FAITH CAN HEAL

Faith has played a major part in my life.It forms part of my everyday thoughts and activities, but it hasn’t always been like that !
I first became a Christian in 1981and settled into a life full of Christian values and ideals. Yet when my father died in 1987, he died from complications caused by having a rare genetic form of Alzheimer’s disease (pre senile dementia)

I grew increasingly discouraged with church life. I was suffering personal doubt ie why was I and my family being persecuted. There was no one to talk or to share my problems with.

All I could see was hypocrisy all around me. self centred beliefs and ministers with no real commitment to what they were preaching from their pulpits.

This went on for nearly 20 years until I was diagnosed after attending my doctors surgery. He had discovered that I had high blood pressure (240/160) I was literally fit to burst.I was put on immediate medication to control the blood pressure.

I was sent straight to the Royal Glamorgan Hospital where they discovered I also had high cholesterol levels I was put on statins to decrease the levels of cholesterol in my body.

Only two weeks later I was back in hospital having suffered a major stroke. (on the 19th April 2003) the doctors conducted a cat scan and found the remains of 3 clots on the brain.

As I lay in bed at night the image that I remembered from my time long since passed entered my mind, it would not leave me rest.

It was of a poster that I had seen years earlier. It was one of a beach scene at high tide there was no one on the beach yet a single set of footprints were all that disturbed its glistening sands.

A voice inside my mind told reminded me of its meaning when there was only one set of footprints that you saw, it was then that I was carrying you.

IT WAS THEN THAT MY FAITH BEGAN TO BE REIGNITED

I waited patiently for results of genetic testing that would prove beyond a doubt God was working quitely in the background to help me through this ordeal.

Three years later I got the results back and guess what?

Remarkably I was informed that the tests came back as negative,

My chances of succumbing to Alzheimer’s disease was the same as the general population. Even though I looked the spit of my father, shared the same characteristics and genes the chain had finally been broken. 20 years of worry switched for a second chance at life.

Now I have discovered that the small scars left by the strokes may have been vascular dimentia and that the earlier intervention all be it 2 weeks probably saved my life.

Positive thinking can alter a persons lifestyle as well as outlook on life. I truly do believe this. It is a belief that has seen me through the worst days of my life. Where there was nothing but dispair and anguish I was able to find hope and encouragment in order to carry on.

Now you can believe my story or disbelieve the choice is always yours to make. The facts are there in the doctors notes.

Call it a great big series of coincidences,call it Hocus pocus or a show of great healing power of the mind and spirit it is up to you. My faith is a personal matter that I share with a select few.

For reasons that I would not wish to go into except to say that the power of belief and faith transcends all religions I believe there is only one God full stop. It doesn’t matter to me if your of Christian faith or of Muslim faith, be it catholic, Jewish, Buddhist, Hindu or Eskimo. If you believe that Jesus was an Astronaut as long has you believe in God, Or an entity unfathomable or unknown A superhuman being of great power and strength just believe and that faith or positive thinking can get you through.

Only when you put man into the equation do we get religion, wars, ethnic cleansing and all sorts of abominations etc

Why do we still get ministers of my own ex christian faith preaching hell and damnation from the old testament when Jesus was supposed to take away all that came before when he died on the cross.

One preacher who shall remain nameless once told me of a freind to both of us. He had been a teacher in my old comprehensive school, He had succumbed to a brain hemorage,

He was always a devout christian, Who was led to change his beliefs.

That he now thought there was more than one way to heaven and that Preacher turned round and told me that God had given him a warning to turn back or else. I was a ghast and soon left his congregation after that.

Jesus said love one another as I have loved you. full stop that is the only commandment that he left us and supersedes all others.

That is my faith. That is what I believe in not hell and damnation which belongs in the age old book of the old testement ,with its laws and commandments That was suppossedly torn up the day Jesus went to the cross and took the sins of all of us to the grave and beyond.

