Do You Expect Proof?

Bringing a spiritual perspective to daily life

God is all-present and knows all. His power is supreme. The Holy Bible shows how the power of God changes human lives for the better.

Throughout the Bible, the fact that God is omnipotent is made plain. Many faithful religious believers acknowledge and accept as fundamental truth that God's power is unopposed.

Yet, even if you and I acknowledge this in theory, we may still live as though we doubt it more than accept it.

Do you expect to see proof that God's all-power is practical, profound, and far-reaching? To the degree you don't expect omnipotence to make a tangible difference in your life, you are blind to its true potency! To look at God's all-power as a beautiful but abstract ideal - of little practical consequence - is to lose sight of the truth. In reality, goodness has no challenger, for God, who is good itself and is infinite, is eternal, sovereign, ruling over all. Divine omnipotence implies that evil is demonstrably without actual existence, action, or influence - never a cause, and therefore having no real effect.

"Science Health with Key to the Scriptures," by Mary Baker Eddy, draws just such conclusions. This is the Christian Science textbook. It illumines the spiritual message of the Bible, a healing message relevant to everyday needs. Page 469 states, "We lose the high signification of omnipotence, when after admitting that God, or good, is omnipresent and has all-power, we still believe there is another power, named evil."

In order to honor God better, we need to first find, and then prove in our lives, more of the significance of prayer, for this helps us see that there is no evil power operating in opposition to God. Refusing to lose sight of the all-power of God, and of the consequent powerlessness of evil, is one way to pray. It helps and heals. It blesses those we embrace in our thoughts and helps us aid our communities in solving both small and tumultuous problems.

I used the spiritual facts of being to pray once when I was disturbed by an act of anarchy. A riot had broken out in the center of the city where my wife was working. Although she got home safely, the fear loomed large that this violent protest would continue. The issue in dispute was a tax, and the riot was the culmination of anger concerning it, which had been growing for a couple of years. TV news broadcasts carried vivid pictures of the riot, and evil certainly did look real and powerful.

I reached out to God to unite with anyone who was praying about the situation. I considered what might be fueling protests against this tax. Beyond political issues, I saw, there was an underlying assumption that income and the like is material, limited, generally meager. Centuries earlier, Christ Jesus had proved the opposite to be true, in incidents such as feeding 5,000 people with a small amount of food. This was indication of the fact that God supplies us abundantly - spiritually - and that spiritual understanding ushers instances of abundance into human life.

Through my own prayer, I'd seen much proof, in more modest ways, that income is ever available, and that we find our means growing more sufficient through knowing God. Now I saw how I needed to remember that God's provision is infinite, true for all. More than that, I realized, I had a divine right to declare that in reality everyone knows that his or her sufficiency truly is of God - is spiritual and not material - and is therefore unlimited.

This realization brought me peace and freed me from fearing a repetition of the violent protests. As it turned out, that Saturday's riot was the last, although up till then the protests had been escalating in fury. Soon after, they faded out. And the tax was replaced by one generally deemed fairer.

God's omnipotence, I feel, prevailed in our community, to the benefit of all.

The knowledge of God gives us the means to challenge every difficult situation through prayer. Sickness, too, is effectively healed through understanding that because God is good, good is All, and no evil power has actual existence. We can accept this and prove it!

You can read in-depth articles about Christian Science in a monthly magazine, The Christian Science Journal.