: : : http://content.health.msn.com/content/article/1668.50132

: : : According to the article here..a group of patients that received prayers unknowningly has a total of 11% higher chance of recovering then those who were not prayed for....Comments any1?

: : ***Have there been any studies of those who know the are being prayed for? What about those who are being prayed for that no one knows about? How about a study of those who believe god will heal them without medical science? How about a study of those who reject prayers but believe that medical science can cure them because the cure is known? How about those who have a very good system of social support vs those who have no one in thier lives to care/visit them...

: : ***To me, prayer automatically means that most of the people studied have a very good social support system, which I believe plays a big part in self healing processes, especially when combinded with medical expertise.

: bzrd here: There is a young woman who goes to my church that has a 4yr old daughter that suffered from daily seizures for 21/2 yrs. They had a prayer meeting at the alter and annointed her head with oil; she has not had one since. No, God does not always cure the afflicted, but the prayer is always answered. Granted, there is a lot of foolishness re: Devine healing [esp on TV], however, the power of prayer in healing is well documented.

***I am always glad to hear that people are made beter, although I do not know how to expllain some of them, it seems to be involved with the hope and belief that one will get better, faith. I experiance this phenomenon and actually should have been dead as a result of the situation, I did reach out toward the sky in the moment of desperation, and said "Oh, my God!" there was no plan of action, and really no hope at that moment, but the outcome was something that I atributed to something beyond myself. Today I feel as though my entire being took over the situation and saw me through it, for in the moments when I was unconsious, I did must have done several things which are not normally believed possible for a man to do, and I have no recollection of actually doing them, but the outcome leads me to beieve that I did them. Another wierd aspect of this is the amount of time that seemed to have passed, it seemed an eternity, and the way in which I came back to conscosness was strange too, a very slow kind of returning to reality, like absolutely no understanding of anything I was percieving, including who or what I was, and it all came back in a slow motion kind of way, and all that meant anything was that I had survived somehow. I can only attribute this to an extream survival mechanism, which is more powerful than I thought could be possible at that point in my life.