Prayer, Faith & Healing: Cure Your Body, Heal Your Mind, and Restore Your Soul

Part I

Prayer Power

Science Finds God

FAITH HAS THE POWER TO HEAL

A traffic accident leaves Kim Shipley of Exeter, California, battered, in a coma, and close to death. As she is wheeled into surgery, her parents and friends pray in the hospital waiting room. Within minutes, Shipley’s bleeding stops and her vital signs stabilize. Three months later, she is well enough to tour with her school choir.

Just four months old, Caedon Sawabi of Ware, Massachusetts, is diagnosed with a rare disorder that leaves him nearly blind in his right eye. His mother brings him to a priest, who lays hands on the child and prays. A warm, peaceful feeling flows through her. Later, an eye specialist’s tests reveal that his sight has been restored.

While recovering from heart bypass surgery, church choir member James Earl Martin develops a respiratory problem so severe that he needs a machine to help him breathe. Weeks in the hospital turn into months. Yet at every Wednesday night church service, friends pray for the recovery of the Louisville, Kentucky, resident. Finally, one week, as Martin listens to a special tape that his beloved choir made for him, tears roll down his cheeks and he begins to heal. A few weeks later, he is released from the hospital. Seven months later, he’s back singing in the choir.

Stories like these of miraculous healing from life-threatening problems are fascinating, but the skeptic within us wonders: Does God really answer prayers for our health or for the health of the ones we love? Or even the stranger in the next pew?

For years, scientists and researchers have wondered, too. The answer building quietly over the past three decades is a resounding yes. Of the hundreds of studies conducted to explore the health rewards of prayer and faith, 70 to 80 percent show a benefit. That’s more evidence than scientists have supporting the benefits of vitamin C as a treatment for the common cold.

In fact, studies show that religious folks who attend church regularly and practice what they believe:

• Have lower blood pressure

• Have lower cancer rates

• Are less likely to be addicted to alcohol or drugs

• Are more likely to survive major surgery

• Are less likely to experience depression or commit suicide

• Are better able to cope with chronic disease

• Live longer

Perhaps even more amazing, in certain cases, lack of religious belief has been found to be as bad for our health as smoking and drinking.

When you sum up all of the research, you find that faith is actually a highly beneficial factor, surprisingly beneficial, says David B. Larson, M.D., president of the National Institute of Healthcare Research in Rockville, Maryland, an organization that has systematically explored and, with its fellows, published many of the studies linking faith and health.

Like any body of research, there is some variety in the quality of the studies that are done, but there are a significant number of good studies in this area, and the evidence is growing all the time, says Dale A. Matthews, M.D., associate professor of medicine at Georgetown University School of Medicine in Washington, D.C., and author of The Faith Factor.

In fact, the question now isn’t whether religion is good for us, it’s which faith factor is helping people live healthier and longer. Is it prayer? Church attendance? Strong belief in God? A healthier lifestyle inspired by faith?

While all are good for us, the most up-to-date research seems to show that church attendance and how much strength and comfort you obtain from your religious beliefs pack the most health benefits, says Dr. Matthews. I think that one can have substantial confidence that there is a genuine medical benefit in sincere religious commitment.

The Old Testament encourages making your case based on a solid foundation, says Dr. Larson. We have a rock on which to build when it comes to the research on religious commitment. We need follow-up studies on the value of using religion to cope: how it prevents illness, how it can improve treatment outcomes, and how it helps people with serious and chronic medical illness.

The Test That Set the Standard

One of the earliest studies demonstrating the connection between faith and healing—and the study that galvanized the scientific discussion of the power of prayer—took place at San Francisco General Hospital between 1982 and 1983. As 393 patients entered the hospital’s cardiac care unit, Randolph C. Byrd, M.D., a cardiologist there at the time and lead researcher on this study, divided them into two groups. Each patient in one group would receive intercessory prayer (offered to help others) from three to seven born-again Christians with an active Christian life as manifested by daily devotional prayer and an active fellowship with a local church. Patients in the other group would not be prayed for.

Dr. Byrd then went a step further: He made sure that no one involved in the study knew which patients were being bathed in intercessory prayer. The only people who knew were the born-again Christians, and they conducted their prayers outside of the hospital with only the patient’s first name, diagnosis, general condition, and a request to pray for their rapid recovery and freedom from complications.

After their operations, those patients who received intercessory prayer had less congestive heart failure (8 versus 20), needed less antibiotic therapy (3 versus 17), had fewer episodes of pneumonia (3 versus 13), and had fewer cardiac arrests (3 versus 14).

Additionally, when rating the patients’ success in recovering from their operations, doctors observed that 163 in the prayed-for group had a good recovery, versus 147 in the other group. Two in the prayer group had an intermediate recovery versus 10 in the other group. And 27 in the prayer group did poorly while 44 of the others had a poor recovery.

