Testimony of Healing June 4, 1979 Issue

A healing of the smoking habit advanced my spiritual understanding...

Virginia Ellen Bailey

A healing of the smoking habit advanced my spiritual understanding sufficiently to seal my conviction of the Christian Science way of life. Up to this point I had received several physical healings that seemed to me quite spectacular. Now I wanted to join the Church of Christ, Scientist. Although I had help from a Christian Science practitioner, the desire to smoke did not leave me. I later realized I was not then willing to be relieved of the habit. (I was an inveterate smoker and averaged about two packs a day.)

When I was more receptive to spiritual truths, I asked another practitioner for help. She pointed out that the use of human will does not bring healing, and she gave me this citation from Science and Health by Mrs. Eddy to ponder (p. 471): "The facts of divine Science should be admitted,—although the evidence as to these facts is not supported by evil, by matter, or by material sense,—because the evidence that God and man coexist is fully sustained by spiritual sense."

One day as I lighted a cigarette, this question arose: "The cigarette has no intelligence, so what is wrong with this habit?" Then came another question, "When you are tired, restless, bored, or troubled, do you first turn to God, or do you first take a cigarette and then turn to God?" I realized the latter was always the case and saw instantly that I was breaking the first commandment (Ex. 20:3), "Thou shalt have no other gods before me." This brought my release, and from that moment on I have never again desired to smoke.

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