Miracles, prayer and faith

When I was about 7 years old and staying in a small cabin in Ilnick lagoon in Alaska. I contracted some kind of gastrointestinal infection and rapidly became so dehydrated that I became lethargic and deathly ill. There was no access to any hospital or physician of any kind since we were in Alaska and my father was gone by plane. If something was not done quickly, I would likely die. Ken Manthey, a priesthood holder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, laid his hands on my head and gave me a priesthood blessing. In that blessing he pronounced that I would be healed. Within a matter of minutes, I was completely recovered and playing outside without any symptoms of an illness. I recall laying in my own feces, feeling almost unable to stand. Then I recall Ken laying his hands on my head and telling me to be healed. I then recall feeling better, changing my pants and going outside and running in the sand around the house. I recall thinking “he healed me”. My mother, Jane Wadsworth confirms that this story is true.

Maybe this was not a miracle. Maybe I would have gotten better anyways without this occurrence. Maybe, my mother and I are just remembering the whole thing wrong. Maybe having someone tell me to get better had a psychological and/or physiological effect on my brain to lessen my experience of negative symptoms associated with my illness. You can choose to discard it however you like. What can I do but share what I experienced according to my memory? You can discard anything you don’t want to believe—that is your choice.

Whatever the case may be, it is impossible to prove, although attempts have been made. Studies can be performed by statistical analysis that looks at terminally ill people in a hospital who have prayers said for them compared to another group who do not have prayers said for them. Then the two groups could be compared and see if the prayer group had a better outcome than the non-prayer group. This has been performed—result? No difference between the groups.

If you could see my facial expression right now, you would see the face of someone who is not the slightest bit surprised. Why am I not surprised? Don’t I believe in God and in the power of prayer? Yes, I do believe in God and believe that prayer can have profound effects. But this experiment was clearly set up by someone who does not share my understanding for the way in which God operates.

If someone told me that they conducted an experiment in which they got on a bike and raced against a car which was not turned on and which had no driver and then they said that they won the race against a car on a bike—I would not be surprised. The car was off and there was no driver, of course the biker won. “Don’t you believe that cars are faster than bikes?” Someone might ask. To which I would reply: “Yes but the car has to be operated properly or it won’t work”.

James 5:16 declares:

“…The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much”

I would inversely say that “prayers that are not fervent, which are uttered by people who are not righteous avail little.” And by little, I mean probably nothing. James reiterates this in the fifth thru seventh verses of his first chapter where he says

“5 If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him.

6 But let him ask in faith, nothing wavering. For he that wavereth is like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed.

7 For let not that man think that he shall receive any thing of the Lord.”

I repeat, “…let not that man think that he shall receive anything of the Lord”.

In other words, if your car is not turned on and there is no driver, do not expect it to go anywhere.

James says that we need to have “unwavering” faith. Before I describe what an “wavering” distinction looks like, I think it is important to get a solid definition for what “faith” actually is. I have discovered that there is a large degree of misunderstanding and disagreement about the meaning of this word.

Faith isn’t just when you believe something is going to happen a whole bunch. It’s not like I can pray that I will turn into a unicorn, and if I believe it enough, its going to happen. That is called belief—(and a silly one at that), but perhaps no more silly than praying that everyone in the hospital wont die. What I mean is that everyone in this hospital just going to suddenly transform into immortals now because someone conducted a faithless prayer experiment? I would bet on the unicorn to appear first and I wouldn’t hold my breath for either thing of them to become reality.

So, what is faith then? In its most simple terms, faith is trust. All intelligent motivated actions are derived from some kind of trust. We have some degree of trust in the laws of the known universe and that is why we put forward effort. We invest effort because we have made predictions based on our understanding of the laws of the universe and the substance that they work upon. Without any trust at all, there would be no motivation and hence no effort.

I’m sure there are exceptions to this, because it seems like I can find exceptions to anything if I put my mind to it. Don’t get too excited if you can think of an exception to anything I say. I’m not trying to account for everything, but I am trying to give you a rough outline of a process. Sort of like pointing in a direction with a few practical “heads up” warnings; not an exhaustive detailed dictionary of everything that has ever been thought of or ever could be thought of.