The study wasn’t without flaws. Dr. Byrd couldn’t manage the amount of praying that the patients, their families, or others did for their recovery. Nor did the study account for such things as the fact that patients received care from many doctors, who could have prescribed different amounts of medication, tests, and procedures that could have affected the patients health. However, even with its flaws, the test results were startling enough to spawn a wealth of studies on prayer research that continues today.

The Trouble with Humans

The biggest problem with studying the impact of prayer on real live people is just that—humans are involved. And humans have a tendency to be unpredictable and to think for themselves. For instance, the sicker people get, the more likely that they or their friends and family are to pray, notes prayer researcher Larry Dossey, M.D., author of Healing Words, which is used as a textbook in many medical schools, and Prayer Is Good Medicine. That can invalidate a study if the person praying for himself is part of a control group that is not supposed to be receiving any prayer.

Intriguingly, Dr. Dossey says, the most conclusive studies of the power of prayer do not involve people as the recipients but, rather, animals, seedlings, fungi, and blood cells.

That’s because it’s much easier to control the variables when dealing with simpler life forms, says Dr. Dossey. In the case of prayer experiments with animals and seedlings and so forth, we can be relatively certain that they aren’t praying for themselves or each other. We can be relatively sure that they have no personal interest in the outcome of the experiment. And we can control how they are prayed for, and exactly the type of condition that is inflicted upon them.

Dr. Dossey notes that another medical doctor, Daniel J. Benor, M.D., a psychiatrist, surveyed all studies of spiritual healing that were published before 1990. Most involved nonhuman subjects. Dr. Benor located 131 such studies. In 56 of them, the possibility of chance producing the positive results reported were less than 1 in 100, says Dr. Dossey. In another 21 studies, the possibility of chance producing the positive results was between 2 and 5 in 100. That’s a pretty convincing body of proof for spiritual healing. Dr. Benor defined spiritual healing as the intentional influence of one or more people upon another living system without utilizing known physical means of intervention.

Here are details from Dr. Dossey of three fascinating studies.

• Ten people tried to retard the growth of fungus cultures simply by concentrating on them with that intent in mind, while observing them from 11⁄2 yards. Of 194 cultures so tested, 78 percent experienced inhibited growth. In a replication of the study, people were able to inhibit the growth at distances of from 1 to 15 miles from the fungus cultures.

• Sixty people—not known healers—were able, through focused intent, to both stimulate and inhibit the growth rate of bacteria cultures.

• In an experiment with barley seeds, half were watered with saltwater, which is known to retard their growth. Then a spiritual healer held the saltwater for 15 minutes, and the remaining seeds were watered with the blessed saltwater. Those seeds germinated significantly more quickly.

The Byrd study was groundbreaking. Not perfect, because no study ever is, but it was revolutionary, says Dr. Matthews. It’s the one that everyone attacks or defends—the gold standard by which every other study of this kind is measured.

Healing Crippled Hands

Inspired by Dr. Byrd’s heart surgery research, Dr. Matthews launched a prayer study of his own—with a twist or two—but with equally intriguing results.

Forty people with painful rheumatoid arthritis received 12 hours of what was called intercessory prayer ministry by Christian Healing Ministries of Jacksonville, Florida, over a three-day period. The people spent 6 hours in educational lectures learning about the nature of healing and divine intervention and obstacles to healing, such as lack of forgiveness, emotional trauma, and spiritual oppression. The other 6 hours were devoted to what’s called laying on of hands in soaking prayer, meaning that several intercessors placed their hands on the people and prayed for them for prolonged periods. Half of those who received intercessory prayer ministry didn’t receive it right away; they served as a waiting list control group for the others.

Like Dr. Byrd’s study, 19 of those with arthritis also received, unbeknownst to them, six months of daily intercessory prayer. The difference is that the folks who volunteered to pray for the people with arthritis were located in different cities.

The results showed that the amount of pain, impairment, and joint swelling and tenderness were all significantly decreased in those who received the 12 hours of intercessory prayer ministry, according to Dr. Matthews. However, there was no additional benefit from the distant daily prayer beyond the effects achieved by the laying on of hands.

Faith: A Cure for the Heart

It may not be as spectacular as healed hearts or hands, but there’s good evidence that frequent church attendance or viewing religion as very important can cut our risk of heart disease and stroke. How? By literally lowering blood pressure.

At least that was the conclusion of a study involving 407 men in Evans County, Georgia. On average, the men who frequently attended church had blood pressure levels that were several points lower than those who didn’t. The biggest and most startling difference was that smokers who didn’t find religion important had 4.3 times the risk for high blood pressure as smokers who did. Those over age 55 who didn’t attend church at all were also at greater risk.

What accounts for the difference? One view is that faith helps religious people avoid anger—in particular, the hostility, or fits of rage that might send others’ blood pressure and stress levels soaring.

