Faith

Study: Praying Won't Affect Heart Patients

Does praying for a sick person's recovery do any good?
In the largest scientific test of its kind, heart surgery patients showed no benefit when strangers prayed for their recovery.
And patients who knew they were being prayed for had a slightly higher rate of complications.

So can our prayers affect the happenings around us?
This ridiculous study says it cannot, but I knew that already.
I had a friend who said he saw god. I asked him how he saw God, and he told me that he prayed very hard, and God revealed himself. Thus the almighty proved his existence in my friends mind.
What this proved to me is the power of prayer. It’s faith in action.
It made me realise that it doesn't matter who or what you pray to; you may pray to Jesus or Allah or Joseph Smith. What matters is you have faith enough in your deity to feel that you can do things you cannot normally do. It is basically tricking yourself into believing that you are not entirely responsible for your actions. This can cause problems for sure, but it also can give you confidence you may be lacking just by believing that someone has got your back.
In my opinion, prayer is sole for the individual, it builds strength within the person that helps them deal with their own shortcomings and the many influences that are involved in their lives. Life is a series of setbacks that we have to deal with and overcome, faith is what we use to carry ourselves forward.
I was reminded recently that faith is a deeply personal thing that cannot be measured by any conventional means, and I should refrain from disparaging anyone's personal beliefs so as not to hurt anybody or receive physical harm upon myself.
I think we all use some sort of faith to justify our ends.
The key is to find what gives us this strength and embrace it.