"YES , but...." Have you ever heard yourself say those two words or realized you were thinking them? Have you ever said, "Yes, I know God heals the sick in the Bible, but that doesn't work for me"? Or "Yes, I know that God is all good, ever present, and all-powerful, but this illness isn't good and it seems very real"?

You may have some other "Yes, but..."s of your own. They come in different words, some easily recognizable, some subtle.

When we say or think, "Yes, but...," aren't we really saying that we are not wholly accepting that something is true? If we accept, for example, the spiritual fact that God is perfect good and that, as the Bible tells us, we are His spiritual image and likeness, don't we also need to accept that we must be entirely good also because we reflect God's goodness? If we try to accept only the first part, aren't we saying that we believe God to be perfect, good, infinite, omnipotent, ever present, and eternal, and that He can be absent as well? God is never absent. We can wholly accept that He does heal all ills by His power and presence, as Christ Jesus demonstrated.

Those two words, "Yes, but...," by showing us when we're trying to hold on to contradictory beliefs, indicate a mental resistance or obstruction that needs to be cleared away before we can see Truth's effectiveness in our lives. When the obstruction is removed, we can heal ourselves and others as Christ Jesus commanded us all to do. The resistance or obstruction does not really belong to any of us, however. It certainly hasn't been created by God, who is divine Mind. Spiritual man, the true identity of each one of us, is the idea of this divine Mind, which, since God is All, is the only Mind there is. So the only Mind we truly have is God, infinite good, in whom there can be no evil in the form of resistance or obstruction. As the New Testament affirms, "We have the mind of Christ." ^{I Cor. 2:16.}

It is a mistake to believe that there can be another mind that can perpetrate evil of any kind. Such a mortal mind is not our mind; it has no reality. Mrs. Eddy writes, "Mortal mind is a myth; the one Mind is immortal." ^{Miscellaneous Writings, p. 82.} So mental blockages are never part of our thinking. They have no mind to originate or to harbor them. They are suggestions that we need not believe, because they are not true.

Mortal mind sometimes seems to say it can make us resist the spiritual truths we are learning. But in reality it has no power to influence us. When we understand that God, good, is the only power and presence, we aren't fooled by mortal mind.

With childlike trust in good we can begin to prove the effectiveness of these truths because God gives all of us the understanding we need at this moment.

Such trusting acceptance can bring very quick healings. A busy church member was suffering from a severe cold. While he was doing voluntary community work, he had been in contact with one or two people who had colds, and he felt he had not been alert enough to challenge in prayer the common belief that colds are contagious. He was to travel to a meeting the next day, so he asked for treatment from a Christian Science practitioner. She assured him that he need not feel he had ever been exposed to infection, because in reality God, divine Love, had been present and caring for him and everyone the whole time. She pointed out that Love heals when its presence and power are accepted into thought. Actually, man is always the exact image and likeness of God; therefore he is always cared for, always maintained at the point of spiritual perfection. The church member was able to accept this spiritual reality, and his thought about the condition changed immediately. By the next morning the cold was gone.

We can accept spiritual facts even though the physical senses tell us the very opposite. Mrs. Eddy says in Science and Health: "What is termed material sense can report only a mortal temporary sense of things, whereas spiritual sense can bear witness only to Truth. To material sense, the unreal is the real until this sense is corrected by Christian Science.

"Spiritual sense, contradicting the material senses, involves intuition, hope, faith, understanding, fruition, reality." ^{Science and Health, p. 298.}

So let's use our God-given spiritual sense and have a change of approach. How about saying with childlike trust, "Yes, even though that physical condition may seem very real, I know that God, good, is my only Mind; I am His own image and likeness, this very moment, perfect and whole." And, "Yes, I too can prove the healing power of God; Christ Jesus and his disciples proved it in their day, and many thousands of people do so in modern times." And, "Yes, I know that Christian Science is revealing to this age the Comforter Jesus promised and that God gives me the understanding I need to put it into practice."