It looks like faith really does allow you to slow down your response and, in a way of speaking, count to ten, says Dr. Larson. When it comes to stress, people of faith seem more willing to think about what they’re doing before they act. They’re less likely to rush to judgment—which may not be so good for your stress or blood pressure levels. We’re talking about improved coping skills that come with the mindset of faith.

There’s another bonus: Active church members lean not only on God in tough times but also on fellow members. Let’s say that I have a need tonight. If I call the people in my church and say, ‘Will you do this for me?’ they’ll come and help, says Dr. Larson. Most people don’t have that type of resource, especially men. We don’t have people willing to help us when we need the social support.

And it’s not just a matter of social support. Most blood pressure studies that examine religion and blood pressure show a benefit, says Dr. Matthews. Among them, research that explored the health of members of devout religious groups like Baptist clergy, Seventh Day Adventists and Mormons—people who shun substances that have been linked to higher blood pressure such as meat, alcohol, cigarettes, and coffee. Some will say that’s just evidence that a strict diet provides health benefits, says Dr. Matthews, to which my answer would be yes, but it’s the religious commitment that encourages that lifestyle. Some wouldn’t be (that way) if their religions weren’t driving the lifestyles. So I would still look at this as a religious effect, even though it’s an indirect one.

The Power of the Sunday Effect

Would dragging ourselves out of bed on Sunday morning be any easier if we knew that regular worship wasn’t just good for our hearts, souls, and minds, but for our overall health as well? Studies that involved some of the 91,900 residents surveyed in Washington County, Maryland, suggests that it probably would be. The studies found that those people who go to church once or more a week have significantly fewer deaths from coronary artery disease and other health problems like cirrhosis of the liver and emphysema. Among men between the ages of 45 and 64 who go to church less frequently than once a week, the risk for heart disease was 40 percent higher. Among women of the same age who also attend church less than once a week, the risk for heart disease was about 50 percent higher.

Start Your Own Prayer Group

Want to start a prayer group in your neighborhood, with your friends at work, or in your church? The first step is to pray about it, suggests the Reverend Paul F. Everett of Pittsburgh, a Presbyterian minister at large with the Peale Center in Pawling, New York, and executive director emeritus of the Pittsburgh Experiment, a national and international ministry to the business and working communities. Pray that you will be led to someone, or that someone will be led to you, who has a similar concern, he says. When you meet that person, the two of you should pray that others will join you, he advises. Two is enough to begin a group. He suggests these steps for developing an effective group.

Seek prayer partners. Place notices in the church bulletin, on community bulletin boards, in the local paper, and anywhere else where people who might be interested in the group would see it.

Set a meeting time and place. Will you meet in a restaurant at noon? In your home Thursday evenings? In a chapel? Will the meeting last one hour or longer?

Make everyone feel welcome. You want to establish a simple, nonthreatening, interdenominational format that encourages members to participate and to invite friends, advises Reverend Everett. It is helpful, he says, if the founders of the group take a moment to explain the purpose of the group and its format at the outset of each meeting, introduce visitors, and explain to them that they may participate or pass as they choose. Then he recommends this format: Share, taking turns, allowing all members to tell what God has done in their lives since the last meeting. Ask each person to introduce himself and either speak or pass. Anyone may pass at any time. All the person has to do is say, I pass. After everyone has shared, then go around again, allowing members to pray for their own and each other’s needs. Again, anyone may pass, simply by saying amen, says Reverend Everett.

Reverend Everett has helped start and has been involved in hundreds of such groups. He says that the ones that are most effective are those that concentrate on sharing and discussing experiences and praying for one another’s needs, rather than trying to promote or debate theological doctrine.

In my 30 years with these groups, none of them ever got into theology, he says. That wasn’t the purpose. Our purpose was to be with each other, to minister to each other, and to grow in our experience of God. We weren’t dealing with doctrinal issues.

Investigators suspect that churchgoers develop greater self-control and probably exercise more. And that, in turn, means less of the kind of acting-out behaviors, like drinking and smoking, that can wreak havoc with our health, says Dr. Larson. In some ways, this research is quite important, and it came out at a time when people were thinking that ‘organized religion’ doesn’t do any good.

The Bible’s Impact on AIDS

While treatments for AIDS have steadily improved over the years, allowing those with the virus to live significantly longer and more active lives, getting an AIDS diagnosis can still produce feelings of fear and despair. But a Yale University study found that AIDS patients who read the Bible often or regularly attended church had reduced fear of death and were better able to cope with symptoms of their condition.

