I once received calls from a couple of people asking me to pray about similar but unrelated concerns. Each explained that they had been praying and doing everything humanly possible to resolve the aggressive and hurtful situations they found themselves in. Each one had been asking God for guidance on how to resolve these issues, but neither was seeing progress. 

Their concerns were not unusual. In fact, over this past year, I have become increasingly aware of the many conflicts people (myself included) have to deal with. And the biggest challenge is often the feeling that we are responsible for solving these problems. 

Christian Scientists trustingly turn to God for help, but it can often be difficult to turn the entire situation over to God and remove our own sense of personal responsibility from the equation. We are, in fact, responsible for turning to God in prayer, but the belief that we must orchestrate the solution to our problems even as we ask for God’s help seems to be a common misperception that stands in the way of healing. This false sense of responsibility is a product of human will and results in anxiety and fear, clouding our spiritual sense—our innate ability to know and understand God.

It is God’s responsibility to care for each one of us.

The Bible tells us that we can rely completely on God’s love, wisdom, and power. It says, “With God nothing shall be impossible” (Luke 1:37). And, as Christ Jesus taught his followers, “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).

As we learn through prayer to let go of what we believe needs to happen and how things should work out and yield to spiritual sense, we become more aware that we live in God’s kingdom, subject only to His authority, control, guidance, and instruction. 

It is God’s responsibility to care for each one of us; therefore, we are fully supplied with all good, peace, harmony, and success. As this verse from a hymn in the Christian Science Hymnal promises,

Instead, then, of feeling responsible for coming up with a solution for a problem, we can turn wholeheartedly to God and listen for His angels—“God’s thoughts passing to man; spiritual intuitions, pure and perfect” (Mary Baker Eddy, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 581)—to inspire the way forward. 

So when those calls for prayer came, I spoke with each person about their individual relationship to God and suggested they pray to see more clearly God’s infinite nature, to hear His thoughts, and to trust in and rely completely on Him. I prayed with each of them, affirming this statement by Mrs. Eddy: “It is safe to leave with God the government of man” (Retrospection and Introspection, p. 90).

We can turn wholeheartedly to God and listen for His angels to inspire the best way forward. 

Within a few days, each individual experienced progress leading to complete healing. In fact, each one was delivered from their difficult situation in a way that they had never thought possible! God, divine Truth, had been the problem solver. Each person had been released from a false sense of responsibility by, as Science and Health explains, “emptying his thought of the false stimulus and reaction of will-power and filling it with the divine energies of Truth” (pp. 185–186).

The orderly unfoldment of right thoughts perfectly adjusts each situation we encounter when we yield to God’s guidance and understand that all is governed by God.