memphis, patients are receiving a "prayer intervention" before and after bypass surgery.
A decade ago, this premise would have been called craziness. The National Institute of Health would not have reviewed a protocol with the word "prayer" in the title.
Medical acceptance has grown along with solid, scientific data of prayer's impact. Dr. Dale Matthews of Georgetown University, author of “The Faith Factor,” estimates that about 75 percent of studies of spirituality have confirmed solid health benefits.
"If prayer were available in a pill form, no pharmacy could stock enough of it," he says.
A six-year, Duke University study of 4,000 men and women of various faiths, all over the age of 64, found that the relative risk of dying was 46 percent lower for those who frequently attended religious services.
"Prayer – whether for oneself, or others – affects the quality, if not the quantity of life. It boosts morale, lowers agitation, loneliness and self-dissatisfaction and enhances the ability to cope in men, women, the elderly, the young, the healthy and the sick," says Dr. Harold Koenig, director of Duke University Center for the Study of Religion and Spirituality in Health. They have discovered that those who prayed regularly had significantly lower blood pressure than the less religious.
Those who attend religious services have healthier immune systems than those that did not.
Dartmouth Medical Center says that one of the best predictors of survival among 232 heart surgery patients was the degree to which they drew comfort and strength from their religious faith and prayer. AIDS patients, who became long-term survivors, are more likely to be those involved in religious practices and engaged in volunteer work. Several medical centers have shown prayer and faith to speed recovery from depression, alcoholism, hip surgery, drug addiction, stroke, rheumatoid arthritis, heart attacks and bypass surgery.
Dr. Andy Newberg of the University of Pennsylvania has documented changes in blood flow, in particular regions of the brain, during prayer and meditation.
"The evidence for the power of prayer is far too compelling to ignore, and not using prayer on behalf of my patients was the equivalent of withholding a needed medication or surgical procedure," says Dr. Larry Dossey (a personal friend of this writer) and author of “Healing Words” and “Prayer Is Good Medicine.”
At nine medical centers around the country, 750 patients with potentially life-threatening heart problems were recently subject to a randomized trial of the intercessory prayer. In the pilot study, prayer recipients had 50 to 100 percent fewer complications.
Simply put, those who pray stay healthier and live longer than those who do not. It prayer can promote healing in us, why not in our troubled world?
Rabbi Harold S. Kushner, author of “When Bad Things Happen to Good People,” composed this prayer that can be said by anyone, of any faith.
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POSITIVE DAILY PRAYER: | 
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