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7/7/2014 Nothing can deter you from healing It is natural to want to help others through your prayers. Practicing prayer for others needn’t and shouldn’t be scary. Healing prayer is very fulfilling. It is motivated by love for God and man. While not every practitioner decides to advertise as a healer, taking out a listing in The Christian Science Journal can be a next step as the commitment to practice Christian Science healing matures into full-time availability to help others. But whether one is Journal-listed or not, the conditions and standards of practice are the same. Each one needs to do what is necessary to give effective help. To an early practitioner, Christian Science discoverer Mary Baker Eddy wrote, “Every day treat yourself that no evil suggestion nor argument can swerve you or frighten you--or deter you from healing and doing just what is needed here . . . Three times each day treat yourself for this temptation then watch that your house be not broken open.” [MBE to Alfred E. Baker, 2/2/1899, F00147] I remember a time when I felt totally blocked as a healer. Really stuck. I couldn’t see any progress in my cases and felt afraid. Maybe I shouldn’t be practicing, I thought. Then I confronted head-on that aggressive and false suggestion that I couldn’t heal. Three times a day I treated myself, my practice and my community to understand that God through Christ was the healer, and that as God’s reflection, I express His eternal, healing Christ.  Mrs. Eddy defined Christ as “the divine manifestation of God, which comes to the flesh to destroy incarnate error.” (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, 583) She also spoke of this Christ as “voicing good, the divine message from God to men speaking to the human consciousness.” (ibid 332) She explained that this Christ is “the divine image and likeness, dispelling the illusions of the senses; the Way, the Truth, and the Life, healing the sick and casting out evils, destroying sin, disease, and death.” (ibid 332) I affirmed regularly that this very Christ is always a present and effective healer; that where I am, the healing Christ is manifest. As I did, I began to feel the authority that Christ gives each one to heal through prayer. I began to think of myself less as a personal healer and more as a perpetual witness to and expression of this healing Christ through every treatment I gave. I stopped being afraid that I couldn't heal. And then things started moving, really moving fast. Sometimes healing came so quickly that I asked myself if I had had the time to give the case a full Christian Science treatment. But my three-times-a-day prayer always showed me that its not a personal me doing something extraordinary in prayer. My role is to witness the Christ expressed in me and in the patient - to witness to the Christ-message of God’s perpetual care for His creation - the divine message of unending good that restores harmony where discord seems to be. I am trying to keep up a regular practice of treating myself three times a day “that no evil suggestion nor argument can swerve [me] or frighten [me]--or deter [me] from healing and doing just what is needed here.” It isn't always easy and sometimes I have to set an alarm to remember to do it. But I am striving to be regular about it, because, bottom line: Good healers are needed. And those of us whose love for God and man move us to want to lift up our brothers and sisters in healing prayer, have every right to be effective in our holy work. Let us lift up our hearts and our hands to God in heaven, and say... Not a subscriber and want to be?
