Healing Prayer and Medical Care

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Let us be drawn closer to You. You are the Vine, dear Lord and we are the branches. You carry all knowledge and all power. You Lord are our medicine. Your Words Lord are Truth and Life. Help us put our trust in You. You Lord are the greatest physician. You Lord are our Creator. You know our thoughts, our sighings and our cryings and every hair on our head.

You are Wonderful and make all good things for us. Heal us Lord, if it be Your will. Lord, Your scripture says that you heal all diseases and whoever believes in You will not perish but have an everlasting life. Strengthen me, Lord, in this time of illness. Sustain him as he lays sick in his bed. When You were on Earth, you did all things good and healed all kinds of sickness. You healed those who had diseases.

You died and rose for our sins and that we may have eternal life, Lord. I believe in my heart that You are here with us today and that with Your most holy power will remove all sicknesses and evils that roam the earth. Let it be done in Your glory, Lord. Most gracious and loving Father, I want to thank You for all the blessings Youve given me, my family and friends and all those I hold dear. Thank You Lord for giving me another day to see the beauty of your creations. You know the state of crisis that I am in now Lord. I want to be of use again to You, Lord.

In the time of my hospitalization, You Lord remain as my rock and my anchor.

Renew My Mind, Body and Soul

Almighty Father, Thank you for your love, grace and mercy. I pray that my discomforts will turn to comforts, my pains to gains, my deprivation to more blessings, my losses to profits, my tear to smiles, my sorrows to pleasures, my illness to wellness, my debts to credits and my dreams to realities. I trust in you Lord and in you alone to heal me with any form of skepticism towards blessing that you will be employed upon me.

I trust, Lord, that this agony and suffering that is only in my head, will come to end and positivism will shine upon me as I read, hear, study and preach the truth in the Bible. For he wounds, but he binds up; he shatters, but his hands heal. The fervent prayer of a righteous man is effective and has great strength.

Often times, it is good to look towards the scriptures for truth and understanding of this world. Click here to read more bible verses about Healing or Life. My high school counselor was frantic because I was losing opportunities for scholarships. In February of my senior year, my pastor preached a sermon in which he said that God can call people into jobs and professions that were not necessarily related to the church. This idea that God had a "purpose" for my life was novel in But, it impressed me and I knelt and prayed that God would reveal to me the purpose and future for my life.

I totally surrendered to whatever God wanted me to do. I can only describe the following event as truly supernatural and miraculous.

I had the incredible certainty that I was supposed to be a doctor. This was never on my list of professions and not only was I certain this is what God wanted me to do, I had incredible peace from my decision.

In the months that followed, God worked in ways I could never attribute to man to get me into a special "six year" program that guaranteed me entrance into medical school only 10 people in the nation were accepted each year and to supply a way to pay for my entire education through the end of medical school. I can now tell patients that God called me to be a physician and gave me the tools to complete my education. So, if I am called by God to be a doctor, then isn't it possible that I may be the answer to their prayer? My point is that God and God alone equips us with the intellect and the thirst to explore science that leads to medical breakthroughs.

If God does this, then by extension, doctors, nurses, and all health care personnel are God's answers to these prayers. Christians should not rely solely upon prayer to treat diseases that are reliably treated through modern medicine. This doesn't mean that we don't pray for the sick. When Christian parents let a child die from a disorder that is readily treatable by modern medicine, it says to the world that we are stupid and uncaring. However, since God calls certain individuals to serve others through medicine, aren't those people really an answer to our prayers?

Next, no attempt was made to compare for unusual biases, such as day of admission and discharge.

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It is conceivable, for example, that patients admitted toward the end of the week may have been investigated and treated more slowly and those due for discharge toward the end of the week may have been retained until the start of the next week. Importantly, considering the number of patients in each group, there must surely have been much overlap in first names.

Did Leibovici consider the possibility that the prayers, then, could benefit patients in both groups to the extent of overlap? Finally, in a lighter vein, would the findings have changed had the author, in the best spirits of ethical research, offered the experimental intervention prayer for the control group at the conclusion of the study?