Of 90 people with AIDS who were interviewed for the study, 98 percent said that they believed in a divine being called God. Sixty-nine percent of them prayed daily, 45 percent attended church weekly or monthly, and 26 percent read the Bible daily or weekly. Eighty-two percent of those with HIV-positive illness agreed that belief in God helped when thinking about death. But it was those who read their Bibles and went to church regularly who were significantly less fearful of death. Those who believed in God’s forgiveness or who had more advanced disease were also more willing to talk about crucial end-of-life decisions such as whether they should be given life support. The study did not investigate whether the more devout lived longer.

Bible reading and church attendance apparently provided a degree of emotional and social support to help reduce the fears about death that the people with HIV and AIDS may have felt, says Dr. Larson. Now that probably comes as a surprise, he says. All these years, we’ve thought that religion makes us more uptight and anxious. And yet people with a severe medical illness were less afraid of death. Why? I think because the heart of the real message of the church and the Bible that they were experiencing is forgiveness through Christ.

Faith and Immunity

Since a weakened immune system can cause so many different health problems—not just diseases associated with AIDS—a slight improvement can be a very good thing. But could improved immunity be linked to Bible reading and warming a pew on Sunday? The answer, according to one study, is yes, to a small degree. Researchers at Duke University Medical Center took blood samples from 1,718 volunteers age 65 or older to look for chemicals associated with enhanced immunity. They found that the older adults who frequently attended religious services had slightly healthier immune systems, providing some support for the theory that participation in a religion makes us healthier.

The study points out that a person’s immune system may function less effectively as a person ages, contributing to a variety of infections and diseases, including AIDS, cancer, heart disease, high blood pressure, and osteoporosis.

A lot of experts have been talking about the importance of looking at chemically measurable factors in these kinds of studies, says Dr. Larson. This one does, and we need to do more.

Secret Prayer Speeds Healing

Clearly, much good comes from a religious life, but our prayers also have power, scientists say, even when the people we pray for aren’t aware of our prayers.

Prayer done in secret—without patients’ or doctors’ knowledge—remarkably sped the healing of patients’ wounds in a study investigating several forms of spiritual healing. The 44 participants in this study were told that they were taking part in a test of a new medical device that measured the bioelectrical conductivity of wounds. A medical doctor took a skin biopsy from the arm of each patient to create identical full-skin-thickness surgical wounds. Then daily, for five minutes, each patient placed the wounded arm through a hole in a wall, where the wounds were supposedly measured by the new medical device.

But there was no such device. Instead, when 23 of the patients extended their arms through the hole, a spiritual-healing practitioner prayerfully, mentally communicated healing to the patient. When the other 21 patients poked their arms through the hole, no one was in the room.

None of the patients knew that any type of healing treatment was taking place. The doctor examining the patients did not know which patients were receiving spiritual healing treatments and which were not.

At specific intervals, over about three weeks, a doctor traced an outline of each wound, which technicians—also unaware of which patients were being treated—digitized for computer comparisons. This is considered an extremely accurate measure of wound healing.

On day 8, the wounds of the patients treated with spiritual healing were significantly smaller than those of the untreated group. By day 16, 13 of the 23 treated patients were completely healed—they had no wounds at all—while no one in the untreated group was healed.

This was a small, scientifically well done study that positively demonstrates the power of prayerful intent, at least on wound healing, says prayer researcher Larry Dossey, M.D., author of Healing Words, which is used as a textbook in many medical schools, and Prayer Is Good Medicine.

Preparing for Surgery with Prayer

By the time we need an operation, especially heart surgery, we want to know that skilled hands are holding the scalpel. But two studies show that patients aren’t leaving the results solely up to some guy with an advanced degree in a scrub suit.

Just one day before 100 heart patients were to go to the operating room, researchers from the U.S. Air Force Nurses Corps, the University of Alabama at Birmingham, and UAB School of Nursing posed this question: Have you used prayer to prepare for cardiac surgery? Ninety-six said that they had.

What’s more, on a scale of 1 (not helpful at all) to 15 (extremely helpful), 94 of the faithful rated their prayers a 9 or higher, and 70 gave prayer a 15. One person who used prayer did not believe that prayer could be rated on a scale of value.

What this shows is that before a bypass operation, nearly everyone in this group prayed, says Dr. Larson. And about three-quarters of them say that prayer is what got them through it, not necessarily the very well trained surgeons. The doubting Thomases out there will say, ‘Okay, that’s nice. That’s quaint. Nearly everyone going into surgery in this study prayed. So what?’

Although the Air Force Nurse’s study doesn’t tell us about the outcome of the operations, a similar study population was investigated at Dartmouth Medical School, and this study answers the so what? questions with good news for the believers and not-so-good news for nonbelievers.

Dartmouth researchers found that among 232 people over age 55 who underwent heart surgery, those who found no strength or comfort from religion and did not participate in any group activities, such as church supper groups, a senior center, or historical society, were three to four times more likely to die after heart surgery than those who did either. In fact, none of the 37 people who considered themselves deeply religious died within six months after surgery. Even infrequent churchgoers didn’t fare too badly: Only 5 percent of them passed away over the same time period.

