How many times have you heard that “practice makes perfect”? Get up early, study hard, stay late, do more and longer workouts, repeat. This is the only way to improve, we’re told. But what if this approach has it backward? 

While it is true, as Mary Baker Eddy writes, “that there is no excellence without labor in a direct line” (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 457), it’s actually a spiritual regimen that makes progress possible and even accelerates it. Jesus said, “If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you” (Matthew 17:20). He didn’t say you’d be ready to move a mountain only after you’ve successfully moved a few thousand shovelfuls of dirt and then graduated to moving small hills. No, it requires faith—faith as little as a mustard seed. 

He also said that “the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does” (John 5:19, New International Version). It’s as if Jesus were saying that God’s child cannot lift a finger or move a muscle—cannot do a single thing—that his Father-Mother God is not already doing. This also implies that we can do anything that God does. The Apostle Paul knew this. He said, “I can do all things through Christ [Truth] which strengtheneth me” (Philippians 4:13).