It's easy! Just sign up in the sidebar. You may also wish to: VISIT MY WEBSITE HOME PAGE FIND LINKS TO MY OTHER PUBLISHED CONTENT LISTEN TO A COLLECTION OF MY "YOUR DAILY LIFT" 2-MINUTE PODCASTS  Here is a 5 minute podcast that shows you a bit of what I am working on for the "Angry no more" lecture that will be coming soon. Hope you find it helpful! Also, if you would like to see/hear short clips from my other two lectures- "Finding God, finding health" and "Unending life within your reach" - they are now available on my LECTURES page. To be sure you don't miss something,
you can have new posts delivered to your email inbox. Simply subscribe in the sidebar. And if this post is meaningful to you, it may also help others. Please share! You may also wish to: VISIT MY WEBSITE HOME PAGE FIND LINKS TO MY OTHER PUBLISHED CONTENT LISTEN TO A COLLECTION OF MY "YOUR DAILY LIFT" 2-MINUTE PODCASTS 10/24/2012 How do I love me? A blog reader (and patient) who will remain anonymous has been encouraging me to write a post on the importance of loving oneself. A couple of days ago, she wrote me an email explaining how important this concept has been to her in recent days. I asked if she was willing for her thoughts to be shared on the blog. Her reply? "Of course." So here you go! From an email dated Saturday, October 20, 2012: The injunction "Love thy neighbor as thyself" has been popping into my mind for the last few days, and I’ve been giving it a lot of thought. I think most of us would find it not too hard - at least in most cases—to maybe not love, but at least like our neighbor. But us? Love ourselves? Even like ourselves? No way!  Once I asked a dear friend if she loved herself and she looked me in the eye and said, “I don’t even know what that means.” And she was love itself, a church-goer, generous to a fault, devoting all her time to helping others. How could she not know what that meant? I think lots of people would throw up their hands in horror if asked the same question. Yet all through the Bible, the subject is God’s great love for us. So I was asking myself, what's wrong? In the Bible there is a lot of talk about self-abnegation, self-sacrifice, and selfless love. Also, original sin. And to me, it’s this notion that we are basically sinners and worthless, therefore unworthy of love, that seems to have gotten the upper hand. So the idea of loving oneself has become twisted into being irrelevant or into seeming like an ego trip of self-absorption or self-indulgence, to be rejected entirely by anyone seeking salvation. And then appears the natural extension of this neglecting to love oneself - self-hatred. I think we have the wrong idea of love and of Love. And it is a better understanding of Love, of God as an unchanging Principle, teaching us to love even ourselves, that makes Christian Science revolutionary.  In Retrospection and Introspection, Mary Baker Eddy writes, “Art thou unacquainted with thyself? Then be introduced to this self. Know thyself!” Over these past several days when you have been working for me, I have begun to understand that knowing myself has to do with loving myself. That is, to know myself, and love my real self, I must see myself as Love sees me. And “love is patent, love is kind.” So a healing has come. I can see that because God says I am loved and loveable, it’s being said and done and can’t be contradicted. I can yield, accept. Understanding this has overturned all the bad I’d been told about myself ever since I was little. And the baseless anger that had been eating at me for several months has just dissolved. I have become more patient and kind. I have totally quit bashing myself for anything and everything. And I have decided to love no matter what. Me. Others. Often expressed in just a smile, or even merely a pleasant expression. And in return I’ve had such blessings. Love it? Please share it!
