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Know the truth, find freedom – a promise

We’re all divinely empowered to discern the spiritual facts that bring about healing – as a man experienced firsthand after an alarming breathing difficulty arose.

  • By Bobby Lewis

Christian Science Perspective audio edition
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I was out on a backpacking trip when I started to have difficulty breathing at night. When I would fall asleep, I would stop breathing and wake up with a start. It was concerning, so I began doing something I’ve consistently found helpful in times of trouble: praying about it.

There’s a well-loved teaching of Christ Jesus that says, “You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free” (John 8:32, Revised Standard Version). This encourages us that we can find freedom from things that are discordant by knowing the truth about God, divine Spirit, and by understanding our identity as Spirit-created and therefore spiritual. Created in the image and likeness of Spirit, we reflect the wholeness and harmony of the Divine.

As I prayed, inspiration came that Jesus’ teaching wasn’t only instruction about what we should do, but a promise – a promise about what God is doing. The presence of God, the goodness of God, the love of God, are ever active.

I felt in that moment an assurance that God, Truth itself, would reveal whatever truths about God and myself I needed to know in order to be free from this condition that was interrupting normal rest. I started to hear the passage in thought with a comforting emphasis on “will” – “You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.”

Referring to another of Jesus’ teachings, Mary Baker Eddy, the discoverer of Christian Science, writes in “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures,” “Jesus’ promise is perpetual” (p. 328). Science and Health also assures, “The promises will be fulfilled” (p. 55). It’s not a question as to whether or not God will reveal truth to us. It’s a promise, because infinite Truth reveals itself continually.

What I was receiving on that backpacking trip was the feeling of God’s presence and healing love that extended beyond just acknowledging those things. It was a certainty of the allness of divine good, of Love and Truth. As I prayed, this certainty grew, and there was simply no more room for fear about the symptoms or what they meant for my health.

And I did find freedom. The symptoms that for a number of nights in a row had been uncomfortable and frightening, ended. I was able to rest normally, hike, and enjoy the time spent moving through those beautiful mountains.

“This awakening is the forever coming of Christ, the advanced appearing of Truth, which casts out error and heals the sick,” is the way Science and Health characterizes this kind of experience (p. 230). The Christ, Truth, reveals to us the ever-presence of Spirit, the healing all-power of divine Love, the divine Principle that is as fully available and accessible for each of us right now as it was for those to whom Jesus ministered.

Divine Truth is a change agent that quiets fear and restores well-being. It is liberating to know that divine Love is loving us in ways that reveal to us the truth of our intact spiritual wholeness. Opening our hearts to receiving the truths that God is imparting, moment by moment, brings freedom.

Here’s a poem inspired by these ideas and this experience:

Set free

“Know the truth”
an instruction, yes
a promise too? yes
an instruction
to affirm the truths
already received
to hold sacred
in prayer
what is known

a promise too
that just what is needed
in this moment
about the Divine
about me
about them
about all
will be revealed
and received

the promises
will be
fulfilled.

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