AS MORE AND MORE people feel the need of trusting in something higher than themselves, it's not unusual for them to seek, both individually and collectively, God's guidance and help on a daily basis. Such requests are deeply rooted in the teachings of both the Old and New Testaments of the Bible. Patriarch, judge, king, prophet, and disciple all sought a closeness to God, especially in times of danger. Most often, this sincere communion is in the form of asking God for something—freedom from sickness or disease, health for a loved one, success in one's endeavors, victory over an adversary.

But what are we to think when such sincere requests appear to be answered in a random fashion or not at all? Does that mean God hears only certain petitions or loves some of His children more than others? Does it mean that sickness, sin, and death are instruments by which God instructs His children, and that He sets these instruments aside only when certain conditions are met? Does it mean that living our prayers in the whole round of human life is impractical, or even impossible?

If we look at the whole of the Bible as the progressive revealing of God's nature, then certainly His allness and goodness stand out as major conclusions of this revelation. The culminating appearances of this allness and goodness are found in the healings of Christ Jesus. They show conclusively that God neither created sin, sickness, nor death nor allows them to exist as additions to His creation, for Jesus would not have gone against his Father's wishes by healing such evils if they were part of God's plan.

God loves His creation, maintains it, and is constantly providing that creation with everything needed to function exactly as He created it. God does not make mistakes. His omnipotence, love, and wisdom would not allow Him to neglect us or require us to remind Him of what He needs to be doing. The Supreme Being is perfect, and there is no need for creation to advise the Creator on what is needed to properly care for that creation.

If God is already providing us with all we need and there is no reason to petition God, then what is prayer? And how can we more consistently live our prayer?

Valuing Jesus' foundation

Jesus provided a wonderful foundation from which to find answers to these questions. Prior to the Last Supper, he told his followers, "I and my Father are one" (John 10:30). While this statement inflamed his enemies and caused them to want to stone him for blasphemy, it also explained his unequalled power and dominion over all evil.

Jesus' prayers were not pleadings and petitions from someone separated from God, asking that God come down and intervene in human affairs. They showed Jesus' absolute conviction not only of his oneness with God, but of the truth that all of us are one with God.

Such convictions enabled Jesus to live his prayers instead of just voicing them. This living prayer was illustrated in both his meekness and his might. These qualities are just as valuable and accessible to us today as they were in his day.

Jesus' meekness was illustrated by his constantly putting God before self-centered concerns. His healing works were not attempts to establish personal human control over people or evil; they were the natural results of his pure transparency to God as Life, Truth, and Love. It was the very presence of Life, Truth, and Love, expressed through Jesus' every thought, word, and action, that did the healing work. "Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in me?" he asked, and then concluded, "The words that I speak unto you I speak not of myself: but the Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works" (John 14:10).

Jesus illustrated this unselfed meekness during an elegant dinner with a Pharisee, when he allowed a woman who was scorned as a sinner to wash his feet with her tears; to wipe them with her hair; to kiss them; and, finally, to anoint them with oil. Such acts might have embarrassed any of us, especially in such surroundings. And yet Jesus not only allowed her to do all this, but he forgave her sins with the love that restores purity.

He shared this same lesson with his disciples when, following the last supper, he washed their feet. "I have given you an example," he explained, "that ye should do as I have done to you. Verily, verily, I say unto you, The servant is not greater than his lord; neither he that is sent greater than he that sent him" (John 13:15, 16).

Meekness empowers our prayers

Such meekness, grounded in unselfed love, empowers our own prayers with the sincere understanding of our own oneness with God—and girds us to conquer the evils in our lives. Imagine what living without regard for one's mortal identity would be like—for this is how Jesus lived. We would know the full freedom that comes with spiritually based honesty—the freedom to stand on principle, to express compassion, to live the deeper demands of Jesus' Sermon on the Mount without fear of hurt or harm. And we'd know the freedom of seeing our prayers come alive with the appearance of practical spiritual healing.

Jesus' meekness before God prepared him to be mighty before the aggressive evidence of powers separate from or in place of God, such as disease and death. This might was shown in the manner in which he dealt with evil.

His understanding of man's oneness with God gave Jesus an authoritative presence in the face of mortality's most vivid and violent forms of sickness, sin, and death. His God-given dominion and power took form in commands such as "Stretch forth thine hand," "Arise, and walk," and "Lazarus, come forth." In the face of his understanding that God was omnipotent, evil retreated. A withered hand was restored. A man confined to a bed for many years arose and walked. Lazarus walked out of the tomb, alive. No wonder the book of Matthew tells us that "the people were astonished at his doctrine: for he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes" (7:28, 29).

Because of the fact that sickness, sin, and death can have no reality when God is good and All-in-all, Jesus didn't change these evils into health, purity, and life. Instead, he replaced these manifested forms of fear with the health, purity, and life that already define and describe the man and universe of God's creating. Jesus' prayer was an absolute knowing of the truth. It had the effect of replacing an ignorance of man's nature with a correct understanding of man in God's image and likeness. Such replacement took form in human existence as spiritual healing.

We can share Jesus' dominion

One of the more important aspects of Jesus' teachings was his reiteration that all of us, as God's children, have the same dominion over every evil, that he wielded. Following his example, we, too, can accept that our prayer rests upon a growing understanding of God—of what He is and what His creation is. It's this understanding that lifts us out of a distorted, ignorant view of creation to see the reality of Life, Truth, and Love. As Mary Baker Eddy counseled: "Look away from the body into Truth and Love, the Principle of all happiness, harmony, and immortality. Hold thought steadfastly to the enduring, the good, and the true, and you will bring these into your experience proportionably to their occupancy of your thoughts" (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 261).

Prayer is an understanding of God, lived. For example, God is Love itself. We are the very creation of Love—the evidence of Love's existence. We are one with Love, as we love. This is not mere emotion, but the love that has the power and authority to deny existence to anything unlike itself. It's the love that Jesus lived and that enabled him to heal.

God created each one of us perfect. He made no mistakes. He did it right the first time, the only time. He left nothing out of creation that needed to be added at a later time, nor included something that needed to be expunged through prayer at a later time. Perfection can't be improved upon; it can only be seen more clearly.

Learn to love all mankind

"True prayer is not asking God for love," Mrs. Eddy once wrote, "it is learning to love, and to include all mankind in one affection. Prayer is the utilization of the love wherewith He loves us. Prayer begets an awakened desire to be and do good. It makes new and scientific discoveries of God, of His goodness and power. It shows us more clearly than we saw before, what we already have and are; and most of all, it shows us what God is" (No and Yes, p. 39).

We don't need to be reluctant to live this higher view of prayer. We don't need to be afraid to accept it, for fear we'll lose what is safe and familiar to us. A life of spiritual awakening is not foreign and unsettled, but familiar and safe. And our Father-Mother, God, is guiding us. With each step we take down this road comes God's loving, embracing benediction, "You are my beloved child, in whom I am well pleased." |css