For a full-text version delivered to your email inbox, you can find the subscription box in the sidebar. You may also wish to: VISIT MY WEBSITE HOME PAGE FIND LINKS TO MY OTHER PUBLISHED CONTENT 10/13/2012 It's not too late to stop this disease Feeling cornered by disease? Is doubt or fear wearing away your confidence in being healthy again? Take a lesson from Isaiah's playbook. Called by Hezekiah when an enemy army was advancing with the intent to decimate his city, Isaiah prayed a prayer so significant, so powerful, that it merited two accounts in separate books of the Bible - II Kings and Isaiah - and with results so effective that they received a third mention in II Chronicles, chapter 32. Isaiah's prayer stopped the deadly enemy cold, thundering to its finale: "Therefore thus saith the Lord concerning the king of Assyria, He shall not come into this city, nor shoot an arrow there, nor come before it with shield, nor cast a bank against it. By the way that he came, by the same shall he return, and shall not come into this city, saith the Lord. For I will defend this city, to save it, for mine own sake, and for my servant David's sake." (II Kings 19:32-34, Isaiah 37:33-35) Let me break this down. In its spiritual signification, "the king of Assyria" represents any thought or condition that bullies or threatens to wipe us out. In his conclusion, Isaiah explains, point by point, the power of divine Love to protect us against four specific tactics of this enemy. It shall not:
 Well before any actual battle, Hezekiah faced aggressive threats from the enemy. The king of Assyria sent a messenger to announce his plans to destroy the city. The intent was, of course, to undermine Hezekiah's confidence and increase his fear. Hezekiah was afraid and felt defeated long before any actual fighting. So when Isaiah came to his side and declared that God wouldn't allow it - that evil would not, could not enter and take the city - his message was like a good rain to thirsty soil. The results were immediately evident. And graphic. "And it came to pass that night, that the angel of the Lord went out, and smote in the camp of the Assyrians an hundred fourscore and five thousand: and when they arose early in the morning, behold, they were all dead corpses." An undeniably effective outcome.  I learned about Isaiah's prayer when I was suffering from a case of pneumonia that was taking me down fast. I felt both invaded and pervaded by disease. The fact that I had been praying for healing for a considerable time, and yet the symptoms worsened, was eating away at my spiritual resolve. I didn't understand this resistance to healing and the persistence of my suffering. When I came across Isaiah's prayer, it almost seemed to arrive too late. The disease had already gotten in. The enemy was well entrenched. Or so I thought. The following explanations from pages 426 and 427 of Mary Baker Eddy's Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, helped me identify the real nature of the enemy. They helped me understand how to apply Isaiah's prayer to my case. Eddy wrote, "When it is learned that disease cannot destroy life, and that mortals are not saved from sin or sickness by death, this understanding will quicken into newness of life. It will master either a desire to die or a dread of the grave, and thus destroy the great fear that besets mortal existence... [Emphasis added] "The human concepts named matter, death, disease, sickness, and sin are all that can be destroyed... "Death is but another phase of the dream that existence can be material. Nothing can interfere with the harmony of being nor end the existence of man in Science."  I realized that the disease symptoms were nothing more than the messages being sent ahead by the enemy, trying to intimidate me and wear down my confidence in God and my spiritual resolve. Neither my body, nor pneumonia were the enemy. Even death wasn't the actual enemy because it would eventually be proved that man doesn't live or die in matter. No. The enemy bearing down on me was the fear of death. And I could do something about that. It wasn't too late to work with Isaiah's prayer. Here is a look into some of my reasoning.
 As Isaiah saw regarding Hezekiah's enemy, so it was for mine. "By the way that he came" (from the nowhere of fear) "by the same shall he return" (to the nothingness of fear).
The pneumonia was stopped dead in its tracks. The black cloud of fear that had threatened me with aggressive symptoms dissipated completely. I was well. Don't be fooled into fighting an unreal enemy. The culprit is not disease. Your body doesn't hate you.The great enemy is always fear. It's never too late - NEVER TOO LATE - to stop fear and disease cold. This is an edited repost of an article that originally appeared on this blog on February 20, 2012.  Hey, hey! Today's Your Daily Lift (a two minute podcast by Christian Science lecturers, airing five days a week) tells the story of something amazing that happened on a road trip in the north of England.
