Inquiring of the Lord

One of the lessons which the student of Christian Science has to learn is the overcoming of self-will and the ability to challenge human desire. How often, before we knew the joy of yielding our human will to the divine, did we act largely upon mere human impulse. Human sense suggested "I want" or "I desire" or "this is best," and human will cooperating with it took possession of the field and swept all before it, frequently with entirely unforeseen and disastrous results. The Christian Scientist, however, is learning not to yield to impulse or suggestion without first inquiring of the Lord. The human sense of things rebels at this delay and argues loss of time, lack of determination, anything so as to be able to take the bit in its teeth and plunge ahead as of yore. But the one who is learning to test every impulse by the divine impulsion of Spirit will not listen to these arguments, but will quietly wait for divine direction and shape his course accordingly.

Many times we read that the prophets inquired of the Lord. Before they spoke to the people there seems always to have been a season of prayer, of listening for the voice of Truth, so as to be sure that the word which was spoken was not theirs but God's. Before they took a journey, or reached any decision of importance, time was taken to seek divine guidance, for only thus could they hope that their way would be prosperous and their mission untainted by self-will and self-interest. In Science and Health (p. 483) Mrs. Eddy says of them, "To those natural Christian Scientists, the ancient worthies, and to Christ Jesus, God certainly revealed the spirit of Christian Science, if not the absolute letter." The untempered human will is intolerant of restraint. Its handmaids are impatience, human manipulation, and human device. It will ride roughshod over everything and everybody in order to achieve its own ends, and due consideration for the rights and wishes of others is wholly lost sight of in the struggle. It was to this phase of thought that the psalmist referred when he wrote, "Be ye not as the horse, or as the mule, which have no understanding: whose mouth must be held in with bit and bridle." There we have the animal propensity in human nature which has no understanding of truth and which must be restrained by the bit and bridle of man-made laws. It is headlong, intractable, unteachable. All that such a condition of thought ever accomplishes, however, is its own destruction, a fact to which human history bears record in innumerable instances.

How different is the mental attitude which is daily learning to say, "Not my will, but thine, be done," and Mrs. Eddy defines this attitude still further when she says, "When the human element in him struggled with the divine, our great Teacher said: 'Not my will, but Thine, be done!'—this is, Let not the flesh, but the Spirit, be represented in me" (Science and Health, p. 33). What a sense of dominion it gives one to know that he is learning not to yield to the impulse of human will, either his own or that of others, until he has taken the time to inquire of the Lord. How different our decisions would be in many cases if we quietly turned away from the clamor of human voices and listened only for the voice divine. Often after such a season of inquiry the very thing which a few moments before had appeared so desirable is no longer in the least attractive; the course which had seemed right is seen to be not the wisest after all. We begin to understand what the prophet Isaiah meant when he wrote, "And thine ears shall hear a word behind thee, saying, This is the way, walk ye in it, when ye turn to the right hand, and when ye turn to the left," and gladly and obediently we go forward, guided and protected by divine wisdom.