Case for Miracles for Kids by Lee Strobel

Author:Lee Strobel
Language: spa
Format: epub
Publisher: Zonderkidz
Published: 2018-02-26T00:00:00+00:00

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THE EFFECTS OF PRAYER

Studies on the effects of prayer have been done for decades. In a study published in 1988, Dr. Randolph Byrd looked at two groups of patients. For one group, Christians were given the patient’s first name, condition, and diagnosis. They were instructed to pray to God for a rapid recovery and for God to prevent medical complications and death. They could also pray for other areas in the patient’s life that they believed to be beneficial. The other group of patients didn’t receive any direct prayer.

The results?

Patients in the prayer group had less congestive heart failure, fewer heart attacks, fewer cases of pneumonia, were able to breathe better without the help of machines, and needed less medicine.

Then a decade or so later, a similar study was done by a team led by Dr. William S. Harris. They looked at the effects of prayer on almost a thousand patients in a hospital where patients had heart problems. Half received prayer; the other half didn’t. Again, the group that received prayer had better outcomes.

DISTANT VERSUS PERSONAL PRAYER

While these studies showed that prayer could have a powerful impact, they didn’t reflect the way prayers for healing were done in the Bible. The studies conducted by Drs. Byrd and Harris focused on distant prayer. The people praying were given the first name and condition of someone they didn’t know and were told to pray for a complication-free surgery and quick recovery.

As you read about the healings performed by Jesus and the other disciples, they generally followed a totally different pattern. When they prayed, they often came within close physical contact with the person in need of healing. The hurting person knew they were being prayed for. They could feel the empathy, love, and caring of the prayers.

Jesus often touched those he was about to heal. For instance, Luke 4:40 says, “At sunset, the people brought to Jesus all who had various kinds of sickness, and laying his hands on each one, he healed them.” What’s more, the Bible says that the ill should be anointed with oil, which usually involves being touched on the head.5

To study the effects of up-close-and-personal prayer, Brown and her team flew to Mozambique. Located on the southeast coast of Africa, this desperately poor nation of twenty-five million people underwent a devastating civil war from 1977 to 1992. Almost half of the country is Christian, eighteen percent are Muslims, some believe in spirits that live in trees and other parts of nature, and the rest don’t claim any religion.6

Brown focused on the healing of those with severe vision or hearing problems—some of whom were legally blind or deaf. Her team used standard tests and technical equipment to determine the person’s level of hearing or vision loss immediately before prayer from a local missionary. After the prayers were concluded, the patient was promptly tested again. The length of the prayer varied, from one minute to five or ten minutes, but it always involved appropriate physical touch.

“After

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