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The efficacy of prayer has been studied since at least 1872, generally through experiments to determine whether prayer or intercessory prayer has a measurable effect on the health of the person for whom prayer is offered. A study in 2006 indicates that intercessory prayer in cardiac bypass patients had no discernible effects.
Ordinary or active mental prayer consists of two operations; one belongs to the thinking faculty which applies the imagination, memory, and understanding to consider some truth or mystery. The other operation is dependent on the will and compels one to love, desire, and ask for the good proposed by the mind, and make resolutions to arrive at it.
Prayer can take a variety of forms: it can be part of a set liturgy or ritual, and it can be performed alone or in groups. Prayer may take the form of a hymn, incantation, formal creedal statement, or a spontaneous utterance in the praying person. The act of prayer is attested in written sources as early as five thousand years ago.
Intercession or intercessory prayer is the act of praying on behalf of others, or asking a saint in heaven to pray on behalf of oneself or for others. [ 1 ] The Apostle Paul 's exhortation to Timothy specified that intercession prayers should be made for all people.
The purpose of meditation is to strengthen one's understanding of the words of God, and to make one's soul more susceptible to their potentially transformative power, [12] more receptive to the need for both prayer and meditation to bring about and maintain a spiritual communion with God.
Lex orandi, lex credendi (Latin: "the law of what is prayed [is] the law of what is believed"), sometimes expanded as Lex orandi, lex credendi, lex vivendi (Latin: "the law of what is prayed [is] what is believed [is] the law of what is lived"), is a motto in Christian tradition, which means that prayer and belief are integral to each other and that liturgy is not distinct from theology.