What if we’ve been praying for some time about overcoming a physical problem but haven’t been healed yet? We’re studying the weekly Christian Science Bible Lesson and praying to see the truth that Jesus said would set us free (see John 8:32), but the body is still uncomfortable. What to do?
At a time like this it can be helpful to take a closer look at how we are praying. Before I began to study Christian Science, I thought of prayer as an activity to be engaged in for a particular period of time each day, after which I would go about my business, expecting to have a better day for having prayed. But the Bible does not instruct us to divide our time when it says, “Pray without ceasing” (I Thessalonians 5:17). Neither are we to pray to a God who is separate and distant from ourselves, for Jesus said, “Behold, the kingdom of God is within you” (Luke 17:21).
Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, says much in her writings about how to pray effectively. I find a statement she makes on page 160 of The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany deeply instructive: “To live so as to keep human consciousness in constant relation with the divine, the spiritual, and the eternal, is to individualize infinite power; and this is Christian Science.”
