A recent healing of an aching tooth really got me thinking about my definition of successful prayer.
If we are immediately healed, we acknowledge that prayer was successful—and I’ve had many healing experiences like that. But what about when we’ve been praying and something still hurts? Or we’ve been praying for five days but have still gone through all the cold symptoms? Or we’ve called on a Christian Science practitioner to support us through prayer and that doesn’t seem to help either? That’s when the suggestion enters thought that prayer is not successful. And agreeing with this suggestion opens the door to discouragement and defeat.
In the situation with my tooth, I found myself challenging the conclusion that prayer wasn’t working, for two reasons. One was that I’d had many proofs that what the material senses report is not spiritual reality, and that aligning thought to the spiritual reality—in spite of the report of the material senses—brings a change that is tangible to those very senses. In other words, material sense cannot inform reality, but reality can and does inform the senses. Second, I knew that a change of thought from focusing on the material evidence to the spiritual reality is the harbinger of physical healing.
