It’s an absolutely crucial question to ask when praying for healing.
What do you expect to happen?
Do you expect the body to get better?
Honestly now, don’t just mouth the words, “Yes, I expect the body to get better.” Do you honestly believe and know beyond a shadow of a doubt that the truth you are praying is going to heal you mentally and physically?
We’re always expecting a certain type of result. When struggling with a physical illness, we need to know whether we’re expecting to get better or expecting to get worse. Typically, one choice or the other has been made whether we’re aware of it or not.
Too often, I’ve noticed, patients expect to get worse. Doctors have told them the illness is incurable or will go through stages, and the patient believes the doctor, agonizes over his opinion and fears the consequences, and then lives them out. Even though they believe prayer heals, their faith in the doctor’s verdict is stronger than their faith in God. Their expectation is formed more by the doctor’s opinion than by the spiritual truth. And this mesmeric hold has to be broken to improve one’s expectations and move the weight of thought onto the side of the healing Truth.
We have to be on vigilant guard to defend our expectations from evil influence. Mortal mind wants us to believe in error, to accept suffering as natural and normal, and to give into increased distress. That’s the whole agenda of mortal mind, to perpetuate and increase suffering.
But Christian Science comes to the rescue and declares, “You don’t have to suffer. There is a spiritual healing to be had. Disease is not the reality it appears to be. Health is the reality and is yours to demonstrate today. Christ is at work on your behalf making it so.”
When my eye was hit severely by a tennis ball last year and the evidence of damage in my eyeball was highly distressing, I included in my prayer an expectation of physically getting better. I knew there could not be a disconnect between what I was knowing spiritually, and what I was experiencing humanly. If it was spiritually true that my vision was indestructible and that God gave me a seeing eye, then I could not have destroyed vision or an unseeing eye, in the spiritual or in the so-called physical. This meant that the physical evidence of a damaged eye had to disappear. And it did.
Mary Baker Eddy said it well,
“Stand porter at the door of thought. Admitting only such conclusions as you wish realized in bodily results, you will control yourself harmoniously. When the condition is present which you say induces disease, whether it be air, exercise, heredity, contagion, or accident, then perform your office as porter and shut out these unhealthy thoughts and fears. Exclude from mortal mind the offending errors; then the body cannot suffer from them.”
So, back to my original question, “What do you expect to happen as a result of your prayers?”
It’s not enough to outline what we expect to happen in order to be healed, but it is a strong indicator of how much faith we have in the Truth we’re praying to demonstrate. The more we believe the truth and understand it, the less faith we have in error, and the stronger our expectations become of making progress morally, mentally, spiritually and physically.
When Jesus commanded, “Rise, and walk.” The man arose and walked. Jesus expected physical recovery as a result of his spiritual treatment, and physical recovery came.
We can have the same type of expectation, and results! God helps make it so…
Our acknowledging Univeral Love as always being with with us I experienced today a healing over a body conern that I was unable rise above the erroneousness belief. My deep prayer for others resulted in my own healing. Your messages have been very timely for me on many issues this year and seem to appear when I have been in the need of the direction of God’s healing.
This is really good, evan, thanks. arguing for the case isnt enough unless we “call forth” the truth of being with total expectation.
How do we raise our expectations. I know we have to pray about it, but how do we just decide we are going to expect healing. I have been dealing with nagging injuries related to my running and I pray, but I guess there is that little thought that keeps telling me it won’t go away and I will just have to live with it. I guess I have a hard time expecting good.
Thank you!
To anon above,
Certainly part of raising your expectations is knowing the mental nature of all suffering, that physical ills are mortal beliefs, and spiritual truth can conquer those false beliefs. If you think the problem is material, it probably looks hopeless from a spiritual point of view. But if you understand the material is mortally mental, you gain hope because you know you can change thought. False belief gone, physical suffering gone. The more we understand this, the stronger our expectations grow.
Does “what do you expect to happen as a result of your prayer?” apply to all problems besides physical ones?
My husband has been looking for a worthwhile job opportunity and not finding much at all. Can he expect to find the job he wants? I know he is very discouraged, and his expectations seem to get smaller and smaller. What is the difference between expecting a certain outcome as a result of prayer, to outlining? And why is that the though the cup is ‘overflowing”, there doesn’t seem to be a drop available.
To anon above,
You ask, “Can my husband expect to find the job he wants?” He can expect to get the job God wants him to get. And this is where prayer enters–to hear where God is leading us. We often want what we’re not ready for, so have to be humbly listening for God’s direction. One truth concerning your husband is for sure, God intends for him to be fully employed engaged with worthwhile and profitable work. What human form this takes, it’s often hard to know until it happens. But if thought stays open to wherever God leads, that meaningful job opportunity will open up. The supply is always present. But if we materially outline what form the supply should be, and we’re wrong, we don’t see the spiritual provision. So keep your expectations on a spiritual level. Per my discussion above about expecting results, yes, you certainly can expect to see some type of progressive employment open up. That is a right idea.
Evan, I too had an eye injury when I was 11 yrs old. The doctors wanted to remove the eye (this was said in my presence)and a practitioner was called. The decision was made to “sandbag” my head to hold it steady for 10 days and after the 10 days my eye was fine (thanks to the practitoner and obviously God’s loving care for me) As I was leaving the hospital, one doctor told my parents (again in my presence) that pressure would build up in the eye and a needle would have to be inserted to remove the excess fluid from the pressure. I was fine until age 16 when this intense pressure built up in my eye, this latent belief that was resting in my conscioiusness. The pain was intense. I was in a sports situation at the time and had to really affirm God was right there with me, guiding me through this and that a Dr’s claim is just that- a belief. As I silently affirmed this in thought that God doesn’t know pain, the pain left as quickly as it came. Poof! Gone, never to return. This is why it is so important to guard against what others say, what their expectaions are. The demonstration is always in our own conscousness. It was no use in blaming the Dr.’s (even though I wanted to!) for the fear they put in me as a child, they were only doing what they were taught,(their expectations) and I had to do what I was taught, (my expectaions) which was too expect a different result. A much better way to go, don’t you think?? Thanks for your thoughts on all this-very helpful in reaffirming why we practice C.S.
To anon above,
Excellent example of the benefits from watching one’s expectations. They set a course for action and outline what we have faith in. And we want to have faith in Truth not in error!
Thanks for sharing.