With the sincere hope that others may be helped and encouraged by it, I submit the following testimony. From childhood I would sometimes lose consciousness when I stood for a long time. I was elected Second Reader in a small branch Church of Christ, Scientist, but resigned because of a fear of this condition which began to manifest itself.
After many years, and after I had had class instruction, I was again elected Second Reader. Fear arose, and on the first Sunday, I had to sit down for a while before I could go on with the reading. I had loving and steadfast help from a Christian Science practitioner and did much studying and praying about the condition myself. The First Reader also remained a stanch support, encouraging me all the time.
In spite of this, I had to sit down for a while several times in the course of the first one and a half years of our reading, and I had many battles with fear and discouragement. However, the importance of the First Commandment, "Thou shalt have no other gods before me" (Ex. 20:3), became clearer to me all the time. I saw the mental nature of the problem and made Christ Jesus' answer to the tempter in the wilderness my own (Matt. 4:10), "Get thee hence, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve."