But we aren’t just discussing “faith”, we are discussing a particular kind of faith—or trust in a particular thing. This isn’t trust in the reliability of your car or your high school best-friend. We are discussing trust in God. And not just any trust, but “unwavering” trust. According to James, without this specific kind of trust, you shouldn’t expect to receive anything from God. And to the contrary—if you have this kind of trust, expect to receive whatever you ask for. For example if you imaging God to be cruel and tricky, you probably wont want to pray in the first place. 

Before you start exercising trust in God, it might be a good idea to have a general idea of what (whom) you are placing your trust in—or in other words: of some of His characteristics. Surely if I told you false characteristics or attributes in regards to God, you would be exercising the wrong kind of trust. Like having trust that cars exploded if you touched them… that kind of trust isn’t going to help you get anywhere in the car. Yet some people believe many incorrect things about God that prevent them from knowing how to exercise useful trust, regarding Him.

I will describe God to you similarly as I would describe a friend or as I would describe one of the laws of physics. God does not lie and His attributes and characteristics are unchanging-- like one of these laws, yet He is a personage with a personality and characteristics, just as you and I have them (except His are infinitely more exalted).

God existed before the universe and time existed and God will exist after the universe ends. God has the characteristics of being both perfectly merciful and just. The most dominant of all of Gods characteristics, is Gods love. It is so pervasive and abounding that it is perhaps impossible for us to comprehend it without divine help. There are people which have experienced some degree of this divine love, (myself included), and all that can be said is that it is beyond description and there is nothing like it which can be found on all of the earth. The closest I can come is the love that my wife and I have for our children, but even that comes up so short that I am ashamed to even make the comparison. Because of this infinite love, God has the capacity to love us all equally and does not favor one of us over another. He isn’t going to hear my prayer and reject your prayer because he has no favorites, because we are all his favorite. Any prayer said by anyone with unwavering faith with be answered, regardless of any other feature.

Earlier I explained that faith isn’t just believing “something”—rather, faith in God is believing “someone”.

That someone is God. Some people think that this means to believe the scriptures since the scriptures predominantly come from God in theory. Although the scriptures are generally good to believe, that isn’t actually what I am talking about. Having faith in God, means to trust God directly. Scriptures were written by men and translated and can be interpreted a million different ways. Specifically, to have faith in God means that you receive a revelation from God, and then you exercise faith or trust in God by following the guidance received in the revelation.

But what if you never received a revelation? I would argue that everyone has received a revelation, they just may not have recognized it as such. You see, initially revelations come in the form of our conscience that dictates that we do good and kind things. At some point in your life, you were invited by God to do something good or perhaps to stop doing something that was harmful in some way. This invitation was a revelation from God. If you had followed it, you would have received another. And had you followed this additional revelation you would have received another and another. At some point the things that you are invited to do seem to be a big sacrifice or seem difficult or even embarrassing. But to have unwavering trust in God means to do it anyways. After some time of following these promptings, they will start to become more and more distinct and recognizable and also more miraculous.

One day you may be prompted to call a certain friend at a certain time, and it might change his life. You may be asked to give a blessing to a small sick child, and be prompted to say that the child will be immediately healed—and it will occur according as you say. You may be prompted to pray of where to go to serve the Lord, and then be prompted to go to a specific location and find someone who was prepared to hear your message. All of these things are exercising trust or faith in God. If you do not waver from your trust, then whatever thing you ask for in the name of Jesus Christ, shall be given unto you. But you will not ask for anything unrighteous or contrary to the will of God, because to do so would not be keeping with that trust, and would be as one that “wavereth” from that trust. God does not align His will with ours—we align our will with His.

An important part of this is also being able to recognize when something is not Gods will. For example praying that there will be no death or praying that people will have their agency removed-- or sometimes praying that a loved one will not die when it is their time. Before you ask something of the Lord, we should first determine if it is Gods will. One could even make an argument that answers to prayers are when God reveals to us what was going to happen anyways in many cases. There is a lot more I could say on this subject, but I will leave it here for now.