Christ Jesus’ words were always very clear, precise, and powerful. This is because he spoke the word of God: “Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in me? 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).

Humbly I pray to more and more let God’s word do the healing in my daily practice, as Jesus taught us. Understanding the power of God’s word has helped me silence mental suggestions and doubts in my thinking. It has also healed me several times in church, right during the service; I’ve experienced healings of colds, coughing, fatigue, a sense of burden, sadness, and other difficulties. 

One day I visited a friend in another city. While walking through the city, I tripped on a curb and hurt my foot. The pain was intense, and I could continue walking only slowly and with a limp. I was trying to pray, but I could not overcome the feeling that I was hurt. 

The next morning, a Sunday, nothing had changed. But I was able to go to a Christian Science church service with my friend. There I listened intently to that week’s Bible Lesson-Sermon that was read from the desk, which included the following passage from the book of Matthew about Christ Jesus’ healing work: “And great multitudes came unto him, having with them those that were lame, blind, dumb, maimed, and many others, and cast them down at Jesus’ feet; and he healed them” (15:30).

Wow, I thought, all of these people who were brought to Jesus were healed! Those who were sick did not go home in the same condition as they had come. Then I thought, Well, the spiritual ideas and truths being read from the desk—having the authority of Christ, Truth, behind them—are capable of healing everyone at the service, including myself.

It was such a transforming realization of the healing power of Truth that when we stood up for the last hymn, there was strength in my foot and no more pain. Indeed, I walked out healed and rejoicing.

It is reported that Mrs. Eddy once expressed her desire that nobody enter a Church of Christ, Scientist, without being healed: “Mrs. Eddy once said to a student that she longed for the day to come when no one could enter a Christian Science church, no matter how sick or how sorrowing that one might be, without being healed, and that this day can come only when every member of the church studies and demonstrates the truth contained in the Lesson-Sermon, and takes with him to the service the consciousness thus prepared” (“Healing the multitudes,” Christian Science Sentinel, July 1, 1916). 

Church with its mission of healing is a very important part of my life. Mary Baker Eddy gave the spiritual definition of Church in the Christian Science textbook, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures. It reads, in part: “Church. The structure of Truth and Love; whatever rests upon and proceeds from divine Principle” (p. 583). I am very grateful for all the spiritual growth and progress with which I am blessed.

Gisela Manger
Freiburg, Germany

We should measure our love for God by our love for man; and our sense of Science will be measured by our obedience to God,—fulfilling the law of Love, doing good to all; imparting, so far as we reflect them, Truth, Life, and Love to all within the radius of our atmosphere of thought.

—Mary Baker Eddy, Miscellaneous Writings 1883–1896, p. 12