To be an effective healer

It is natural to want to help and heal others through prayer. Praying for others isn’t scary—it’s deeply fulfilling. It’s motivated by our love for God and man. Whether or not we advertise publicly in The Christian Science Journal as full-time Christian Science practitioners, all of us can help others through the practice of Christian Science healing. The conditions and standards of practice are the same for us all. Each one needs to do what is necessary to give effective help.

I confronted head-on the aggressive and false suggestion that I couldn’t heal.

To an early practitioner, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy, wrote: “Every day treat yourself that no evil suggestion nor argument can swerve you or frighten you—or deter you from healing and doing just what is needed here …. No evil mind can touch you if you realize there is but one Mind. Three times each day treat yourself for this temptation then watch that your house be not broken open” (Mary Baker Eddy to Alfred E. Baker, 2 February 1899, F00147, © The Mary Baker Eddy Collection).

I remember a time when I felt totally blocked as a healer—really stuck. I couldn’t see any progress in my cases, and I felt afraid. Maybe I shouldn’t be practicing, I thought. Then I confronted head-on the aggressive and false suggestion that I couldn’t heal. Three times a day I treated myself, praying to affirm and understand that God is the healer, that God’s healing power and presence is the Christ, and that as God’s reflection I express this healing power.

Mrs. Eddy defined Christ as “the divine manifestation of God, which comes to the flesh to destroy incarnate error” (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 583). She spoke of the Christ as “the true idea voicing good, the divine message from God to men speaking to the human consciousness.” She continued, “The Christ is incorporeal, spiritual,—yea, the divine image and likeness, dispelling the illusions of the senses; the Way, the Truth, and the Life, healing the sick and casting out evils, destroying sin, disease, and death” (p. 332).

I began to feel the authority that the Christ gives to each one of us to heal through prayer.

I affirmed regularly that the Christ is always a present and effective healer, present and manifest wherever anyone is opening his or her thought to Truth. As I did, I began to feel the authority that the Christ gives to each one of us to heal through prayer. I began to think of myself less as a personal healer and more as a perpetual witness to the healing Christ, expressing Christly qualities and understanding through every treatment I gave.

As a result of this regular treatment of myself, and the spiritual understanding it gave me, I stopped being afraid I couldn’t heal. Then healings started coming very quickly.

My three-times-a-day treatment of myself always showed me that it is never a personal “me” doing something extraordinary in prayer. My role is simply to witness to the Christ-idea of true manhood and womanhood—to witness to the Christ-message of God’s perpetual care for His creation, the divine message of unending good that restores harmony where discord seemed to be.

I still try to keep up a regular practice of treating myself, to know “that no evil suggestion nor argument can swerve [me] or frighten [me]—or deter [me] from healing and doing just what is needed here.” It isn’t always easy. But I am striving to be regular about it, because, bottom line: Good healers are needed. And those of us whose love for God and man moves us to want to lift up our brothers and sisters in healing prayer have every right to be effective in our holy work.

“Let us lift up our hearts and our hands to God in heaven, and say: … You came near when I called you, and you said, ‘Do not fear.’ You, Lord, took up my case” (Lamentations 3:41, 57, 58, New International Version).