God’s purpose for you – guard it! Live it!
If we’re feeling helpless in the face of problems that would draw us in, we can yield to the power of God, which empowers us to be and do good.
What can you do if you feel drawn, as if by a magnet, to the problems you, others, and all humanity are facing, and you want to help, but you feel helpless?
The very fact that you want to help shows that “God is at work within you, helping you want to obey him, and then helping you do what he wants” (Philippians 2:13, The Living Bible).
Oh, joy! God’s purpose for you and everyone is for Him – divine Truth, Life, and Love – to work in us for the benefit of all, including ourselves. We can fulfill this holy and practical purpose by faithfully and lovingly yielding to God.
Christ Jesus showed us how. Before he launched into his God-appointed healing and reforming mission, his resolve was tested. And he was watchful to keep himself faithful to God.
After fasting for 40 days in the wilderness, Jesus was tempted by the supposed power of evil, called Satan, to use his sonship with God for self-serving purposes – to satisfy his hunger by turning stone into bread, to put himself in danger and appeal to God’s angels to rescue him, and to worship Satan in order to become a personal ruler in the world. Jesus’ response was decisive: “Get thee hence, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve” (Matthew 4:10).
Through his watchful, undeviating devotion to helping humanity by serving God alone, Jesus proved that God is the only real power. With God working in him, he healed people who were sick, reformed people who had sinned, and raised people who had died.
Jesus knew that we, too, would be tested – and that by faithfully letting God work in us, we would be able to pass these tests triumphantly. So, he left this instruction: “What I say unto you I say unto all, Watch” (Mark 13:37).
Let us mentally bow in humble prayer to God. Let us watch to keep our thoughts and motives in God’s service. Let God awaken us, and keep us awake, from the supposed hypnotic pull of the problems we and others are facing, and empower us to be truly helpful in solving these problems.
In line with this, Mary Baker Eddy wrote in the textbook of Christian Science, “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures,” “Stand porter at the door of thought,” and, “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” (pp. 392, 393).
Jesus kept himself faithful to God by knowing, and holding fast to, his true identity as the Son of God – and by knowing and loving everyone in our true identity as man, the spiritual idea of God made in God’s likeness. The true nature of God, as well as our true identity as God’s spiritual reflection, is the wonderful truth that thousands of individuals have been learning to understand and hold faithfully to – with healing results – through studying the Bible along with Science and Health.
Christian Science uses the term “animal magnetism” in reference to the supposed ability of evil to hypnotize and control us. But it makes very clear that evil has no power to hypnotize a spiritual idea. Our spiritual nature as God’s idea is like pure gold; it has no element that can be magnetized.
Our need is to conform to our true God-given identity by humbly opening the door of our thought to God’s purifying influence, which is always present in human consciousness. With God’s all-power and authority working in us, we can shut out the false belief that we and others are mere physical mortals vulnerable to evil. Then, God’s healing and purifying power shines through us for the good of everyone.
We can’t serve God through blind belief in Him, or for self-serving purposes. We need to gain, and hold to, the spiritual understanding of God’s true nature, and of our and everyone’s true nature as God’s spiritual reflection – by loving that reality and selflessly conforming to it each day.
Over the past decades, I’ve experienced how this brings about the blessings that come from God’s reforming and healing power working in us. Thank you, God! You can let Him work in you, too!
The Living Bible, copyright © 1971. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.