What is prayer?

[Ryan R]

Originally Posted by decrumpit

I think it might be more appropriate to elaborate.

Originally Posted by decrumpit

If we are to come before God with requests for healing, and we request that he heals our amputated limb, people would think we are crazy.

But if after rounds and rounds of chemo, radiation, and prayer we are cured of cancer, we attribute it to a miracle. If atheists, Muslims, Jews, etc. have exactly the same rates of healing, wouldn't it seem to indicate that there was no healing going on?

My question is, shouldn't there be some sort of higher incidence of answered prayers for believers as opposed to atheists?

My dad knew a lady who was so far along in her throat cancer that the medical community had written her off entirely. My dad watched the agony she experienced just trying to swallow her food. After fervent prayer from a lot of people she bounced back suddenly, miraculously and lived for decades.

The medical community frequently refers to 'miraculous' recoveries that defy everything we have come to understand as medical science.

And no, the incidence is right where God wants it. We can't pray the effects of the fall away, we just live in a fallen world. The great hope is that there is restoration just ahead.

So, for His glory, God will heal people physically sometimes. I don't have any idea how our faith or lack thereof affects the success, but I know when I have really believed that my prayer will make a difference in healing if it is God's will that the healing happens, it has at times had instant (and I mean instant) results.

Even if there had only been one miracle in history that would be one miracle more than a naturalist (atheist) worldview can permit, and I read doctors referencing miracles all the time.