More seriously, because the data were retrospective, it should have been possible for the study to have been repeated several times, with fresh randomization each time. Would the results, then, have remained unchanged? These and other issues were raised in the journal correspondence published on the Leibovici[ 39 ] article. In the broadest sense, prayer describes thoughts, words or deeds that address or petition a divine entity or force. We expand on certain of their views and of the views expressed in the journal correspondence that followed their article, and we add our critical perspectives in the discussion that follows.

Some technical notes that do not flow with the text are provided in the Appendix.

Wired for Spirituality?

By invoking prayer, researchers invite troublesome questions about the importance of several theosophical matters:. Therefore, all of the above would need to be considered as independent or confounding variables in any scientific study on the efficacy of intercessory prayer. Curiously, no study has so far addressed these issues.

And, for several reasons, such issues are disturbing because they reduce the concept of God to that of a human being with weaknesses and vanities, thereby exposing theological inconsistencies and attacking the very roots of theology and natural justice. We present some of the unsettling questions that arise in these contexts; the questions are unsettling because they invite comparison with human parallels that devalue the concept of God, something that those who pray surely would not have considered. These questions are unsettling to those who pray because of their theological implications, but they are also unsettling to scientists because they challenge the design, analysis and interpretation of randomized controlled trials of the efficacy of intercessory prayer.

From a scientific perspective, if prayer is indeed considered to work, thought should also be given to the possibility that it may not require a deity. It may, instead, invoke some hitherto unidentified mental energy that has healing power. If so, might prayer be more effective if those who pray are in closer proximity to those who are being prayed for? Might the direction in which persons face while praying matter? Might the assistance of the physical sciences be required to identify the nature of the biological energies at work? It should be noted that the distant healing, intercessory prayer studies specifically test the intervention of a divine entity.

This is because the intercessors are usually blind to the identities of the patients for whom they pray, or at least because the intercessors do not have any contact with these patients. Therefore, it is left to a sentient being to miraculously divine the intent of the prayers and apply the intercession to the correct target. Of note, distant healing, intercessory prayer studies address soft diagnoses with soft outcomes. No study, for example, has examined whether prayer can result in the disappearance of medically proven tumors and metastases, reversal of traumatic paraplegia or revival from a state of brain death.

It would seem that the results of such studies could be more convincing than the results of studies on wound healing or successful pregnancy. Could it be that those who pray believe that God has or sets limitations? In this context, we must keep in mind that religion is based on faith and not on proof. This implies that, if God exists, he is indifferent to humanity or has chosen to obscure his presence.

Either way, he would be unlikely to cooperate in scientific studies that seek to test his existence. Where does this leave us? God may indeed exist and prayer may indeed heal; however, it appears that, for important theological and scientific reasons, randomized controlled studies cannot be applied to the study of the efficacy of prayer in healing. In fact, no form of scientific enquiry presently available can suitably address the subject.

Therefore, the continuance of such research may result in the conducted studies finding place among other seemingly impeccable studies with seemingly absurd claims Renckens et al. Whereas we have attempted to be scientifically and politically correct in our critique, other authors, such as Dawkins,[ 43 ] have been humorous, nay even scathing, in their criticism. The aim of science is not to open a door to infinite wisdom but to set a limit to infinite error attr.

National Center for Biotechnology Information , U.

Prayer and healing: A medical and scientific perspective on randomized controlled trials

Journal List Indian J Psychiatry v. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

This article has been cited by other articles in PMC.

Abstract Religious traditions across the world display beliefs in healing through prayer. Healing, miracles, prayer, randomized controlled trials, research design. Prayer may be supported by varying degrees of faith and may therefore be associated with all the benefits that have been associated with the placebo response Clinically significant treatment gains have been observed with placebo in numerous disorders, including anxiety, depression, schizophrenia, obsessive-compulsive disorder, tardive dyskinesia, ischemic heart disease, cardiac failure, Parkinson's disease and even cancer, among a host of other conditions.

Prayer may be associated with improvements that result from spontaneous remission, regression to the mean, nonspecific psychosocial support, the Hawthorne effect and the Rosenthal effect Spontaneous remission is well known to occur in conditions that range from medical disorders e. Prayer may result in benefits that are due to divine intervention Although the very consideration of such a possibility may appear scientifically bizarre, it cannot be denied that, across the planet, people pray for health and for relief of symptoms in times of sickness. Absence of benefits with prayer Aviles et al.