You can click one the sheep below to find it in English or in French. Also available is an expanded text of the lift in this blog post.  I love reading the chapter “Prayer” in Mary Baker Eddy’s Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures. True to its title, prayer is described in its many forms, including, but not limited to:
This adds up to 12 forms of prayer, and that is only looking at the first four pages. There are loads more. You might try reading the chapter to find how many more you can find. Read “Prayer” online. 8/7/2012 A faith that isn't blind What makes the healing prayer taught in Christian Science distinct from other types of prayer for healing? Mary Baker Eddy devotes an entire book - Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures - to this question. Specifically, page 12 clears up some of the fog and mystery surrounding Christian Science prayer. Interestingly, the discussion begins with a statement of what it is not. The healing prayer practiced in Christian Science is not a human “mind over matter” blind faith-cure method. Mrs. Eddy writes, “‘The prayer of faith shall save the sick,’ says the Scripture. What is this healing prayer? A mere request that God will heal the sick has no power to gain more of the divine presence than is already at hand.” If we use prayer something like a balloon or emergency flare we send up, - “Hey, I could really use some help over here on my problem,” - where is God in this prayer? Circling around somewhere outside the problem, needing our help through prayer to find it and fix it? Holding sickness at the center of a case and bringing God to it indicates a misunderstanding of the Everpresent One. Spiritual healing involves correcting misperceptions of the who and what and where of God. God is the infinite All – the one reality, power, presence. If we are holding onto a problem, or a disease, to be one fixed reality, which we hope another reality, our God, will come to heal – this is a human “mind over matter" blind faith-cure attempt.  Sometimes faith-cures have positive physical results and sometimes very negative. It all depends on the strength of the human will of the healer acting through his blind belief. But whether the results are good are not, there is no guarantee they will be permanent. And if one’s spiritual understanding of the one reality as God, or Good, isn’t growing, the case can be left in a worse state than before, vulnerable to any new belief – regardless of the appearance of a physical improvement. As Mrs. Eddy says, "The common custom of praying for the recovery of the sick finds help in blind belief, whereas help should come from enlightened understanding. Changes in belief may go on indefinitely, but they are the merchandise of human thought and not the outgrowth of divine Science." When it comes to the healing prayer taught in Christian Science, Mrs. Eddy makes an important distinction between a blind belief - holding limited human thoughts about God - and the total yielding to divine Principle, to the Science of God and man, in the human understanding. Mrs. Eddy puts blind belief completely outside of the practice of Christian Science when she explains, “It is neither Science nor Truth which acts through blind belief, nor is it the human understanding of the divine healing Principle as manifested in Jesus, whose humble prayers were deep and conscientious protests of Truth, - of man’s likeness to God and of man’s unity with Truth and Love.”  There we have Mary Baker Eddy’s statement of what constitutes the Christian Science practice of healing prayer, “the human understanding of the divine healing Principle as manifested in Jesus, whose humble prayers were deep and conscientious protests of Truth, - of man’s likeness to God and of man’s unity with Truth and Love.” Jesus’ theology of the perfection and spirituality of man as the likeness to perfect Spirit who is God, and of man as inseparable from Truth and Love, heals. When one protests for, affirms with well-reasoned understanding, the truth of God and man, healing is the natural outcome. Health is the outward evidence of an inner truth. Prayer doesn’t change reality, or exchange one form of reality for another. It is the confirmation of Truth’s, God’s presence and the permanence of health in God’s creation. Healing prayer affirms what is real and true, and physical, mental, emotional and spiritual healing confirms the truth. Jesus said, “To this end was I born… that I should bear witness unto the Truth.” (John 18:37)The same goes for each one of us. Healing is normal to the Christ. It is not a special talent or unique dispensation given to some and denied to others. Christian healing – Christian Science healing - is the natural confirmation of God’s presence and power – His Christ - here and now reflected in us. Helpful? Can you think of someone who could be helped by this blog? Please share.
