THE IMPELLING POWER OF PRAYER
No power can compare with the might of prayer. But prayer needs to be understood if its full effectiveness is to be realized. It needs to be comprehended as inspired by God Himself, as evidence of Truth's ability to reach men and stir their hearts to spiritual desire and understanding.
One who considers prayer in terms of God's impelling power to waken mankind to His eternal presence is certain to find his prayers answered. This recognition made the prayers of Christ Jesus successful. He said, referring to his healing ability (John 14: 10), "The Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works." And Paul, whose prayers were answered—sometimes in startling ways—spoke of God as "able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us" (Eph. 3:20).
There were no negative, counteracting reservations in the prayers of these mighty advocates of prayer. They did not corrupt their communion with their heavenly Father by permitting doubt and fear to enter thought. They knew that answered prayer is proof of God's will done, and by the reflected power of their righteous lives, their obedience, and their consistently positive attitude they brought their prayers to bear upon thoughts and conditions which were not in accord with the divine will. To them the will of God was the governing law of the universe, and they proved that whatever opposes divine law is without authority and without ability to prolong its preposterous claims to existence.
Mary Baker Eddy explains how Truth comes to human thought through law and controls it. She says in "Miscellaneous Writings" (p. 208), "Like a legislative bill that governs millions of mortals whom the legislators know not, the universal law of God has no knowledge of evil, and enters unconsciously the human heart and governs it." The moment one turns his thought to God in pure and prayerful desire for good, this is evidence that he is responding to the influence of the law of Truth, which has unconsciously entered his heart and uplifted his motives and character. God has roused in him the right desire that is the essence of prayer.
Honest prayer is always proof that the light of Truth has penetrated the opacity of mortal sense, which claims for man a life apart from God. Divine Mind is ever declaring itself through its idea, and this eternal order is manifested to human consciousness first as spiritual desire. Then desire progresses to a higher realization of God and His creation. In this way desire develops into affirmation of the truth and goes on to fulfill the demand of the resistless power that first stirred desire in the yielding heart. Then spiritual reality is established in thought as the only fact of being, and healing of mind and body is certain to follow.
Whoever realizes that the communication of righteousness is always from Love to its object, or idea, is in the direct line of spiritual power. He is able to prove the presence of the divine might, which impels and supports right desire, and he can more readily bring that desire to fulfillment. The zeal with which one carries his prayerful desire for holiness and health to harmonious conclusions is evidence that he is yielding to the divine influence, which is never absent, to "the power that worketh in us"—the might of omnipresent good.
On the page quoted from "Miscellaneous Writings" Mrs. Eddy speaks further of the need for recognizing the healing action of Truth's law through prayer. She says: "Mortals have only to submit to the law of God, come into sympathy with it, and to let His will be done. This unbroken motion of the law of divine Love gives, to the weary and heavy-laden, rest." Without interruption divine Truth produces, activates, and preserves its spiritual creation —man and the universe in which he abides. Because of its very presence and its power to assert its all-ness, Truth proves error to be false.
Christian Science makes plain the duty of its students to keep out of thought all elements contrary to the fact of God's presence and His power to manifest Himself. It shows that fear and ineffectiveness arise from one's belief that man is a mortal, that good thoughts and desires originate in the human personality, and that there is a question regarding the possibility of one's prayer being answered. Christian Science demonstrates the oneness of Mind and its manifestation, the inseparability of all righteousness and its source, God. It reveals the infinitude of all that true prayer can hope for—the purity and integrity and health, the joy and intelligence and perfection, that man made in God's image and likeness reflects.
As men find through Science that prayer has its inception in God, divine power will accompany their efforts to demonstrate the presence and peace of Spirit. They will be proving that the impelling force of prayer rests with the omnipotent Father of all, whose will is that His sons be perfect and dwell together in harmony. As mankind progress in the understanding of this real order, the mortal sense which includes all error will fade from their experience, and they will prove God's will, forever enforced, to be the only governing law of the universe.
Helen Wood Bauman
