Archive for Prayer that heals
The healing power of music
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Henry Garza, guitarist and vocalist with Los Lonely Boys, wrote the lyrics to their song, Heaven. It was a prayer; a prayer motivated by his families financial and emotional hardships, combined with the death of his first-born son from sudden infant death syndrome. The prayer expressed his deep desire for healing. “I know there’s a better place/Than this place I’m livin’/How far is heaven?”
Henry’s heartfelt plea touched hearts worldwide. Because of the strength of the message, the album that included Heaven sold over 2 million copies.
Melodies move us emotionally and change us physically. Read More→
What can fear do to you?
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Recently, when asked, “What can fear do to you?” I was reminded of two experiences.
The first started with me asking a Sunday School class of first graders, “What would you say if someone wanted you to pray for them?”
A visitor to the class, a young girl, spoke up and confidently said, “I would tell them that they were safe in God’s pocket.”
A few hours later, my phone rang. A man, suffering with a physical problem, asked me to pray for him. Because the girl’s simple but confident response had so impressed me, and since I understand the cause of most problems to be fear, I was led to say, “You are safe in God’s pocket.”
He began to cry and hung up, without giving his name.
A week later, he called back to report he’d been healed of the physical problem the instant he hung up the phone. He also stated that for the next few days, every time he tried to smoke cigarettes, they tasted terrible. Not only had he been healed of the physical trouble, he’d stopped a long time habit of smoking, as well. Read More→
Cheating death 101
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You enter the room of a gravely ill friend where hope has vanished. Your thoughts weigh heavy. The family expects a quick passing. Doctors have proclaimed there are but a few hours left. The room is dark, both mentally and physically. You feel helpless.
But, what if you could do something, something that made a difference?
Two last-minute healing experiences, I am aware of, show it’s possible for you to be of help. The first involves Joseph Mann and a thirty-two-caliber revolver. The second details Mary Belt’s time at the Clara Barton Hospital in Los Angeles. While I briefly describe these accounts, for a point of emphasis, I am suggesting that you are the healer. Read More→
Why love matters
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When I got married, I became an instant dad to my wife’s two sons. One day just before we were married, Joanne and the boys came to visit me. Jarrod, the older, was four. He sat on my lap, and we played with his teddy bear. I would take his teddy and pretend he was talking to Jarrod. When it was Jarrod’s turn to make the bear “Talk,” he swung it and hit me hard across the face.
He didn’t mean to be violent, but got carried away with the game. However, when he saw the blow had shocked me, he quickly put both hands up in a defensive position, expecting me to hit back.
I was stunned more by his fear than by being hit. At that moment, I realized what it was going to take to be a father figure – forgiveness and love.
I slowly reached out, took both his shoulders, pulled him close, and kissed him on the cheek. I can still remember the amazed look on his face. He relaxed, and we started playing again.
It would’ve been easy to try to “teach him a lesson.” But both of us needed an instruction in love being lived. And we needed to learn, most of all, that love matters. Read More→
Make it a great wait
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Unless you enjoy uninterrupted minutes of Angry Birds, Draw Something, or Scramble on your smartphone, you may be finding wait periods in doctors’ offices frustrating.
In a world where most of us are in super, hyper motion, slamming on the brakes and just twiddling thumbs is emotionally painful.
A recent look at data from over 700,000 physicians’ offices revealed that patients in the US spend significant time in a room their physicians almost never enter. The national average is 21 minutes, but some wait for hours. Read More→
Great Expectations
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I am intrigued by the power of expectations; by the impact they have on our well-being.
Yesterday, I had the opportunity to speak with Dr. Thomas Curry, a licensed Texas psychotherapist about this phenomenon.
Dr. Curry explained, “Expectations are a hot topic in healthcare practice and research. It is widely recognized that an individual’s, or group of individuals, expectations either help or hurt healthcare outcomes. Why this is so, and how it happens, unfortunately remains a mystery. However, what is not mysterious at all is the fact that expectations play a very pivotal role in the progression of mental and medical disease, as well as it has a strong role in any treatment effect.”
This makes me wonder: Do expectations of decline and illness allow for unchecked fear to manifest as disease on the body where it can develop and spread? Are expectations of health possibly divine urgings that animate us to discover more than we are accepting of life at a given moment? Read More→
Hit ‘em with a prayer not a chair
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Everyone seems to have a chip on his or her shoulder. From the Occupy Wall Street protesters to the Obama-haters, aggression is in the air. Hate appears to be the flavor of the day.
This hate is causing an accelerated polarization of society. But it is causing something more. Are we hearing the warnings that hostile hearts can jeopardize health? Besides straining relationships, hate is a mental poison that causes bodily harm.
Deborah Smith, staff writer for Monitor on Psychology (a publication for the American Psychological Association), in her post Angry thoughts, at-risk hearts, writes “Research findings indicate a clear pattern — being an angry or hostile person is bad for your heart.” She goes on to cite several studies that prove the point.
It’s my experience as a Christian healer that hateful thoughts can be harmful not only to the heart but to every part of the body. Therefore, if hate is a poison, what is the antidote? Read More→
Keeping yourself (and your horse) healthy
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Health and wellness are important to everyone. 80 percent of Internet users look for health information online. We want to be educated.
Yet, health information flows toward us even as we commute to work or relax at home. Advertisements repeatedly broadcast the symptoms of diseases and the side effects of applicable medications. But is this knowledge always helpful? Are we educating ourselves into illness and suffering, inducing problems with fearful predictions and images? Read More→
“Pain is just mental” – says Dallas Cowboy
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There is just one game left, the Super Bowl. The regular season of the NFL (National Football League) is complete. It was a special year. The Green Bay Packers flirted with a perfect season. Tim Tebow’s faith and dramatic comebacks stole many a headline. The Houston Texans even won their first playoff game. Yet, the New England Patriots and the New York Giants will now decide which team is the best of the best at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis on February 5.
I am a fan of the game. Although I spend more time watching games than I should admit, I spend even more helping to heal the pain and suffering of others. Therefore, it quickly caught my attention when Dallas Cowboys’ safety, Gerald Sensabaugh, recently said, “Pain is just mental.”
The news report I was reading stated that there are only a small number of football players who are able to complete a game with a strained arch and as well, play another game five days later. However, after he helped his team defeat the Miami Dolphins, Sensabaugh has been added to the list. Read More→
Acceptance of Spiritual Healing, An Uphill Climb
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Jane Sarasohn-Kahn reported on a Health 2.0 Spring Fling in her post at Disruptive Women in Heath Care.
She wrote:
Wellness and disease prevention were the meta-themes … Dr. Dean Ornish told the attendees in the standing-room-only ballroom space that the joy of living is a greater motivator than the fear of death. And the 1.0 version of managing health risks has been more the latter than the former. As a result, Ornish’s two decades of research have shown that health is more a function of lifestyle choices than it is drugs and surgery. In fact, people have a “spectrum” of choices to make based on their personal preferences — not a one-size-fits-all “diet,” Dr. Ornish has learned.
Descriptions such as Sarasohn-Kahn’s show that society is beginning to look up from the deck, — ascending above materialistic forms of healthcare. Sadly, however, it may be some time before people are ready to free climb to a purely spiritual system of effective healing. Read More→