Also, if you aren't yet a subscriber, a full-text version of the blog can be delivered to your email inbox. It's easy to sign up in the sidebar. You may also wish to: VISIT MY WEBSITE HOME PAGE READ MORE BLOG POSTS FIND A LIST OF MY OTHER PUBLISHED CONTENT 7/30/2012 The simple theology that heals Christian Science has this beautiful, clear, pure, spiritual simplicity to it. The entire theology can be boiled down to a few basic points: 1) God exists. 2) God is good. 3) God is all. 4) The universe, including man, is the reflection of God. 5) There is no evil. Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer of Christian Science, explained that her work consisted of 2 parts: 1) Discovery of this Science – of these five basic points 2) Proof by present demonstration that this is the Principle by which Jesus healed. We can’t have the discovery without the proof. Mrs. Eddy discovered the action of the divine Mind on human minds and bodies. But limited mortal thought patterns have worn a groove in collective human consciousness, probing, diagnosing and picking apart matter as both cause and effect. Hence we are drawn into thinking that problems are material and thus complicated or difficult to heal. For Christ Jesus, theology and medicine were one. Jesus’ theology is simple and clear. God is all, Good. Evil is nothing, unreal. What we face in every case is a challenge to the simple theology of the Christ. Can we depend on the fact that God is good? Can we prove it? Is man really reflection – the image and likeness of God? Can we demonstrate it?  Every case touches on a theological question. The task of a Christian healer is to simply answer the question and watch the proof appear. The work should always be this simple. But it isn’t without opposition. That which Mrs Eddy named mortal mind – limited, matter-based reasoning that generates doubt and fear - would make the task of healing seem complicated, unclear and difficult. Fear and doubt impel us to overwork, or underwork the healing activity of prayer, to doubt our experience with the Christ, to change methods repeatedly and ultimately let the problem run the case. I received a phone call from a father whose child had jumped from a tree house and injured his calf. It appeared to be broken. I was asked to pray for him while the family sorted out the practical care. When I hung up the phone I immediately thought, Well, God, what do you have to say about this? I had Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures open on my desk. My eyes fell on a statement of Jesus found on page 45, “Spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have.” Looking up from the book, I thought, Don’t be fooled by the picture of flesh and bones. That is not who this child really is. His substance is Spirit. All that he is and has comes from the Spirit that is God. It seemed such a simple response to the theological question, Is this boy the image and likeness of God?  As I considered the implications in prayer – that he was in fact spiritual and that anything pro or con going on with flesh and bones didn’t touch him – a doubt cropped up. I wanted to be sure I was getting the message correctly. I wondered, But wasn’t Jesus just talking about himself? Then I turned the page and read, “The divine Spirit, which identified Jesus thus centuries ago, has spoken through the inspired Word and will speak through it in every age and clime. It is revealed to the receptive heart, and is again seen casting out evil and healing the sick.” (46) OK, I thought, so Spirit knows this child the same way it knew Jesus - as perfect, spiritual, whole, unbroken, invulnerable, unfallen. The same Spirit voicing truth through Jesus' words to his disciples was communicating to me in the inspired Word of Science and Health in this age. My receptive heart was accepting the message. Then up popped a fear. Can it be this easy? What about the broken bone? Don’t I have to do something about this in my prayer? I looked down once again at the book and read the next phrase as though it was being spoken with force, “The Master said plainly that physique was not Spirit…” I remembered Jesus’ instruction in the Sermon on the Mount and thought of it in relation to prayer, “Let your statement be, 'Yes, yes ' or 'No, no'; anything beyond these is of evil." Matthew 5:37 I needed to say Yes, Yes to the plain and simple reality of unbroken, uninterrupted spiritual being. And I needed to say a direct and clear No, No to the physical belief that the child was material and breakable.  That was it. I consented and said YES, YES. In fact, I was so taken by what I was saying YES to, that I forgot the case entirely and continued reading. The phone rang about 30 minutes later. It was the mother. She told me that two minutes after they placed the call, she was holding her son and praying to know what to do next. They had discussed calling an ambulance or driving him to the hospital. Then they heard a distinct sound coming from his leg “like the sound of a zipper.” And he was healed just like that. The pure simple theology of the Christ is revealed. And it heals. Love it? Please share it for others to enjoy.
Let's work together to share the love. Also, if you aren't yet a subscriber, a full-text version of the blog can be delivered to your email inbox. It's easy to sign up in the sidebar. You may also wish to: VISIT MY WEBSITE HOME PAGE READ MORE BLOG POSTS FIND A LIST OF MY OTHER PUBLISHED CONTENT  I am just back from a short trip to Boston. I love long flights. They give me time to think. And to pray. And to sleep.
