Mary Baker Eddy wrote that prayer should be "importunate" (see The People's Idea of God, p. 9), and that we should mentally "insist" (see Science and Health, p. 412). However, if God is not a human being, but is the all-knowing Mind, why should we need to be importunate and to insist?
A1 in the opening chapter of Science and Health Mary Baker Eddy wrote, "God is Love. Can we ask Him to be more? God is intelligence. Can we inform the infinite Mind of anything He does not already comprehend?" (p. 2). We exercise the qualities of importunity and insistence, therefore, not for God's benefit, but for our own. God, the all-knowing and all-loving, does not need to be reminded to love His children. However, we sometimes need to remind ourselves how very much God loves us. The consistent acknowledgment of that love brings human consciousness into line with what is already true.
The word insist comes from a Latin root that means "to stand on." As we stand on the truth about our spiritual perfection that God has revealed to us, in defiance of what appears to the material senses, our conviction deepens that we really are "heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ" (Rom. 8:17).
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