The news wasn’t as good for those who considered themselves much less religious: 21 of them passed away within six months. Four of the deaths occurred during surgery, 5 happened within 24 hours of surgery, 6 occurred in the hospital within three weeks, 5 occurred after discharge but within 3 months of surgery, and one patient who also had lung cancer died 5 months later.

The results of this study show that religion has some benefit, according to the researchers. They suggest that if further research backed up their findings, it might make sense for doctors to counsel patients on group participation and religious involvement as regularly as they advise them about cigarette smoking and high blood pressure.

A study like this has important implications. Even if you have the best surgeons and surgery, if you’re afraid, or don’t have the social supports, you may be at risk, says Dr. Larson. When confronting serious illness, you can feel like you’re all alone. You need to be able to say, ‘My life is in God’s hands’ or ‘I have people praying for me.’ My experience is that committed people are frequently much more at peace. And that peace can be beneficial.

Replacing Broken Hearts with Hope

While a heart bypass or valve replacement is certainly no medical walk in the park, few operations are fraught with the same level of peril as a heart transplant. From the stress created by the delay and wait for an available organ to the continuing deterioration of the existing heart to possible rejection of the donated organ, there is much to worry about, if not pray about.

A study of 40 heart transplant recipients at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center found that those with strong beliefs who were involved in religious activities after their transplants had better physical and emotional health and were more likely to comply with their doctors’ instructions than those who weren’t interested in God.

The researchers made the discovery after asking recipients about their faith and health at intervals of 2 months, 7 months, and 12 months after their operations. Those who were more likely to report better physical health by the end of 12 months were patients who felt that their beliefs exerted greater influence over their lives and who consulted God to make important decisions.

Not only that, but transplant recipients who attended religious services frequently were less worried about their health and had higher self-esteem than those who attended less often or who weren’t religious.

This is similar to what we’ve found in studies of patients with cancer and those undergoing dialysis, says Dr. Larson. Faith seems to become more important when someone has severe illness. It gets them through the hard times. They not only seem to cope better but they are also more satisfied with their lives and have higher self-esteem. You don’t want to get depressed when you have severe illness. You don’t want patients worrying. During a transplant, the doctors have already limited your immune functioning so that you don’t reject your new organ. So when you are dealing with severe illness or major surgery, you can’t afford additional stress—it further weakens the immune system.

Coping with Cancer

It’s probably no surprise that committed members of religious groups who avoid meat, alcohol, smoking, and coffee have lower cancer rates than the general U.S. population. That includes breast and prostate cancer, two of the most common.

But what if we’re diagnosed with cancer? What good is our faith then? A study that investigated the emotions of 147 women, ranging in age from 40 to 70, in various stages of gynecologic cancer and benign gynecologic disease found that nearly all of them drew life-sustaining hope from their faith.

When asked how religious experiences had affected the way they dealt with their illnesses, 93 percent of the women said that religion helped them sustain hope. What’s more, more than half felt that they had become more religious since being diagnosed. And these were women who already knew their way around a hymnal. Eighty-five percent said that they had some connection with organized religion, and just over three-fourths indicated that religion has a serious place in their lives.

Like the Air Force Nurses Corps heart study, This research shows that when people have severe illnesses where their lives are at risk, there’s an increase in the role that religion can play, says Dr. Larson. The implications are that (health professionals) really need to recognize the importance of the patient’s religion or spirituality when dealing with such disease.

People with more advanced cancer have an even tougher challenge: sustaining faith while death closes in. Yet one study shows that among terminally ill patients, those who attended church most frequently were more satisfied with life, happier, and better able to control their pain.

Although this particular study didn’t show that survival rates improved, it did find less pain and better well-being, says Dr. Larson. Certainly, when you have emotional problems or when you’re not doing so well, you’re not getting enough sleep, you’re feeling down, and you’re feeling alone, guess what happens? The pain feels worse than for those who feel better about life.

Faith That Heals

Of course, folks probably shouldn’t expect to see long-term health benefits by showing up at a church-sponsored potluck dinner as if it were some networking opportunity. If you’re only using your religion to obtain better health or money or status, you’re actually making religion subservient to another goal, which is that of serving yourself and your own health, says Dr. Matthews. The goal of faith is to become close to God, to seek God’s face. If that is our deepest intention, there may be this wonderful by-product of an authentic searching for God: better health.

Why Faith Heals

THE 12 FAITH FACTORS

Believers know it. Solid medical studies show it. But why does faith help prevent and heal health problems? A growing number of medical experts believe that they’ve traced the answer to a unique collection of factors that are as powerful and as vital to our emotional and physical health as certain foods, nutrients, and exercise.

