A friend of mine fought in the Battle of the Bulge in World War II. As an 18-year-old American soldier, he joined his comrades in facing incoming artillery shells exploding all around them. My friend told me, "There were no atheists there that day. The men were trying to remember all their childhood prayers in that frightening attack."

The societal scourge of spousal, child and elder abuse has grown at an alarming rate over the past couple decades. Violence among family members fills our news headlines as the lives of men, women, and children are being ravaged by an often secret epidemic…domestic violence. How severe is domestic violence in our modern "civilized" world? Is there a way of escape from its oftentimes deadly consequences?

Mental Health experts around the world report, with growing concern, that stress—physical and mental—continues to erode away the edges of society, resulting in increased suicides, family abandonment, elder abuse and run-away children. Heading the list of symptoms for this growing world health crisis is depression, defined as one's inability to cope with the immediate to the point of breakdown and withdrawal.

What do the terms "thalamocortical pathways," "nociception," "peripheral sensory receptors" and "asynchronous" have in common? They are all words now used in the escalated, seemingly more sophisticated pro-abortion stance of the medical community. Based on a study by a team of medical experts published in The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), abortion supporters now claim that early fetuses in the womb do not feel the pain of the abortion procedures, so therefore they are not really human.

With so many natural disasters, financial woes, diseases, wars, rising job loss numbers, and daily fears and anxieties plaguing our lives in this modern world, is prayer an irrelevant activity Or is there value to us as a nation—and as individuals—in reaching out to God through effective heartfelt prayer?