Have you ever felt that you were prayed out? Perhaps even diligent prayer has had little healing result. Most Christians have experienced this.
Through study and practice of Christian Science, prayer becomes more consistently effective. Enlightened prayer enables us to move beyond imploring God to save us and instead accept God, good, as the source of our true selfhood—to affirm that man is His likeness. Man's nature is divine Love's reflection and not a product of the Adamic race. Inspired thinking exposes the illusion of life in matter as unreal. Divine Mind is supreme, and its idea—ones true selfhood—eternal.
When we identify ourselves and others as Mind's ideas, we gradually become conscious that all God's qualities are meant to be employed. Qualities such as love and integrity destroy ignorant and fearful material thinking. As mortal mind's negative thinking is abandoned for the consciousness that expresses divine Mind, we learn that God's law governs. Whether we are confronted with danger, sickness, or sin, Mind can always be relied on for healing. The book of Isaiah says of God, "For thou hast been a strength to the poor, a strength to the needy in his distress, a refuge from the storm, a shadow from the heat, when the blast of the terrible ones is as a storm against the wall."lsa. 25:4;
Sometimes we may be preoccupied with discordant physical symptoms and focus our prayer on removing them. Instead, scientific prayer zeroes in on the unspiritual thinking behind the malady and replaces it with the reflected nature of divine Love. Proportionately as the truth of being is understood and practiced, discord is lifted. Our real being is forever untouched by mortal mind, and when we correctly identify ourselves with this spiritual nature, conscience is enlivened. Then evil's supposed presence is recognized as unreal, and we reject it. This enables us to discern more clearly the Godlike qualities we really express.
We may think that resentment, frustration, fear, sensuality, and the like have no bearing on our well-being. But errors of thinking, in belief, cause disease, increase sinful tendencies, and disrupt experience in general. Sin, sickness, malice, and crime are supposititious pictures of an unreal mentality out of tune with God, divine Love.
Mrs. Eddy writes, "What renders both sin and sickness difficult of cure is, that the human mind is the sinner, disinclined to self-correction, and believing that the body can be sick independently of mortal mind and that the divine Mind has no jurisdiction over the body."Science and Health, p. 218; Through prayer, mortal mind yields to God's law; belief in evil is destroyed as we expand our understanding of good. We can awake to real selfhood as Mind's self-expression. When we recognize that we reflect divine Mind's well-being, completeness, and dominion—the only true substance—healing takes place.
There may be times when we need to pray persistently, knowing that true consciousness is Mind's perfect effect. False character traits may seem very real, tenacious, and personal. But they are mortal mind's projected falsities, a mesmeric claim that consciousness can be fragmented. Through Science we discern their unreality and discover our true individuality.
Unhappy memories, friction between individuals, pressures of everyday living, pain and pleasure in matter, are recognized in Science as elements of a finite mentality—fundamentally false. We destroy them and neutralize their bad effects as we progress. We need to reject the belief that we can exist as mortal entities, divorced from our real function as God's ideas. To obtain true freedom, health, and happiness, we must change from material living and acknowledge that we reflect Mind. Mrs. Eddy writes, "My discovery, that erring, mortal, misnamed mind produces all the organism and action of the mortal body, set my thoughts to work in new channels, and led up to my demonstration of the proposition that Mind is All and matter is naught as the leading factor in Mind science."ibid., pp. 108-109;
As we become more alert thought watchers, identifying and expressing more of our real being, we are spared the distress brought on by undisciplined thinking. Spiritual-mindedness keeps aggressive mental suggestions from taking root. Even though a sense of evil may for a time be kept "at arm's length" without such thoroughgoing discipline, the unreality of evil is better understood and demonstrated as our prayer becomes more scientific. There may be times when we need to pray specifically that divine Love illumine the path out of false material beliefs into the consciousness of Soul.
We need to face up to vulnerabilities honestly and refuse to be their willing tools. The aggressive nature of the evil one, whom Jesus called "a liar, and the father of it,"John 8:44; claims affinity with us. Its animal nature and magnetic action would have us believe that phases of wrong thinking not only originate with us but also belong to us. Science breaks through this mesmerism. Then we find that claiming origin for evil and accepting it as real are characteristic of the evil one, not of individual consciousness reflecting the divine. Truth, understood, separates the sense of evil from real identity. It preserves our innocence from material thinking and hastens individual repentance, redemption, and healing.
Christ Jesus' prayers were effective because he understood God's healing power. His knowledge that Ego is Mind, and the reflected power of Mind he expressed, enabled him to do his marvelous works. The Master reiterated time and time again the need to exchange worldly values for the spiritual. He proved without equal that true, Christly selfhood is completely dependent on God for every element of its being. He said, "My Father worketh hitherto, and I work."5:17;
How comforting it is to know that God, divine Love, does answer prayer. Then we can approach each challenge with unwavering courage. The spiritual understanding of being encourages us to turn away from material means for healing with undeviating trust in God's power. Deep confidence and joyous expectation accompany the certainty that God's moral, spiritual law—the law of divine Mind—destroys evil. Healing follows naturally.
As we put first things first in a fundamental sense, we establish priorities in thinking and in living that are more in harmony with the teachings of the Way-shower Christ Jesus. This makes us more Christlike, and we regard our fellowman more compassionately. We are then more able to discern others' needs and awaken them to a deeper consciousness of the unbroken unity of God and His reflection. The degree to which we carry out Jesus' admonition "Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness"Matt. 6:33. determines the effectiveness of our prayer in freeing ourselves and others from discord, sickness, and sin.