In fact, research shows that no fewer than 12 aspects of faith may help deliver healing benefits—a package of all-natural health boosters that complements the medicine chest of prescription drugs, says psychiatrist and prayer researcher Dale A. Matthews, M.D., associate professor of medicine at Georgetown University School of Medicine in Washington, D.C., and author of The Faith Factor. Among the faith factors that Dr. Matthews and others have identified are the following:

Social support: From friends bringing over meals when we’ve lost a loved one, to strangers who pray for us when they hear that we’re in the hospital, it’s hard to match the social support that church membership provides. People who have a strong religious commitment are more connected to each other, says Dr. Matthews. The Bible tells us to love our neighbors as ourselves. And we can’t really do that if we aren’t involved in other people’s lives.

Temperance. Needless to say, most faiths take a pretty dim view of drunkenness, sexual immorality, smoking, even overeating—all documented risk factors for illness and disease. The Bible, for example, encourages us to treat our bodies as a temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 6:19 NKJV), even suggesting that physical training is of some value. (1 Timothy 4:8 NIV) Although the main motivation of believers should be to grow in holiness and godliness, they often gain a secondary benefit: better health, says Dr. Matthews.

Serenity. Relationships falter. Jobs are lost. Health wanes. And as the pace of life quickens, we scramble to keep up. Such events subject us to incredible stress. Yet studies by Herbert Benson, M.D., associate professor and president of the Mind/Body Medical Institute at Harvard Medical School, have found that forms of meditation, including prayer, create something called the relaxation response, dramatically reducing the damaging effects of stress. While Dr. Benson believes that we can meditate on just about any single word or phrase to reap the benefits, believers can tap God’s comforting and specific promises from the Bible. A wonderful place to start is the book of Hebrews: I will never leave you nor forsake you. (Hebrews 13:5 NKJV) or the Gospel of Matthew: Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. (Matthew 11:28 NKJV)

The stress-buffering and immune-enhancing effects of meditative prayer techniques form one of the faith factor’s most powerful components, says Dr. Matthews.

Appreciation of beauty. A full moon on a warm, cloudless night. Soaring snowcapped vistas. Nearly everyone revels in nature’s beauty, and the faithful are reminded to look up and enjoy the view: The Heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament shows His handiwork. (Psalm 19:1 NKJV) What’s more, worship services, though ultimately designed to give glory to God, provide a feast for the senses. Dr. Matthews has found that profound, uplifting hymns, stained glass, and candlelight services all serve as art therapy to help revive our spirits.

Worship. Even if our church isn’t an ornate cathedral, we still benefit mightily from worship, says Everett L. Worthington, Ph.D., professor of psychology at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond and co-author of To Forgive Is Human. Through song, dance, uplifted hands, or silent prayer, worship bathes us in a variety of healing faith factors: ritual, social support, and beauty. Also, as we come to worship God alone, the stress of striving for things like money, sex, and power fade in importance, says Dr. Worthington.

Confession and starting over. Faith can drive us to make good on our guilt. Christian faith, for example, encourages us to confess our sins—no matter how bad we think they are—to a holy and loving God who is eager to forgive. The promise is that once we confess our sins, He’ll forgive us (1 John 1:9 NKJV), remove them as far as the east is from the west (Psalm 103:12 NKJV), and restore our fellowship with Him.

Prayer Pointers

Which patients are most likely to experience that very rare spontaneous remission of cancer? Is it those who:

• Give up, sink into gloom, and resign themselves to doom and death?

• Insist that they will beat the disease and curse it and fight it tooth and nail?

• Embrace it as a natural event in their lives?

• Deny their disease and believe that, because they do not accept it, their mind power or some metaphysical principle will cause it to go away?

The answer is complex, says prayer researcher Larry Dossey, M.D., author of Healing Words, which is used as a textbook in many medical schools, and Prayer Is Good Medicine. We really don’t know why any given case of cancer undergoes spontaneous cure, so there is no set formula for people to follow. But one effective coping strategy is to accept the disease as simply another life experience, make peace with the illness, and stay open to whatever life has to offer. With acceptance, we turn our focus to other, more positive endeavors and get on with living the most loving and helpful lives for whatever time we may have left.

Acceptance often involves a sense of spiritual connection and trust in the Divine. And spirituality almost always involves some form of prayer, which, many studies show, can also have positive effects in healing, says Dr. Dossey.

It’s tough to keep beating ourselves up about something if even God has forgiven us. Confession and forgiveness allow us to learn from our mistakes and sins and move on, rather then becoming unhealthfully preoccupied with our shortcomings, says Dr. Matthews.

The power of ritual. Research shows that religious rituals in and of themselves have health benefits. Whether we’re taking communion, saying the rosary, or repeating a familiar favorite prayer, such repetition, at minimum, provides comfort. Ritual can give us a sense of security, assuring us that we have reached a safe harbor in a stormy world, observes Dr. Matthews.

