Someone informed me that my last post was cut off (thanks, Donna!). Guess i talked too much. Here's a summation of what else i tried to mention:

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> > How does anyone know that any *prayers* actually work? (The prayers that are asking for something, that is. Of course not all prayers are requests.)
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The Greek New Testament uses more than one word to distinguish between different types of what we might in English overclassify into "prayer."

The first type of prayer Paul mentions appears to be merely an ongoing, internal conversation with God the intention being for the individual to assist the individual in gaining and/or maintaining the eternal perspective that God has on our temporal existence. [Quite a mystical idea by modern standards]

The second type of prayer he describes is this type of need-based prayer, or as Wolfspirit mentions, "intercession." The integral key to having this right is that eternal perspective. Too often, when prayers appear unanswered, it is because we are asking things with such short-sightedness, thinking too temporally, about concerns of material things which God promises already to provide if we seek His will first.

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> I've mentioned before that there have been several double-blind clinical studies showing the positive effect of intercessory prayer on healing. Good ole science holding up a candle to 'faith.'
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Personally, i don't put too much in these. The one of these i saw seemed to allow for merely the emotional calm brought by the praying to evoke better health. In a sense, the patients could have believed it would work, and that loss of worry allowed their bodies to recover. Makes me wonder how many other forms of treatment might work if we weren't so sceptical of doctors and their suggestions.

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> > What do they think when they don't? The explanation that "Your request was not in God's plan" is what we are taught, and it's as satisfying an explanation as one can hope for.
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> I s