Your're not helpless!

When you or a loved one is suffering or your income just isn't meeting expenses, when crime is on the rise in your community, do you hear yourself saying, "I'm helpless to do anything about it. It's out of my control"?

Helplessness canm be destroyed. Prayer -- specifically, that prayer demonstrated by Christ Jesus -- defeats helplessness and reveals an ever-present , ever-continuous flow of divine aid in times of need.

Jesu's works of years ago relate directly to our lives now. His unfailing ability to heal was the result of ceaseless, spiritual prayer. Certainly in no human way could he have demonstrated so absolutely the powerlessness of evil and the omnipotence of God's love for man.

Remember Jesus' healing of Lazarus? This good friend was already buried when Jesus arrived to heal him. If Jesus had felt helpless, could he have called back Lazarus from the grave? Jesus prayed -- and Lazarus "came forth." n1 Through utter obedience to the healing law of Love, the Master demonstrated that God is indeed a loving Father.

n1 John 11:44

Jesus allowed nothing to thwart his mission as mankind's Savious. Helplessness was no less a "devil" to be cast out than blindness or hatred or death. His devout, single-minded prayer, fully glorifying God, overcame allm phases of evil. Everyone, including himself, was blessed by the healing christ, Truth.

That ability to bless mankind becomes ours, too, as we prayerfully yield our mortal outlook on life to the Christlike understanding of God, of divine Love and Mind. Our real selfhood right now is man -- spiritual man -- created in Love's, Mind's, image, and reflecting His immortal strength and infinite capability. The Mind that is Love bestows dominion and intelligence and unbounded freedom. The Love that is Mind protects and cares for the beloved divine creation. Man -- indeed, each of us as the spiritual child of God -- simply is not and never can be helpless.

Helplessness is nothign more than an inverted sense of Love's omnipotence, an upside-down view of God and man that insists we are subject to unpredictable and sometimes horrific conditions of mortal living. Wasn't Jesus' entire healing ministry proof of the falsity of this inversion and of man's actual spirituality? As Mary Baker Eddy n2 writes in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures,m "Evil is not supreme; good is not helpless; nor are the so-called laws of matter primary, and the law of Spirit secondary." n3

n2 Mrs. Eddy is the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science

n3 Science and Health,m p. 207

Whether we are up against illness, crime, or poverty, the prayerthat recognizes and unwaveringly asserts the omnipotence of Mind and the ever-presence of Love -- the prayer that yearningly desires to see and obey God -- is always answered. The truth of man's spiritual nature is revealed to us in appreciable human terms.

This became very clear to me during a healing involving my young daughter. At one point I felt so helpless about the situation that I couldn't think clearly. But Mrs. Eddy writes: "Rise in the strength of Spirit to resist all that is unlike good. God has made man capable of this, and nothing can vitiate the ability and power divinely bestowed on man." n4

n4 ibid.,m p. 393

That inherent capability to rise spiritually to an adverse occasion could not desert me, even if words did. And so in prayer I yielded humbly to love's healing presence. I really had nowhere else to turn. All heplessness dissolved immediately, and an intantaneous and permanent healing resulted.

"The eternal God is thy refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms; and he shall thrust out the enemy from before thee," n5 the Bible says. Our prayers , rightly guiding us in the footsteps of the Master, truly thrust out the enemy of helplessness, as well as anything else that would separate us from our Father. And what replaces it? Dominion, freedom, holiness -- indeed, all God-given qualities. n5

n5 Deuteronomy 33:27

Each of us can demonstrate that he is right now fully equipped with divine ability. We're not helpless! DAILY BIBLE VERSE My flesh and my heart faileth: but God is the strength of my heart, a nd my portion for ever. Psalms 73:26