Unlimited Healing

My grandmother was so ill with asthma that she was bedridden and could not care for her children. A Christian Science practitioner healed her through prayer in one visit. Because this healing led to my own study of Christian Science, I've enjoyed a lifetime of benefits and physical healings through prayer alone.

Relying on prayer, our family has been healed, without medical intervention, sometimes instantaneously, of skin cancer, heart trouble, malaria, chronic back pain, athletic injuries, severe respiratory problems, and diseases of childhood, to name a few. Our growing understanding that we are God's children, always spiritual and perfect, created and maintained as the good likeness of God, has brought these healings.

God does not fail those who rely on Him, who seek healing through spiritual, not material, means. Because God, Spirit, created us each in His image and likeness (see Genesis 1:26), you and I are spiritual. What's not always so easy to see is that this means our life is not in matter. It is of utmost importance for us to understand this, because waking up from the illusion of life in matter is fundamental to healing.

Today, scientists are finding matter to be less than solid - more like energy or motion. The theology of Christian Science urges this advancing discovery forward, to the understanding that spiritual reality is the only reality, and to the fact that all reality is actually governed by God, supreme good.

I was reminded of how powerful the understanding of this truth is just this morning as I dropped off my car for servicing and walked the mile or so back home. I realized it was a freedom walk! At one time, years ago, I had experienced such severe symptoms of heart trouble that I could walk only short distances before needing to rest. I had prayed earnestly about this, relying on no other means. And I was completely healed.

My study of divine Science, Christian Science, has shown me that God's law is omnipotent, and that He is, as the Bible says, "a very present help in trouble" (Psalms 46:1).

God's spiritual law supports goodness - including good health. At the same time, it annihilates evil, including sickness, sin, and death. Anyone can turn to this law, learn, and practice it. Anyone can be healed. You don't need to belong to the Christian Science Church to practice Christian healing, as many current books and media reports of healing through prayer have shown. But people like me have found that the clearest explanation of the healing law of God is to be found in the textbook of Christian Science, "Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures." To the author, Mary Baker Eddy, healing through prayer and Christian living was direct proof that she understood and was practicing correctly the divine Principle of healing - the same Principle Christ Jesus demonstrated.

There are no limits to God's healing power! But God does require something. One must live one's life in an ever more Christian manner, must work at eliminating fears, sins, and ignorance of what is good, and strive constantly to love everyone more fully. God is divine Love, patient and merciful, and Christian healing doesn't proceed from a hateful, disobedient, or unbelieving heart. Jesus' life shows the spiritual-mindedness, the trust in God, the unselfishness, that heal unfailingly.

Through the years there have sprung up misunderstandings about Christian Science. But those who seek a deeper understanding of God become convinced that here is primitive Christianity in action. This theology has a record of healing conditions termed hereditary, infectious, incurable, inoperable, terminal.

The following is a fundamental precept from the Preface to Science and Health: "The physical healing of Christian Science results now, as in Jesus' time, from the operation of divine Principle, before which sin and disease lose their reality in human consciousness and disappear as naturally and as necessarily as darkness gives place to light and sin to reformation. Now, as then, these mighty works are not supernatural, but supremely natural" (Pg. xi).

You can visit the home page of The First Church of Christ, Scientist, at (www.tfccs.com).