Worse outcomes associated with prayer Benson et al. Retrospective benefits with prayer Leibovici[ 39 ] reported the results of an unusual study that was conducted in Israel. By invoking prayer, researchers invite troublesome questions about the importance of several theosophical matters: Do the quantitative aspects of prayer influence outcomes?

Quantity refers to the number of prayers, the frequency of the prayers and the duration of the prayers. Do the qualitative aspects of prayer influence outcomes? Quality refers to the category to which the prayer belongs in the religion of the person who is praying; the fervency with which the petition is expressed; whether the prayer is expressed in thoughts, speech or song; the addition of vows and sacrifices, etc. Does the practical content of the prayer or the actual petition matter?

That is, are some petitions more or less likely to receive a favorable response, depending on how reasonable they are? Are outcomes more likely to be favorable if the persons praying have greater belief that the outcome will be favorable, or greater faith or conviction in the deity at whom the prayer is directed? Are outcomes more likely to be favorable if a larger number of people pray or if a team approach is adopted as opposed to an individual approach? Might outcomes depend on the personal characteristics of the persons who pray; that is, their age, sex, income, religious denomination, position in the religious hierarchy, experience with and skills at praying and so on?

Might outcomes depend on the moral and social characteristics of the persons who pray; that is, their integrity, kindness, altruism, willingness to forgive, generosity, religiosity and so on? Might outcomes depend on the personal, moral and social characteristics of the persons in whose favor the prayer is offered, or of the general worthiness of the cause? If the number, duration and frequency of prayer are important or if the number of persons praying is important, does God, like a businessman, market boons based on the currency value of the prayers? Or, will God pay attention only if those who pray are sufficiently bothersome?

If the type of prayer is important, is God a bureaucrat who is more likely to consider petitions that appear in the prescribed forms?

Can Prayer Heal?

If the addition of vows and sacrifices is important, is God somebody who can be flattered or bribed into granting a boon? If the practical content of and petitions in the prayer are important, how does God make decisions about what is and what is not a reasonable request? If the faith or conviction of the persons who pray is important, does God value the beliefs of the petitioners more than the merits of the petitions? If the personal characteristics and qualities of the persons who pray or the persons who are being prayed for are important, are some people more equal before God than other people?

Religions portray God as being compassionate; what sort of compassion is displayed by the selective favoring of an experimental over a control group? If the entity to which the prayer is directed is important, do different Gods have different portfolios? Are some Gods more approachable? Do some Gods ignore some prayers? If the religious affiliation of the person who prays is important, what becomes of the other religions of the world and those who follow such religions; will their prayers remain unanswered?

If the magnitude of response to the petitions is total, then all prayers should result in miraculous or near-miraculous benefits. This, clearly, almost never happens. Thus, does God work on percentages; that is, if the petition is for an elephant, does he sanction a mouse? Or, are his responses only subtle ones? If so, how does he choose on the outcome measure to improve?

It could be difficult, if not impossible, to measure all the independent and confounding variables that are important in such research. For example, how might one measure faith, fervency, reasonableness, worthiness, religiosity, morality and other abstract constructs? How might one define what is an acceptable response to prayer?

Healing can be partial or complete. It can be psychological or physical. It can be abstract or concrete. Confounding the picture, statistically significant improvement can be identified only if the same outcome measure is improved in a sufficiently large number of experimental relative to control patients, but why should God decide to select any one outcome measure over the rest? And if different outcome measures improve in different experimental patients in response to prayer, there is no way in which the improvement can be statistically detected.

As atheists, in general, form a minority in most populations, in any randomized controlled trial of intercessory prayer, there is likely to be a number of persons friends, relatives and the patients themselves praying for members of both experimental and control groups, unknown to the researchers. If prayer works, this unmeasured source of healing could diminish intergroup differences in outcomes. As inferential statistical tests will be applied to the data generated by randomized controlled trials of intercessory prayer, is it valid to assume that acts of God conform to normal, t or other statistical distributions?

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