If praying for healing of a physical ailment, are you tempted to check the physical body for evidence of progress? It’s a common temptation, and a misguided one.
All healing happens in thought first. If you want to know whether you’re making progress or not, check your thought! That’s where the action lies.
The human body is human thought objectified, so, for the human body to improve, the thought governing the body needs to improve.
It’s okay to check for progress, but check in the right place! Check your thought. And if it helps, make a list of all the ways your thought has been improving.
Are you more grateful, loving, patient, kind, in closer touch with God, feeling more of God’s presence, more aware of Truth, and mentally engaged with constructive healing spiritual truths?
Ask yourself, “How has my thought been improving because of my prayers?” Look for evidence of improvement. Find it. Rejoice over it.
Progress should be expected in any case of healing. And progress is a right. But check for it where it really happens. In thought!
The body will follow where your thought goes like a tail follows a dog. You can count on it.
Such a helpful reminder, thank you Evan!
Things Are Thoughts:
https://sentinel.christianscience.com/shared/view/6x7du73wta?s=e
Excellent, just excellent! I needed to be reminded of this!!! You made it all so plain, too. Again, many thanks.
Every truth we feel and understand makes a difference.
It’s like hitting a rock with a hammer. Every blow does not break the rock but it does make a difference in the rock being broken.
Truth heals even if it takes more than one blow.
The classic management tale is of the man who had an unwanted boulder in his garden. Every day he hit it hard with his sledge hammer as long as he could manage, but it seemed to no avail. Eventually he gave up. His neighbor noticed the cessation of activity, and offered to give it one more blow, and the boulder disintegrated! Failure is when you give up. Love always carries on. Progress is the law of God. Keep love in thought, know how much God loves you, and what God sees. God does not check His creation , – He knows it, and that’s all we can know.
Thank you Evan, a very helpful reminder.
Thank you Ken for “God does not check His creation, He knows it, and that’s all we can know.” Powerful.
And thank you Evan for the suggestion to make a list of how our thought has been lifted, to see if we are kinder, feeling more grateful, more peaceful, more in touch with feeling God’s power and presence. I have worked with gratitude lists before but this takes it to the next level. Very practical and extremely useful message today.
I deeply appreciate the loving contributions of all of you, each in your unique ways! Blessed day to everyone!
God does not “check” His creation , – He “knows” it, and that’s all we can know. This ministered to me.Thank you!
Like rock picking our way out of Shawshank! 🙂
(Movie Shawshank Redemption)
Every blow counts!
https://sentinel.christianscience.com/shared/view/rt2jfhbbyu?s=e
Thanks for the link Brian- I liked how it stated that even lighter consistent blows on the rock will eventually do the job, but that we can learn how to strike harder blows. And when we fully understand God’s omnipotence, just that one powerful blow of Spiritual understanding can do the job.
That’s so encouraging! So, Instead of beefing up our muscles to use that sledge hammer more effectively, we can strengthen our spiritual understanding and conviction to see how God’s Truth obliterate any erroneous lies!
Thank you Brian!!!
&
Resolving “things into thoughts”:
https://sentinel.christianscience.com/shared/view/1unrj2c0nwg?s=e
Thanks Angie for your continual research and finding applicable articles.
Going to have a stress test today. I will keep the message of not being “distressed” from the article.
Perfect article to expand on Evan’s thought. Thanks Angie!
Thank you Angie!
Evan & Angie’s powerful truth today, makes inharmonious matter go away.
John’s hammering on a rock of error crumbles evils terror.
Many good thoughts extend with unity error’s end.
This church we all adore.
As we gather here, loving more..
We thank Thee Divine Mind,
For Truth, healing mankind.
Enjoyed this poem David, very appropriate, made me smile, especially “As we gather here, loving more.” Nice tribute to this group and to Evan and the power of what is happening here.
Also appreciated the Jack Benny, age 39 reference, I remember that. It’s a good way to remind ourselves, with humor, that we are nothing but the reflection of a timeless, infinite, ageless God, and to ward off those mental impositions that would try to tell us otherwise.
Yes good thought…I guess if you are still feeling worried enough to check, then your thought hasn’t yet been healed.
Aging is another illusion. The material senses continue a barrage of aging material lies.
Aging is being healed.
Often in the presence of others, I feel the effects of the community of their concept of matters appearance.
While I am doing what only a few can do, they often ask, “How old are you?” I remember a comedian named Jack Benny. He always answered “Thirty-nine.” Last time I replied the same, “Thirty-nine”.
Demonstrating strength instead of weakness, vitality instead declining ability, glorifying God in fullness of years.
Still “behind the plow”. But being a servant of valued and high ideals.
Love, David
Thank you Diane. Love your comment. And thank you Evan and Angie.
Thank you, Evan, for this very helpful inspiration. Mrs Eddy says in Science and Health (p 239): “To ascertain our progress, we must learn where our affections are placed and whom we acknowledge and obey as God. If divine Love is becoming nearer, dearer, and more real to us, matter is then submitting to Spirit.” This was once brought out in a Radio Sentinel and so I try to keep this in mind instead of looking for physical evidence of progress when something needs to be dealt with..
All of these ideas are ever so HELPFUL!
Thank you Dear Evan and Thank you dear friends!