Hope. For years, doctors have talked about the placebo effect—the idea that some people get better just because they believe they’re taking something that will make them better. Rather than putting hope in a pill, those with deep faith believe that God has their best interests at heart regardless of their circumstances and that all things work together for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to his purpose. (Romans 8:28 NIV) We evoke the power of the placebo when we connect to a transcendent realm where our present worries pale in comparison to the wonder of God’s ultimate promises, explains Dr. Matthews.

Unity. Fast-paced life and fear of crime, among other things, have all but made the idea of community seem, well, quaint. Yet the Internet, perhaps one of the most isolating inventions of all time, is jammed with chat rooms—cyber meeting places where people of shared interests type questions and answers to one another. Why? It’s an opportunity to gather and communicate. The same qualities make faith a healing activity. We long to be with people like ourselves, who like what we like. But faith provides at least one other benefit that most clubs and hobbies probably don’t: We hold each other accountable. If my faith flags momentarily, my spiritual brothers and sisters will remind me of God’s promises and point me back to the tenets that we hold in common, observes Dr. Matthews.

Meaning. Imagine two cancer patients: One looks like he didn’t move from the chair next to his bed the entire weekend. He won’t talk. He doesn’t want to see the chaplain. The other is in for chemotherapy but is just as happy and positive and bright and alive as anyone you’ve seen in your life. I mean, her eyes are glittering. Her skin is shining. A smile busting out all over, says Dana E. King, M.D. associate professor in the department of family medicine at East Carolina University School of Medicine in Greenville, North Carolina. The difference? She has Jesus in her heart. Her life has meaning, says Dr. King. If the severity of their illness is equal, who would you guess will live longer?

Trust. Find a man or woman of deep faith and you’ve found someone who knows how to trust. No, these aren’t people who sit beside a river with an empty bucket and expect God to fill it. Rather, they’re people who do what they are able with the strength and ingenuity and desire that God gave them and then trust Him for the results. Such people probably don’t even know the meaning of the word of anxiety and, as a result, enjoy a sense of peace that is positively health-preserving, according to Dr. King.

Love. The awesome, healing power of love is probably best illustrated by what happens when we lose it, like the woman whose partner of 50 years dies. I’ve seen it far too many times, says Dr. King. She literally dies of a broken heart. No real physical causes.

Faith doesn’t make us immune to the pain of such loss. But it does shield us from some of the trauma because we’re reminded that God is near and His love will never fail. Such reminders might simply be a sweet assurance in our souls. But often, there are concrete examples of His love, like the kind acts of someone from our church family who constantly invites us over, refusing to allow us to be alone. And then, when we are able, we reach out to others.

Healing Faith

Yes, say the researchers, certain aspects of faith can help heal us, but there is one important point to keep in mind: It seems that to enjoy the full benefits of the 12 faith factors, we must do more than just warm a pew. We must grow in our faith. Mother Teresa was not religious because her greatest desire was to achieve better health, says Dr. Matthews. Her greatest desire was to worship and serve God. The people who seek to serve God, even though they are not looking specifically for better health, get the interesting by-product of better health. As Jesus says, Seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well." (Matthew 6:33 NIV)

What Is Prayer?

ACCEPTING THE GREAT MYSTERY

Prayer, most of us would agree, involves opening our hearts and communicating in some way with a greater presence and power. Often, we turn to prayer when seeking some change. And often, as we pray or afterward, we sense or see change taking place.

Maybe the change is simply that we are calmed or soothed while we pray. Maybe it is that we slowly or suddenly—perhaps in a dream or mid-conversation—gain a new outlook or perspective about a situation. Maybe a situation substantially changes after we pray about it. When any of those things happen, we feel that our prayers have been answered.

Prayer in its simplest form is empathic, loving, compassionate intentionality, explains prayer researcher Larry Dossey, M.D., author of Healing Words, which is used as a textbook in many medical schools, and Prayer Is Good Medicine. Prayer is a form of alignment with God.

Prayer is focusing on an intention, focusing on a desire, or focusing on resolution of a situation. Perhaps we state it silently or aloud or simply sense it or imagine it—in faith, believing that it, or what is best, will come to pass. Prayer is seeking an answer or simply seeking to be at one with God.

Most Americans think of prayer as talking out loud to a white male parent figure who prefers to be addressed in English, says Dr. Dossey. That definition, he says, is woefully inadequate. It does not allow for how broad and all-encompassing prayer can be, and it limits God.

Healing Words

Pieces of a Greater Spirit

There are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit.

There are differences of ministries, but the same Lord.

And there are diversities of activities, but it is the same God who works all in all.

But the manifestation of the Spirit is given to each one for the profit of all:

For to one is given the word of wisdom through the Spirit, to another the word of knowledge through the same Spirit,

To another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healings by the same Spirit,

To another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another discerning of spirits, to another different kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues.

