Testimony of Healing April 19, 2004 Issue

Prayer proves to be effective and reliable

Tim Goodrich

Growing up, I attended a Christian Science Sunday School but I always relied on medical means to address my health concerns. As a teenager, I suffered from sinus infections that resulted in severe headaches, and required prescription medication for relief. During these times I would miss several days of school until the condition subsided. I was not yet ready to accept the idea that I could rely on something other than medication to help with this condition.

Soon after graduating from college, however, I had a growing desire to drop my dependency on prescription drugs, and I sought help through Christian Science to heal a different physical ailment. I was pleased with the result, so I decided to ask a Christian Science practi tioner to help me pray about the chronic sinus problem. I don't remember specifically what the practitioner said to me, but one of the main ideas was that reliance on God was my medicine. Although I didn't fully understand what that meant at the time, I felt tremendous hope and comfort within. For the first time in my life, I felt I could be free of this condition without medication. The practitioner continued to pray for me, and after a few days I was permanently healed. That was more than 15 years ago.

Christian Science has also proven to be an immediate help in emergency situations. Once, when I was sawing wood in our basement, I drew the blade across my hand. A previous cut like this had required stitches at the hospital. This time, however, I immediately began to pray. While my wife brought me a cloth to control the bleeding, I repeated—out loud at first—the "scientific statement of being" from Science and Health, considering carefully each line of it: "There is no life, truth, intelligence, nor substance in matter. All is infinite Mind and its infinite manifestation, for God is All-in-all. Spirit is immortal Truth; matter is mortal error. Spirit is the real and eternal; matter is the unreal and temporal. Spirit is God, and man is His image and likeness. Therefore man is not material; he is spiritual" (p. 468).

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