Testimony of Healing July 6, 1957 Issue

Of the healings I have experienced...

Norma Joanne Cripe

Of the healings I have experienced in Christian Science, one in particular stands out from the rest because of the strength of God's presence which I felt so strongly and which resulted in freeing me from the cigarette habit. I had indulged in this habit for thirteen years, and I smoked from one to two packs daily. All attempts to quit had been unsuccessful.

My desire to stop smoking grew as I began attending a Christian Science church with a loving friend. One day these words from the Bible came very strongly to my thought (James 1:22): "Be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves." Also I recalled a statement in the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," in which Mary Baker Eddy says (p. 89), "We are all capable of more than we do." The following Sunday the Lesson-Sermon in the Christian Science Quarterly was very inspiring to me, and I commented on it to friends on the way home.

Later in the day, while I was smoking cigarettes, drinking coffee, and reading the Sunday comics, thoughts came to me such as these: How could you possibly have meant a word you said this morning? Here you are, smoking away like a veritable steam engine. What an awful hypocrite you are! I felt conscience-stricken. After several moments I thought to myself, Why, of course you are sincere in your desire, but if you had understood what you heard this morning at church you could not possibly continue to smoke. I felt a brief spark of gratitude that I had at least the desire to stop, and that evening I read from Science and Health.

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