But one and the same Spirit works all these things, distributing to each one individually as He wills.

For as the body is one and has many members, but all the members of that one body, being many, are one body, so also is Christ.

For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free—and have all been made to drink into one Spirit.

—1 Corinthians 12:4–13 NKJV

In fact, as Christians believing that there is only one God, we are free to pray to any aspect or representation of the Divine that we choose. We may call it higher power. We may find God in the beauty of nature. We may simply recognize God’s presence everywhere and allow that recognition to be a prayer in itself.

This teaching has been addressed for centuries by Christian mystics and by some of the great Catholic theologians. And it is biblical; the Bible teaches that God is omnipresent and almighty and holds all things together, as shown in the following verses: For of Him, and through Him, and to Him, are all things. . . . (Romans 11:36 KJV) "And He is before all things, and by him all things consist. (Colossians 1:17 KJV)

Making the Quantum Leap of Faith

By what mechanisms does prayer work? We don’t actually see our prayers being routed along some cosmic Internet. We don’t see all the connections made. We don’t see God—however we envision God—actually pushing buttons and pulling strings and rearranging scenery and manipulating events. We may choose to envision a prayerful desire or warmth actually beaming through time and space and reaching the person or thing that we hope to affect, but we don’t see this with our bare eyes. We accept that it happens. We believe that it happens. This belief is called faith. Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. (Hebrews 11:1 KJV)

But is there some way we can explain the cause and effect of prayer that goes beyond faith? One view of one aspect of God is of a huge, all-encompassing, all-knowing mind. What if some portion of each of our smaller, separate minds were plugged in to that great Divine Intelligence, much like wires plugged in to an old-fashioned telephone switchboard? What if all of our connections to that switchboard also connect us to one another, as with the old-time party line, and any of us can just pick up and listen in any time we wish?

That’s a simple image that conveys a concept of interconnectedness that cutting-edge physics and psychology are beginning to theorize, notes Dr. Dossey.

Across the Aisles

The Focused Power of Prayer

Prayer can heal. This is a belief that is common in religion. And nearly every world religion has prayer traditions that invoke the healing response, says Herbert Benson, M.D., associate professor of medicine and president of the Mind/Body Medical Institute at Harvard Medical School.

Dr. Benson discovered the healing effects of prayer while conducting research into the beneficial power of prayer, transcendental meditation, and other activities that heal. He refers to the healing effect as the relaxation response and the process of evoking it as focused thinking. While such terminology and rigorous laboratory experiments make this all sound cold and impersonal, this is not reducing prayer to a scientific or mechanistic view, says Dr. Benson. Rather, we see it as a reaffirmation of what people have been telling us for millennia: Prayer is good for you.

Two keys to producing the beneficial response, Dr. Benson discovered, are the repetition of a word, sound, prayer, thought, phrase, or muscular activity and the ability to return to the repeated words, sounds, or such when other thoughts intrude.

Sometimes as we relax into a prayerful state, we’ll find ourselves focusing on our breathing, says Dr. Benson. Or, we are trained to do that, as in the form of contemplative prayer taught by the Reverend Thomas Keating, a Trappist monk at Saint Benedict’s Monastery in Snowmass, Colorado, which is based on prayer practices of the first 16 centuries of the Church. The instruction given at that time, says Dr. Benson, was to "kneel and repeat on each out-breath the word Jesus as you experience the feeling of love."

Reciting the Rosary and centering prayer (a form of meditative, or contemplative, prayer) are examples of repetitive prayer, Dr. Benson notes. These types of prayer tend to most quickly render physical benefits.

When Dr. Benson surveyed world religions, he found that almost all teach some form of prayer that involves focusing on the breath or on some other repetition.

Laboratory experiments suggest that such an interconnectedness does exist, reports researcher Sperry Andrews, director of the Human Connection Institute in San Francisco, which is dedicated to such study. Experiments suggest that what one of us does or thinks or desires can have some effect on any or all of the rest of us.

When we view Bible teachings in the light of modern scientific understanding, we can see how there may well be a scriptural case for interconnectedness, for the concept that God the Almighty can be in each of us and link each of us.

As Jesus says, My prayer is not for them (the disciples) alone. I pray also for those who will believe in Me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as You are in Me and I am in You. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that You have sent Me. I have given them the glory that you gave Me, that they may be one as we are one. (John 17: 20–22 NIV)

As it is, there are many parts, but one body. . . . If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it. (1 Corinthians 12:20, 26 NIV)

Almost universally, when people think of prayer, they envision quieting or focusing the mind (and sometimes the body as well) and attempting to find a contact point with God somewhere within themselves. That contact point, or God place, may reside in the 80 to 95 percent of our consciousness that is beyond our awareness most of the time, suggests Dr. Dossey.

Prayer Works When You