This time, high above the Atlantic, things rocked and rolled with heavy turbulence of the head banging sort. I was shaken from a nap, not only by the movement but, by the murmurs of fear from my fellow passengers. For a few moments, a growing terror seemed to be drawing all oxygen from the plane and was threatening to take my breath with it. But, instead of just succumbing to the fear, I fought back with the only tool I had to defeat it. I prayed. And as I prayed, I thought, "We are safe because we are not alone. We are safely hid with Christ in God where no evil or terror can reach." Within seconds the crazy shaking stopped and calm returned. I can't tell you how many times I have observed this on airplanes and in other situations where big shake ups have threatened to take me out. Once fear is faced and handled in prayer, turbulence in any form stops cold. Here are a few posts that take on the question of fear and how to handle it when things get tough. Also, find a link to a 17 minute podcast, entitled, "Hid with Christ in God" that was put together at the time of the 10th Anniversary of the World Trade Center bombing by the Christian Science Board of Directors. It is a real treat, offering their personal insights into handling intense fear.  I love, love, LOVE my new kitchen! Fifteen days without internet connection can be very stressful for a blogger used to getting up at 3 am to post. Or not. In fact, I have slept like a baby. After a seven year search, a lot of prayer, and spiritual growth, we just purchased our first apartment in France. With the exception of the phone and internet installation, everything about the move (a whole 4 blocks away) has run like a perfectly adjusted Swiss movement watch. We haven't missed a beat. I find it hard not to see the internet pause as anything but a blessing. If access had been available, I may have felt the pull to sit in front of the computer. Instead, I took the time to unpack, settle in and enjoy our new home. Can't beat that! Telephone and internet issues aren't new to me. When I first moved from the United States to Europe in 2005, I dealt with the repeated and unexplained disconnection of my phone and high speed line. After a year of escalating problems, I had completely had it with the phone company. Had prayer been my first resort, I am sure a solution could have been found much earlier. As it was, I waited until I had exhausted all human means of dealing with the problem before finally settling down to pray about it. (Tip: Pray first!)  Did I mention how I LOVE my new kitchen? When I did finally take it up in prayer, I thought about God as All-in-all, the only Cause, producing all real effect, and that this effect can only be good. As I considered God as divine Mind, the only intelligence of the universe, I realized I could no longer accept that French telecommunications could be disconnected from intelligence or behind the times. Since all communication is governed and controlled by Mind, these systems could only reflect the Mind that is God, the Mind of Christ. All that is real and true in human systems is governed by Mind, which gives stability, intelligence, and enlightenment to their actions. As I stopped seeing the phone company as my enemy, the frustration with it faded out. I began to pray for them. Prayer put us on the same team. Within 24 hours of this prayer, I had phone and internet. In the six years that followed, I never had another interruption of service. Today, I am sending a shout out of thanks to the members of the team. My boxes are unpacked, my paintings are hung and it looks like we have lived here for years. And the internet is now back on. Good work, guys! Your timing is perfect. The moment we get tired in the waiting, God's Spirit is right alongside helping us along. If we don't know how or what to pray, it doesn't matter. He does our praying in and for us, making prayer out of our wordless sighs, our aching groans. He knows us far better than we know ourselves, knows our pregnant condition, and keeps us present before God. That's why we can be so sure that every detail in our lives of love for God is worked into something good. Romans 8:26-28 If you like what you see, please share the links with your friends, fans and followers!
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I have practiced Christian Science professionally in some form since 1979. But my journey with Christian Science started in a Sunday school where as a young child I was taught the Scriptures and some simple basics of Jesus' method of scientific Christian healing. A significant experience at the age of twelve opened my eyes to the great potential of this practice. After impaling my foot on a nail, I prayed the way I had learned in Sunday school. Within moments the pain stopped and healing began. By the next morning the wound had disappeared completely. Having experienced the great potential of Christian Science, there would be no turning back. |
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© 2011-2021 Michelle Boccanfuso Nanouche, CSB. All rights reserved. Pages reviewed and updates 6/30/2021.