A budding Christian Science practitioner asked me for some spiritual insight on how to meet her financial needs when faced with little income. I shared a few ground rules and truths I’ve applied myself, or learned through experience, over the 23 years I’ve been in this precious ministry.
1. God gives us what we need spiritually to succeed in the practice.
2. We don’t have to go into debt to the world to serve God, therefore burdensome debt is to be avoided. The practice is about serving God, serving divine Love, with our whole heart, mind and soul. It’s not about serving debt.
3. God blesses all right desires and motives with adequate resources for those desires and motives to come to fruition. The practice is a right desire, and brings only blessing into one’s experience.
4. A practitioner’s income is not directly dependent upon his or her number of patients. The income that prospers a practitioner is spiritual, coming directly from God, and it flows in superabundance. This income is discovered in an inspired Mind-consciousness that knows no lack,–an understanding of unending love from Spirit that translates into human needs met. And most specifically, the human needs of patients who call for help.
5. There is an unlimited demand for the treatments and support a practitioner has to offer. More people than most practitioners realize are receptive to spiritual healing and ready to ask for help.
6. It’s not advertising, fame or popularity that attracts patients. Growth in the practice results from divine Love bringing the supply a practitioner has to offer together with the demand the practitioner is ready to meet.
7. Practitioners need to know what they have to offer, to understand its value and worth, to know the effectiveness of Christian Science healing, and to know Truth meets practical needs and produces practical results.
8. Christian Science practitioners are engaged in a noble and worthwhile profession that is worthy of honor, respect and success.
9. God blesses, in practical ways, a practitioner’s honest desire and diligent efforts to practice Christian Science for the benefit of humanity.
10. A practitioner works for God. God watches out for His employees and gives them the resources they need to succeed at the tasks He has assigned them to do. It takes hard work, sacrifice of self, a deep unselfed love, and iron-clad commitment to succeed, but the reward of faithful service and unwavering devotion is of El Dorado proportions.
I was reading the chapter on The Apocalypse in Science and Health and it mentions “the Israelites of old at the Paschal meal thus prefigured this perilous passage out of bondage into the El Dorado of faith and hope.” [p.559″28-31]. Then it came to me to search your blog on El Dorado and whoa it is so uplifting! I love what you mentioned, “The practice is about serving God, serving divine Love with our whole heart, mind and soul. It is not about serving debt.” [maybe worries] In an Asean country where I come from, to be in the full time practice is not an easy decision to make where we need to pay the Journal card listing in dollars. That’s why I love every single idea you mentioned in your blog. I remember listening to one of your lectures where a woman came and gave you money for no reason at all in terms of debts owed by her but which met your need. I am not in the public practice but I can relate to that because many times I had experiences like it and now I had a few experiences of myself do the same thing. I mean an act done because of intuition [Mind directed]. Mrs. Eddy wrote in Science and Health’ Soul has infinite resources with which to bless mankind.” We know that she experienced the truth of what she said. Thanks again Evan.