FAITH’S REWARDS

Although it is difficult for secular skeptics to believe that joy and satisfaction is found through a spiritual life-style, we can prosper in many ways through our faith. This can now be seen through a large body of research. Psychiatrist Raymond Moody, some years ago, researched and wrote the amazing book called Life After Life. In it he described scores of experiences through which persons from all walks of life died clinically and then were called back through heroic medical procedures. Multitudes of persons, perhaps as many as several million, including Roberta who bled to death during the birth of our third child and was revived miraculously, went through the now famous tunnel to the light on the other side of life and then returned to complete earthly missions. The life after life experience has become too common to deny, although some scientists legitimately debate its cause. However, most researchers see it as a real event. From time to time we catch glimpses that existence isn’t all over for us with the death of the brain and body -- some aspect of our soul seems divine and linked forever with the God who brought us into existence. We suspect the human race has been experiencing this for a long time, which would account for the elaborate Egyptian celebration of life after life during the ages of the pharaohs.

We can also verify the power of prayer in our lives as believers after relating to God. Professor of Cardiology Randolph Byrd of the University of California Medical School in San Francisco studied some 400 patients at San Francisco General Hospital over a period of several years. They were in the Cardiology Unit with massive heart attacks or severe chest pains that required serious treatment. Dr. Byrd conducted traditional double blind research in which neither the health care professionals nor the patients knew which half of the sufferers were being prayed for - in addition to the best care the hospital could offer them. Their names were sent to church groups around the Bay area for regular prayers. The two hundred control patients received the precise same medical treatment but without consistent prayer. The results were spectacular, far beyond statistics, almost beyond belief!

According to Larry Dossey, M D, who has written Meaning And Medicine and Healing Words (The Power Of Prayer), the group being prayed for reacted precisely as if the patients were being given a miraculous new medication. The 200 being prayed for, although taken at random in a double blind, had far fewer deaths, required less surgery and were soon put on a much milder medication schedule. They healed more quickly than the control 200. Dr. Dossey reports that had any new drug been so effective, it would have been hailed world wide as a modern medical miracle. Dossey cites some one hundred thirty research studies which show that prayer heals and how it is connected with the temporal area of the brain's right hemisphere! We can call this telepathy or communicating with God or whatever, but the truth is; When we pray for you with love, compassion and concern, knowing we are connected with God, something good ,prayhappens to you! Also -- the other way around when you pray for us.

From the day Jard learned that his innocent nephew on Death Row in an Arizona prison was getting an appeal hearing, he prayed that justice would be served, that the judge would see the truth and release David. What happened at the hearing? Within forty-five minutes the judge threw the conviction out as being without any merit and sent David home with his mother and father. When we connect with God -- we also connect with each other and it can be a fulfilling connection! It was a tremendous victory over evil men and systems through prayer.

SELF-FOCUS
Do you know anyone who returned from the other side?

When have you seen sincere and loving prayers work miracles?