Healing heart ailments
The Bible, with its many examples of healing through divine power, can bring reassurance and comfort to those suffering with a heart problem. It can awake them to the practicality of this power in their own lives. Spiritual understanding - an understanding of the true nature of God and His creation as revealed in the Bible - can heal heart difficulties, even those considered beyond hope. There are many witnesses to the complete and permanent healing of heart troubles through spiritual means alone.
The experience of a friend of mine is an example. One day while at work he suddenly collapsed. His sister, who was working with him, had him immediately taken to a nearby medical facility, where he was told he had suffered a heart attack and had a serious heart problem.
Because my friend was a student of Christian Science and had many times experienced the healing power of prayer, he asked to be free of the medical treatment and decided to rely on God alone for healing. He called a Christian Science practitioner, who came immediately to talk with him and agreed to join him in prayer based on the acknowledgment of God's goodness and allness; on the fact that God's will for man is health and harmony and life, and that nothing, in reality, can interfere with His will.
My friend is an active family man, and at this particular time had been feeling overworked and under a lot of pressure. He felt a weight of personal responsibility for the family business, which was suffering financially. Both he and the practitioner recognized that fear and anxiety needed to be healed and not just the physical symptoms. Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, points out, ''Fear is the fountain of sickness, and you master fear and sin through divine Mind; hence it is through divine Mind that you overcome disease.'' n1
n1 Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, pp. 391-392.
As my friend and the practitioner prayed together and reasoned along this line, fear left his thought, and the pain seemed to drain from his body. He was soon back to work with a renewed sense of the ever-presence of God's goodness. The business problems were healed as well. This all happened many years ago, and there hasn't been the slightest recurrence of the heart problem. My friend leads a very active life, and the family business has prospered to the degree that, even in hard economic times, it's a challenge to handle the continuous flow of customers! Looking to God in his moment of need not only saved him from suffering but proved to be a turning point in his life.
To realize that God, the one infinite Mind, is in perfect control, and that man's actual being is the indestructible manifestation of Mind, can greatly benefit someone faced with the specter of sickness. As we acknowledge and yield to the spiritual fact that God does govern all - including all aspects of man's identity and being - fear and its supposed physical effects must recede and disappear.
We may not always be aware that the body is a manifestation of thought. Yet looking deeper, we see how plainly thought can be objectified. Such expressions as ''heartbroken,'' ''hardhearted,'' ''heartsick,'' refer to states of thought that may be quite descriptive of physical conditions. But the truth of God's allness and goodness and of man's spiritual perfection cuts right through mental discords and the ills associated with them.
''There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear,'' n2 the Bible tells us. God - perfect, infinite Love - imparts good to His creation with strength and order and continuity. Man, made in God's image, reflects this order and freedom.
n2 I John 4:18.
You are never, then, really trapped by a physical trouble. There is a way to prove your God-given heritage of freedom - a spiritual way - and nothing can stop you from utilizing it. DAILY BIBLE VERSE They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint. Isaiah 40:31
