A Brain Activator

The earnest prayer of a righteous person has great power and produces wonderful results. James 5:16

For the past 6 months I have been praying for Eva’s brain. And it isn’t, unlike the past, a prayer dependent on the outcome. (It took me about 6 years of battling God to get to this place.) I have simply stepped into His presence and asked God if He would continue to heal her. Either with ongoing healing, a complete healing or, wait for it…a new brain. Crazy sounding, I know. But God gave me the okay to pray for this. 

People have been praying for Eva since the moment of her accident. And continue to pray. From all over the world. Some began praying for the first time in their lives when they first heard about Eva. Complete strangers once traveled by plane to come and pray for her. Still others have sent texts, letters, posters, clothing - all filled with prayers. 

Well, as James says, prayer is powerful. Something I’ve always believed, but as I’ve discovered this week, there’s more to it. Far beyond my scope of understanding. To say God’s ways are higher than my ways are an out-of-this-world understatement.

I listened to a neurosurgeon speak about the impact on the brain when someone is prayed for. To test their theory, scientists put a person in a room connected to a brain scan and the “prayer person” in another enclosed room. They recorded both rooms so they would know the time frame of when prayer was happening and when it wasn’t. After the experiment, they compared recordings and discovered that when the person was being prayed for, parts of their brain were activated and when the prayer stopped, the activation stopped.

Well, let me tell you, my prayer life has gone through the roof since learning this. Talk about, as Paul encourages us, to pray without ceasing. Good grief, it’s all I seem to do. I'm praying for my family, my friends, my neighbors, my "window to the world." When I’m out walking, showering, eating, working, sometimes when I’m sleeping. Because prayer is powerful, doing so much more than I could ever have asked or imagined. 

In those early weeks after Eva’s accident the doctors showed us her brain scan, pointing out that there was nothing there. It was just a grey mass and to expect nothing more than Eva living out her life in a vegetative state. 

Well, jokes on them. Because of the hundreds, if not thousands, of prayers that have been prayed and continue to be prayed, Eva's brain has been activated. This girl blinks to communicate and smiles and scrunches her nose when she doesn’t like something and pulls a lever in order to send her baseball flying out of the park when she’s up to bat.

A brain that once was lost has now been found. And I believe it’s because, and only because, of prayer. And that there is more to come. For Eva and those in my world that I continue to pray for. Because I am, as all of us are when we pray, a "Brain Activator."