QUESTIONER: I think that many people admire the faith of those who rely on prayer for healing, but often they doubt that they could ever take such a step themselves. How does one begin?

SPEAKER: I would say that one begins with a desire to understand God. A first step is acknowledging that there's an intelligent power governing the universe and man. And this power which we call God cares for us and has the capacity to heal us.

We read in the book of Exodus for example (15:26), "I am the Lord that healeth thee." So, the Christian Scientist strives to accept a closeness to or a communion with God which results in healing. You see, turning to God will transform our thinking and our lives. It was the mission of Christ Jesus to teach mankind the need for and the possibility of communion with God.

QUESTIONER: How does one turn to God?

SPEAKER: You turn to God in thought, acknowledging the presence, the power, of God and His infinite nature. You would begin by opening your thought to Him.

QUESTIONER: This matter of spiritual healing depends upon the individual himself then. He must want it. He must ask for it. How does he ask for it?

SPEAKER: We turn to God through prayer, which is one of the first steps in spiritual healing. Prayer helps us to draw closer to God. Through prayer we begin to understand the wonderful relationship which already exists between God and man. Now, this isn't as complicated as it appears to be. It's really as simple as understanding the twenty-third Psalm. The first verse, for example, reads, "The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want." Now, the word "shepherd" here implies a spiritual guide. So, if we can bring our thought to accepting God as a spiritual guide, we gain leadership in a spiritual direction, you see. And God being the source and condition of all good, how can we want for that which is good?

In other words, if we understand the intent and the motive behind this Psalm, we must recognize God as being an ever-present source of leadership to us, giving us all we need every moment.

QUESTIONER: Well, then why do we experience so much sickness and trouble?

SPEAKER: Because we believe that there is a reason for it, that it is necessary to experience sickness and suffering. Perhaps we believe that we have transgressed a physical law of some kind and must, therefore, pay a penalty because of it.

Isn't the real need here to draw closer to God in our prayers? And this demands activity of the individual. Without doubt, all spiritual healing is preceded by a spiritual step forward on the part of the individual—opening his thought in prayer to an acknowledgment of the power and presence of God to help him.

So this need to draw close to God in our prayer requires something of us. We've got to open our thought; we've got to give; we've got to be willing to exchange sinful and sickly thought for right thinking. And, when you come right down to it, right thinking and right acting is all there is to health and well-being.

QUESTIONER: Could you give me a specific example of how one would take the first step in asking for spiritual healing?

SPEAKER: A young woman I know had a heart defect. Her parents thought it would be somewhat of a miracle if she ever lived to maturity. I introduced Christian Science to her and told her of many experiences I'd had myself in healing through the application of Christian Science. She asked if it could heal her, and I assured her that it would it she were willing to study it. She studied the Bible Lessons daily, which appear in the Christian Science Quarterly. And over a period of time the heart condition was completely reversed, and she's never had a trace of it since.

Now, the individual who will persist in an effort to know God can be sure that God will see him through every step of the way. It isn't a case of God demanding that we obey His law and then leaving us to solve the problem for ourselves. We've got to do the work ourselves, yes. But we do it through spiritual guidance—this idea of shepherd, you see. "The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want."

QUESTIONER: Is this complete spiritual healing open to anyone?

SPEAKER: Why, of course. "God is no respecter of persons," the Bible tells us (Acts 10:34). God doesn't give to one and withhold from another. God is the great giver of all good to all. But all of us don't accept what God gives.

QUESTIONER: How does one go about becoming conscious of this divine power?

SPEAKER: I think Jesus put it very clearly in one of the Beatitudes. He said (Matt. 5:6), "Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled." So, you see, even just a glimpse of man's spiritual relationship to God or closeness to God begins at once to remove fear, for example. It eliminates tensions, anxiety, worry, and sorrow, and these are often the very cause of sickness.

QUESTIONER: Then fear and anxiety that you speak of exist only in our own minds, and they do not come from anywhere outside of ourselves?

SPEAKER: They exist only in a misconception about us. You used the phrase "our own minds." In reality there's only one Mind, which is God. Christian Science capitalizes the word Mind and uses it as another name for God. And the Bible says (Phil. 2:5), "Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus." Here again the demand is on us.

So if we allow the same kind of thinking to govern us as governed the Master—yes, the demand is on us—the effect will be the same. We shall have answered prayer.

Let's turn to the final statement in the twenty-third Psalm (verse 6), "And I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever."

Mary Baker Eddy gives us a very interesting interpretation of that in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures." She writes (p. 578), "And I will dwell in the house [the consciousness] of [love] for ever."

Now, in keeping with what we've been saying, within this consciousness there can be no anxiety or fear. If one is conscious of God, he's conscious of good. The individual who finds such a consciousness through prayer is really finding God and his true selfhood. You can't separate the two. You can't separate God from man or man from God. Man, dwelling in the consciousness of Love, in effect lives and moves and has his being in God. not as a small or miniature god but as the very image or likeness of God. This is your real being; it's my real being. In the consciousness of Love there can be only the expression of Love. You dwell there and I dwell there, and we can put absolute trust in that knowledge.

In Science and Health, Mrs. Eddy writes (p. 444), "Step by step will those who trust Him find that 'God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.'"