We have all got a right to live here on earth together in peace and harmony. We have to learn to work together to firstly earn the right to become its guardians looking after, nurturing and developing this world not polluting it.

My faith is based on a God that cares for this planet, who cares about the people on it and in every animal and plant that roams on it

Not in religion or kings and queens or irate American president who decide to wage war on a country because as he claims God told him to.

In order to proove my point further scientists can now proove that patients who have a faith and a belief process have a better chance of being cured than those without such a faith.

By Ed Stoddard

DALLAS (Reuters) - People of faith have long contended that the power of prayer can help heal the sick. Now a study conducted in Rome suggests that religious faith may help people recover from a stroke.

The study does not point to a "higher cause" but suggests that a strong dose of spirituality can reduce the emotional stress linked to obstacles in stroke recovery, according to a report Thursday in the journal Stroke.

Researchers at the San Rafaela Pisana Rehabilitation Centre in the Italian capital of Rome interviewed 132 stroke survivors about their religious beliefs and spirituality. The median age of the study participants was 72.

The responses were compared with their scores on the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale, a self-assessment tool.

"The analysis showed higher scores on the anxiety and depression scale correlated significantly with lower scores on the religious and spirituality questionnaire," said the American Heart Association, which publishes Stroke.

"The association remained significant after adjusting for other factors that could influence a stroke patient's degree of emotional distress (such as mental and physical functioning, living conditions and marital status)," it said in a statement.

The reasons for this possible link between faith and post-stroke emotional distress are hard to pin down, though the researchers gave tentative explanations.
"Religious people who are active in their communities are more likely to receive external aid that can be provided by volunteers," said Dr. Salvatore Giaquinto, chairman of the department of rehabilitation at the San Rafaela Pisana Rehabilitation Centre. Continued...

People of faith have long contended that the power of prayer can help heal the sick. Now a study conducted in Rome suggests that religious faith may help people recover from a stroke.

The study does not point to a "higher cause" but suggests that a strong dose of spirituality can reduce the emotional stress linked to obstacles in stroke recovery, according to a report Feb. 15 in the journal Stroke.

Researchers at the San Raffaele Pisana Rehabilitation Center in the Italian capital of Rome interviewed 132 stroke survivors about their religious beliefs and spirituality. The median age of the study participants was 72.

The responses were compared with their scores on the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale, a self-assessment tool.

"The analysis showed higher scores on the anxiety and depression scale correlated significantly with lower scores on the religious and spirituality questionnaire," said the American Heart Association, which publishes Stroke.

"The association remained significant after adjusting for other factors that could influence a stroke patient's degree of emotional distress (such as mental and physical functioning, living conditions, and marital status)," it said in a statement.

The reasons for this possible link between faith and post-stroke emotional distress are hard to pin down, though the researchers gave tentative explanations.

"Religious people who are active in their communities are more likely to receive external aid that can be provided by volunteers," said Dr. Salvatore Giaquinto, chairman of the department of rehabilitation at the San Raffaele Pisana Rehabilitation Center.

"Social support lets them experience feelings of care, love, and esteem. The new experience of support and the background of faith tell the patients that they are not alone."

The research chimes to some extent with other studies that have suggested that spiritual pursuits such as reciting the rosary and yoga chanting may be beneficial for heart rate variability and stress relief.

But some researchers say the possible links uncovered in the Rome study should not be mistaken for direct causality.

"The study does not establish that religious beliefs will definitely reduce emotional distress but shows that people who are religious have better coping abilities," Dr. Lalit Kalra, a stroke professor at King's College London School of Medicine in Britain, wrote in an accompanying commentary.

"Hence, both these variables may define personal attributes of the patient, in other words religious beliefs do not make a person cope better but identify patients who have better abilities to cope with chronic illness," Kalra wrote.

The researchers did note that most of Rome's residents are Catholic. But they said their findings might extend to other religions as well.

Copyright: The Epoch Times