Spiritual resistance gives you immunity

THE fear that one may be deficient or lacking in immunity to disease is a fear no one needs to accept. But, faced with such a frightening verdict, some may hope to find peace by accepting sickness as inevitable. To reconcile oneself to sickness isn't an answer. An answer of hope can be found, though, in the Bible's promise of healing. We don't need to give in to the suggestion that someone has little resistance (to disease or to any other form of evil). Christian healing enables us to rebel against the lie that says God's creation is helpless and can be invaded by evil. Because man is actually of God's creating, there is no circumstance or condition that can make us susceptible to anything harmful. And we prove this through spiritual growth and regeneration. God is never deficient in His all-powerful, encircling love for His creation. The Psalmist sang, ``My defence is of God, which saveth the upright in heart.'' 1 Because our true spiritual nature is God-bestowed, a spiritual understanding of this fact can bring strength, moral and spiritual freedom, and healing. Christian Science brings us a clearer sense of our identity as the sons and daughters of God. As the offspring of God, Spirit, we are not subject to disease. God never made His children vulnerable to either sin or suffering. Knowing our real spiritual nature helps us to keep our lives in line with God's moral and spiritual laws and gives us our immunity from disease and deficiency. If, however, we think of ourselves as a collection of various personality traits, we might mistake physical impulses as genuine desires and follow them instead of exercising our spiritual freedom. In order to defend ourselves from the sin-sickness-and-death cycle of materiality, we need to rebel against it--claim what God is and what we really are and let Truth clear away any dark images of ourselves. We need to resist the false notion that man is inherently material--subject to material pulls and material influences over which he has no control. The Christian Science textbook, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy,2 shows us how to demonstrate our God-given health and moral purity. It says: ``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.'' 3 The early Christians, too, can teach us the way of victory in this struggle to be free from the influence of the physical senses. James wrote: ``Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you.'' 4 When we're reasoning according to divine law in this way and holding fast to spiritual truth, we're effectively praying. And prayer has a deep leavening effect in consciousness and so in our lives. It builds up in us an increasing resistance to the limiting claims of the carnal mind. It opens the mental paths through which we can see further how to ``draw nigh to God''--how to ally our thoughts and lives with Truth. Prayer brings us into conformity with Christ, strengthens and purifies us morally and p hysically by opening our eyes to our spiritual nature. It awakens our native desire to be and do good, to put off whatever is unlike God, Spirit, and frees us from sinful beliefs, whatever form they may take. False fears and impulsions or mere psychological and biological renderings of man can neither define nor victimize us. Prayer builds resistance to these, and to their supposed ravages on mind and body. Temptations of the flesh and bodily sufferings are being overcome today by people striving to follow Christ Jesus' teachings. Science and Health states, ``The history of Christianity furnishes sublime proofs of the supporting influence and protecting power bestowed on man by his heavenly Father, omnipotent Mind, who gives man faith and understanding whereby to defend himself, not only from temptation, but from bodily suffering.'' 5 As the intelligent and beloved children of God, we are governed not by biological ``laws'' but by His law of mercy and justice alone. We are never defenseless or deficient in any good quality. There is no chink in the eternal, impenetrable armor of God's love. 1 Psalms 7:10. 2 The Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science. 3 Science and Health, p. 393. 4 James 4:7, 8. 5 Science and Health, p. 387.