Are You Hungry?

When I was a teenager, I became very hungry. Hungry to know God, that is. This led me to read the Holy Bible for hours when I got home from school each day - to learn about Him.

I also found a book called "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures." What it said about God made what the Bible said about Him clearer to me.

At first it was hard. Sometimes I had to struggle to understand what I was reading. But I kept at it, and being persistent helped. I began to know God. I found that He has wonderful love for us. I learned that He is good and controls all. At the same time, I began to get a clearer idea of who I was.

Are you hungry to know God? Have you wanted to feel that good is with you and has power? You can! It is possible for you to know God, who is good, and feel His presence. And to learn who you really are - because the relationship between God and you is indestructible. God is the great cause, and you really are the effect - what God is causing to be. The more you begin to know God, the more you begin to recognize new facts about who you are.

Keep persisting, and you can really see that God is the infinite Mind, the Mind that controls the universe with unlimited intelligence. (Mind is another name for God that helps us see Him in the way the Bible says He is - infinite.)

The author of Science and Health reasoned, "If God is All, and God is good, it follows that all must be good; and no other power, law, or intelligence can exist" (Mary Baker Eddy, "Miscellaneous Writings," Pg. 101). God gives this intelligence to us. We are not really limited in how much intelligence we have. We express the wisdom of God, the divine Mind. And, like God, this wisdom is always good.

I found that thinking of God in this way, as the all-intelligent and all-good divine Mind, made me see how lovingly He controls everything in His universe. We can feel the great love divine Mind always has for us and everyone. This brings happiness. Knowing God gives us true peace of mind. This was what I learned by reading the Bible and hungering to know Him.

Something interesting happened that was related to all this study and prayer. All through school, we had to take standardized tests. Usually my scores weren't all that great, and from one grade to the next my ranking remained pretty consistent.

Well, when I began to be very hungry to know God better and to take time each day to learn who He was, all that changed!

In high school, when I was in my sophomore or junior year, the standardized tests were given again. I took them with everyone else. A short time later, I was called to the principal's office. He said my score had jumped up much higher this time. So much higher that he was convinced that I must have done something wrong to get such a high score.

He arranged for me to take the tests again. This time, I would be in a room all by myself, with a proctor watching. I took the tests again, and the results were the same. My intelligence - or rather my understanding of the perfect intelligence God gives us all - had increased. Dramatically. My work in classes and my grades improved significantly, too.

There were other signs of how my search to know God was transforming me. For instance, I was a lot more involved in school activities. And I was a much happier person.

One of the passages from the Bible that can help you to know God, and as a result give you a better view of your own potential, is this one from the book of Jeremiah: "Ah Lord God! behold, thou hast made the heaven and the earth by thy great power and stretched out arm, and there is nothing too hard for thee" (32:17).

And they shall not teach

every man his neighbour,

and every man his brother,

saying, Know the Lord: for

all shall know me, from

the least to the greatest.

Hebrews 8:11