text: No dodge.  A direct answer.  Prayer has infinite effects, not always the physical ones we think we want, though many have been scientifically confirmed...healings incongruent with the known course of disease, etc. 
  
  But we have much better than "no writings from Jesus".  What's more important and believable:  what we say about ourselves or what others any others say about us?  And even better we have the testimonies of a tremendous number of lives in the early Church (some non Christian historians have estimated in the millions by the 350s AD or so.  How many martyrs?
  
  I'll take the actual behavior of lives of this many people over what some Confucian-type wrote down about himself.