Article January 11, 1993 Issue

Effective prayer

We don't have to hope for help from God. We can learn how to pray effectively and be confident of healing.

Tazuila Emery

Original in French

Why do people's prayers sometimes seem ineffective? In the Bible, the Gospel of Matthew tells us that one day Christ Jesus' disciples found themselves facing essentially this same question. There lived a man whose son had been suffering for a long time from what appeared to be epilepsy. When the man knew that the disciples were in the area, he took his son to them, hoping the boy would be healed through their prayers. The disciples prayed for the child, but there was no healing.

Seeing this failure, the man repeated his request to Jesus. The story says that the Master then healed the child. Later the disciples questioned Jesus in private to find out the reason for their ineffectiveness, saying, "Why could not we cast him out?" Jesus told them it was because of their "unbelief."

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