Article March 3, 1934 Issue

Prayerful Striving

JEKAB GREENBLAT

"Seeking is not sufficient. It is striving that enables us to enter," writes Mary Baker Eddy on page 10 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures." This statement is in accord with Christ Jesus' admonition, "Strive to enter in at the strait gate." The Master knew human nature; hence his warning against lukewarmness. For many, he said, "will seek to enter in, and shall not be able." Need we be surprised when we discover that merely seeking does not produce the desired results?

In every phase of human experience we find that everything truly worth having comes to us as the result of right desires put into practice through prayerful striving. Throughout the three years of his ministry, during which he fulfilled his mission to preach the gospel, heal the sick, save the sinner, raise the dead, and to show his followers the way to do likewise, Jesus constantly communed with his heavenly Father; and sometimes, we read, he spent the night in consecrated prayer for fuller understanding of the Father's will. Can we do less than pray as he did and strive to be his worthy followers?

A subtle error of the carnal mind is the fear that we should be using human will-power, if we were to fight the claims of evil in our individual experience. This erroneous argument would imply that evil practices and false appetites may be indulged in until they simply leave us. It is noteworthy that in the temptations in the wilderness evil, or the devil, quoted Scripture to Jesus to convince him that its claims were desirable and legitimate. The alert student of Christian Science refuses to obey the suggestion that a righteous effort to resist evil indicates the use of human will-power. His stand is justified by James's words, "Resist the devil, and he will flee from you," and by our Leader's words (Science and Health, p. 529), "We should have faith to fight all claims of evil, because we know that they are worthless and unreal." Recognizing that the determination to know and obey God, to live Christian Science, is supported by God's power, the Christian Scientist has gone a long way toward victory over error. He realizes that every effort to overcome faults of character or conduct, every conquest of self, proves by its fruit that the power of God, the opposite of human will-power, is being successfully utilized.

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