12/07/2025
Sacred Synapse No. 3— The power of belief.
“Therefore I say to you, whatever things you ask when you pray, believe that you receive them, and you will have them.”
— Mark 11:24
Whenever I think about Mark 11:24, I'm instantly reminded of my great uncle, Dr. Pat Page, the namesake of my oldest son— Cash Patrick.
He was a trauma surgeon in Vietnam, a missionary physician in Africa, a man who saw more suffering and more miracles than most people witness in a lifetime. He was more than brilliant, he was wise. He carried a deep reverence for the human body and our Heavenly Father who created it. Pat was known for telling the greatest stories imaginable— and all of them were true. They were about war, mission hospitals, strange cases, miracles, and the latest research and studies he had been reading.
A couple of the studies he told me about have stuck with me for years. They were sham surgery trials where nothing was actually treated, and yet, produced real physiological changes.
The first study was the Angina Sham-Surgery Trials conducted by Cobb et al., in 1959 and repeated by Diamond et al., 1960. Back in the 1940s and 1950s, it was extremely common to treat angina (chest pain) by tying off an artery in the chest wall, believing it would improve collateral blood flow to the heart. This procedure, called internal mammary artery ligation, was performed tens of thousands of times. Cobb and his team decided to test the validity of the operation by performing a sham trial: half of the patients received only skin incisions while nothing inside the chest was tied off. They expected the real-surgery group to improve and the sham-surgery group to remain the same or worsen. Instead, they discovered that chest pain improved just as much after the fake surgery as after the real one. The patients’ bodies responded to their belief that healing had occurred. The pain was real and so was the power of their belief.
The second study was the Parkinson’s Sham-Surgery Trial led by Freed et al. in 2001. In the 1990s, researchers were exploring the idea of transplanting dopamine-producing neurons into the striatum, the part of the brain affected by Parkinson’s disease. To test the effectiveness of this approach, both groups of patients were placed under anesthesia, and burr holes were drilled into their skulls. However, only half of the patients actually received the transplanted neural tissue. Afterward, both groups were told the surgery had been a great success. The results were astonishing: both groups showed improvements in motor scores, reduced rigidity, improved bradykinesia, and better daily functioning. The sham-surgery patients even reported feeling stronger, steadier, less stiff, and more coordinated. These improvements were not imaginary; once again, they were real physiological changes brought about through the power of belief.
Both of these studies (and many more like it, since produced) all point to the same profound reality: What we believe matters. When we believe we have already received what God has promised and hold that belief in our hearts, our mind begins to believe it too, and soon our body follows.
It's not about convincing God to keep His promises, it's about trusting what He has already told us is true and aligning our prayers with His promises, which He will always keep. My grandma Page once told me, you could build a bridge over Hell with God's promises, and walk over with confidence.
Jesus modeled beginning our prayers by first aligning them with God's will in the sermon on the Mount: "Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven." Matthew 6:10
I try to model praying His promises with my children. When Cash is scared, instead of praying, "Help us to not be afraid," we pray in the affirmative, "[Thank you, Jesus, for not giving us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and a sound mind.]" He especially likes it when I put his name in the verses— "[Thank you for keeping Cash in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on You, because Cash trusts in You.]"
In my own Health battles, I've claimed Psalm 103 over my life, taking it in, morning, noon, and night, like my daily vitamins: “[I bless you, Lord, with everything inside me. With every cell of my being, I bless Your holy name. I will never forget all you have done for me. You forgive all of my sins and heal all my diseases— body, mind, and spirit.]”
1 John 5:14–15 (NKJV)
“…If we ask anything according to His will, He hears us… and we know that we have the petitions that we have asked of Him.”
Psalm 37:4
"Delight yourself also in the LORD, And He shall give you the desires of your heart."
Faith is not bending God’s will to ours. Faith is resting in God’s will until our body, our heart, and our inner world bends to His. By "delighting ourselves in the Lord," we are surrendering ourselves to His plan and allowing Him to shape the desires of our hearts to match His perfect will. By believing we have already received what He has promised, we are submitting our mind, body, and spirit to that reality. He wants to take care of us, to prosper us, to give us hope and a future. It is not manifesting. It is trusting. It is not inventing reality. It is aligning with God's Truth. The Bible tells us to pray in accordance with His will, with the belief we have already received it. In the sham surgery trials belief was able to override sensory input and cause meaningful changes in motor output— pain and tremors gone. The brain THOUGHT it was better and so it ACTED like it was better and told the body to follow suit. Neuroscience confirms that God doesn't ask us to pray this way arbitrarily, it has incredible benefits— and it's not in your head.
-Dr. Carly Cameron
Scripture (NKJV):
Mark 11:24
“Therefore I say to you, whatever things you ask when you pray, believe that you receive them, and you will have them.”
2 Timothy 1:7
“For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.”
Isaiah 26:3
“You will keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on You, because he trusts in You.”
Psalms 103:1-3
"1 Bless the LORD, O my soul; And all that is within me, bless His holy name! 2 Bless the LORD, O my soul, And forget not all His benefits: 3 Who forgives all your iniquities, Who heals all your diseases,"
1 John 5:14-15
"14 Now this is the confidence that we have in Him, that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us.
15 And if we know that He hears us, whatever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we have asked of Him."
Psalm 37:4
"Delight yourself also in the LORD, And He shall give you the desires of your heart."
Jeremiah 29:11
“For I know the thoughts that I think toward you,” says the LORD, “thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope.”
Studies:
Placebo Controlled Procedural Trials for Neurological Conditions (Horng & Miller, 2007)- this review discusses the Sham Angina studies from Cobb et al., 1959 and Diamond et al., 1960. Link: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/mid/NIHMS26621/?utm_source=chatgpt.com
Parkinson’s Sham-Surgery Trial (Freed et al., 2001)
Link: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM200103083441002?utm_source=chatgpt.com
A Controlled Trial of Arthroscopic Surgery for Osteoarthritis of the Knee (Moseley et al., 2002). Another amazing sham surgery study showing equal PAIN and FUNCTION improvement for osteoarthritic knee pain in the sham group as was in the lavage and debridement groups… This highlights that the brain not only controls pain but often mediates functional limitations. The sham group maintained this improvement for the entire follow-up period-- 24months. Link: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa013259?utm_source=chatgpt.com