Great post Evan ! and thank you Angie for both articles.
Ageless Health
https://sentinel.christianscience.com/shared/view/ueyxa0rbyc?s=e
Thanks Evan for setting our table with this bountiful offering of blessings, & thanks Martine for sharing this amazing article !
Wonderful inspiration from all these thoughts today. Thank you Evan. I love the idea of checking how ones thought has improved rather than the physical. So appreciate all the sharing of ideas from fellow readers.
Class. Age is the most subtle imposition there is.
It sneaks up unless we see our ageless identity.
Super guidance today . Thank you Evan. Must also say ‘thank you’ for all the links to articles from Angie and Martine. These are always so helpful and encouraging to study.
‘In the vast forever, in the Science and Truth of being, the only facts are Spirit and it’s innumerable creations.’ S&H pg 479.
Looking for the Spiritual …now that’s true vision.❣️
Perfect for me today. These are always very helpful, but some days especially so. Thanks for the hours of unselfish thought that go into preparing these — thought, expression, technical aspects (!). So many of us appreciate them.
Yes, so appreciate Evan and all contributors!
As a child I had warts on my fingers and they finally disappeared after a Sunday school teacher explained today’s topic to our little class. That night in bed I prayed but made sure I didn’t feel around my fingers to check for results. The next day I didn’t think about it until I happened to notice there were no more warts. I rejoiced!
Uh oh, Got me
Yup, this morning I feel into this “trap” and looked into the mirror to see if there was progress.
Thanks Evan for the better and more permanent way.
One of your best, Evan. Thanks for the articles, too, Angie and Martine. Powerhouse ideas and just what I needed to hear today. I’m really grateful for Spiritview and it’s fans.
Thank you Evan and Everyone for your comments. I learned the importance not looking to matter for validation of spiritual truths sometime in the 1990s when I first read the talk entitled “Beginning Rightly” by Daniel Jensen.
https://spiritualhealing.tripod.com/lectures/beginrightly.htm
This was shared here a few weeks ago but I thought I’d share it again because it’s so helpful and relates to Evan’s topic today. In this talk Mr. Jensen tells the story of a practitioner praying to free her son from the belief of polio but also looking to see if his legs were moving. The healing didn’t take place until the mother “stopped peeking”.
A few weeks ago I had a similar experience. A dog got loose in my neighborhood while my cat Finny was outside. I don’t know what happened, but when Finny finally came home that day unusually late at night he had a severe limp. I prayed for a couple of days but there didn’t seem to be any improvement. Finally one night in utter frustration I reached out to God to tell me what I needed to know and God’s gentle message to me was “Do you need to see evidence with your eyes before you will believe what you have been praying is true?” That was the wake-up call I needed and I immediately stopping trying to use physical sense to gain validation of the truth and just really knew wholeheartedly the truth is true and I could trust it. That relieved me of the fear I didn’t realize I was harboring, but I was, of the false belief of “will Christian Science ‘work’ in this case?” Once I was able to put that doubt out of thought I was able to go to sleep that evening without worrying about Finny. The next day when I woke up Finny bounded off into the kitchen to get his breakfast and he was soon back to normal!
It’s so easy to think your prayers aren’t effective until you see some physical evidence, but if instead you can just focus on your thinking and rejoice in the effectiveness of your prayers when you realize how your prayers have replaced false beliefs with the truth of God and God’s ideas, then everything in your experience has to reflect that truth.
Thank you so much Brian for sharing these thoughts and this healing. It was wonderful to hear how your thought shifted. Blessings to you and dear Finny.
Thank you Rose. And thank you for sharing this Daniel Jensen talk with everyone recently. I couldn’t find who had shared it previously before I posted my comment, but I just found it was you. 🙂
Thank you so much for sharing Brian.
Oh yeses, this one is short and sweet with lots of meat, thank you Evan, and I will get to all articles listed, thanks to all commenters! Brian, I too read and listened to Daniel Jensen’s talk “To Begin Rightly”, the link someone gave us last week. and you have re-listed today. I have read and re-read this several times now, it is a wonderful article with great examples. Daniel makes it perfectly clear that we have to recognize that any bodily problem is only a mental illusion, and we have to see that even when we are knee deep in the “belief of” the problem, then we can be in the ball game of revealing the Truth. We are not in the fix and repair business, we are in the lie detection business!
Ha, ha, that’s a funny illustration , “the body will follow where thought goes, like a tail follows a dog”. That will be an amusing reminder to me as I continue looking for improvement where needed. Thanks for sharing!
ONE ORIGIN
“Always begin your day that you live as the wondrous glory of God’s anointed, and not by starting with a problem that you hope to solve through Science. You have never entered nor lived as any fleshly sense, “the supposition of life, substance and intelligence in matter” (S&H 586:18), because the thoughts, or sense of Being, that constitute you originate in God, infinite Spirit, your only conscious Mind. This is the only functioning fact of your being here and now, and this is why nothing that a wholly fictitious human mind is saying about you can ever disturb you, because it never applies to you.” (10/99 JHargreaves)
“The sinless joy, — the perfect harmony and immortality of Life, possessing unlimited divine beauty and goodness without a single bodily pleasure or pain, — constitutes the only veritable, indestructible man, whose being is spiritual.” (S&H 76:2¬6)