Kick the intruder out!

Imagine coming home from work one day to find your home has been taken over by an obnoxious intruder. He has messed up your house, and when you politely ask him to leave, he insults you and says he has no intention of leaving until he sees fit.

What would you do? You'd try to make him leave. And if you couldn't do it, you'd call the police and have them evict the intruder. But what if the interloper argued, ''Hey, wait a minute! You can't throw me out. According to the Intruder's Rights Act, once I get in, I have a right to stay as long as I like. It's the law!''

Of course, we'd never believe such a ridiculous argument. We'd never willingly invite such a character into our home. And we surely wouldn't accept that there could be any legitimate law that would allow another to invade our home and trample our individual rights.

Unfortunately, many people do buy such arguments -- when the ''intruder'' is disease and the ''home'' is the body. We'd never invite disease to dwell in our body. But when it suddenly appears, we are all too often ready to accept its claims of legitimacy. After all, according to the ''Intruder's Rights Act'' -- alias the so-called laws of physiology -- disease can have a lawful claim on our bodies.

Not so! There is a higher law that overrules the bogus claims of disease and sickness. Disease cannot nullify our God-given right of self-government and dominion. We have God's authority to throw the intruder out! This authority comes from the dominion established in the very beginning, when God said, ''Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion . . . over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.'' n1

n1 Genesis 1:26.

This God-given dominion, though obscured by the belief in man's apparent fall from grace, is asserted once and for all in Christ, Truth. In Christ, the spiritual sonship manifest in Jesus, we find man's original dominion. The Saviour did not come to change reality; he brought reality to light, showing life in Christ to be wholly spiritual and the only real existence. Man in God's image and likeness has eternally been the son. This is our true selfhood -- immortal manhood, expressing all that the Father is and does.

Understanding man's eternal sonship, Jesus said to his followers, ''Behold, I give unto you power . . . over all the power of the enemy: and nothing shall by any means hurt you.'' n2 This power is present here and now, maintained eternally by divine Principle, God, as ever-operative law. To see this law operate, we need only to challenge that trespasser, disease, through prayer.

n2 Luke 10:19.

''Exercise this God-given authority,'' writes Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science. ''Take possession of your body, and govern its feeling and action. 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.'' n3

n3 Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 393.

When we challenge disease in this way, with the spiritual understanding of its illegitimacy and unreality before God, we discover the divine energies always operating in our behalf. Disease cannot long abide in the presence of God-derived dominion and power. Refusing to assent to the claims of disease, knowing that no legitimate law supports it, we can throw the intruder out.

Even if the symptoms of disease persist in the face of our prayerful protests , we can confidently appeal to our Father. Trusting in His help, we'll be receptive to His angels -- powerful spiritual ideas and heavenly revelations that remove intruding fear, pain, and images of disease. Once the mental claims of disease have been evicted, the body must return to normal, for the angels of God's presence assure us that disease never was a God-ordained reality.

If disease seems to have moved in on you, you are not helpless. God has given you the power and ability to evict evil. You can rise up and claim your rights -- and throw the intruder out! DAILY BIBLE VERSE Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. James 4:7e 10:19. 3 Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 393.