Dismiss a claim of suffering

Do you like to have quick healings? I do. They don’t always happen as fast as hoped, but there are several rules to follow that enable rapid healings to occur.


One of those rules is to dismiss the claim of suffering quickly. Don’t examine it, wonder about it, mull over it, argue with it or consider for a micro-second that it is real or worthy of acceptance. Dismiss it promptly.


Two Sunday mornings ago, I woke up feeling fine, but when I started to walk around the house I had an odd limp in my right leg that wouldn’t straighten out. The day before I had spent several hours on a vigorous snowmobile trip in the wilderness. But I could not recall any reason to suffer from the outing. My muscles didn’t hurt. But something was mechanically wrong in my hip, like the bones weren’t lined up right making it impossible to walk correctly.


I wasn’t sure where to focus my prayer.


I remembered Mary Baker Eddy’s statement, “Treat a belief in sickness as you would sin, with sudden dismissal.” This was not a belief of sickness or sin I was struggling with, that I could tell anyway, but of anatomical malfunction, but I figured the rule would work just as well anyway.



So, I dismissed the claim. Like dismissing a class of students and watching them promptly exit the room, I dismissed the belief that something was wrong with my hip or leg or whatever, and that I had God-given freedom to walk with ease and without difficulty. I was a spiritual child of God, immune to hurt or harm of any kind, and that was that.
I put it out of my mind.



After church, I dressed for a 1:00 tennis match, and noticed that I was still hobbling around from this weird limp. “I can’t play tennis,” thought protested. “I can’t even run to a ball!”



I thought back to my earlier dismissal of this claim, and did it again.

Obviously the error had not exited my thought even though I had expected it too. It needed another heartier dismissal that left no room for misinterpretation. A dismissal of error by truth must not leave opportunity for error to decide whether it wants to be dismissed or not. The dismissal needs to be emphatic enough to send error out the exit door of possibility without fuss or resistance.

So, I did it again. I dropped any consideration that there was a reason to suffer. Instead of seeing the claim as a physical problem in my body as that I needed to dismiss, I saw the claim as an attempt to halt my progress as a spiritual thinker, as some sneaky evil at work in the background of consciousness trying to hobble me mentally and physically and prevent freedom of movement in my life and in my healing practice.

I didn’t know what the sneaky culprit was, but I didn’t need to know. Having a sense of its intent was sufficient.

With a definitive declaration of “You don’t belong or exist here in my experience, and I refuse to accept you,” I dismissed the suggestion that I had anything to fear on the tennis court. Off to the club I went without giving the belief another second of attention. I forgot about it, put it out permanently and didn’t look back.


It wasn’t until three days later that I remembered the healing. Evidently on the way to the club, the physical healing occurred, for I played tennis with total ease, joy and freedom, and the limp hasn’t even remotely presented itself since.



I’m grateful for the quick healing and lessons learned.



Bodily suffering may feel physical, but it never is. It’s mental, in mortal mind. It’s a belief entertained, not dismissed. So, don’t be bashful about sending it out if you don’t want it hanging around in your experience. Dismiss the unruly intruder and slam the door shut as it leaves your mental precincts.

No pain in immortality

A week ago, at the end of a very active work day, feelings of sickness started to suddenly take over. In minutes, I entertained the suggestion, “Oh no, here comes a horrible cold or flu and you are going to suffer for several days.” And my body felt as such.


Thankfully, I noticed what was happening in thought right away, and immediately prayed for relief. The physical sensation of inevitable suffering was strong, but I knew it was only a mental suggestion parading as a physical feeling, and it could be reversed with right spiritual thinking. So, I dug in my metaphysical heels, resisted the claims, and refuted them with spiritual truth.


I declared my health to be spiritual, fixed, permanent, and not susceptible to loss. It was coming from God, and still coming from God. There was no germ, bacteria or virus that could rob me of my health or temporarily weaken it. I had spiritual immunity from any cold or flu, and did not have to fear them.


In a short time, all the sickness symptoms vanished, for which I was grateful, but a horrible headache had set in and would not yield.


I went home for the evening, and continued my prayer for relief from the pain.


I went to bed early, but it didn’t help. In the middle of the night, I got up, went out to the living room and curled up in a quilt in my recliner and read the Bible Lesson for the week, which happened to be on the subject of “Mortals and Immortals.”


The main point I got out of the lesson was the distinction between mortals and immortals,--that God’s child is not a mortal. And that I was God’s child!


A mortal is never an immortal, and an immortal is never a mortal. Also, mortals do not transform into immortals. Mortals are false beliefs about God’s immortal child. And immortals are what God created.

I was an immortal! I was not a struggling mortal trying to find spiritual peace. I was an immortal already in spiritual peace.


I got it! The pain vanished. It was like turning off a switch. Boom! The pain was gone. My head was clear. I was at total peace. I felt heavenly. I felt spiritual. I felt totally well!


Oh, I'm so grateful for Christian Science. Its logic goes against all that the material senses reason, but its blessings are immense when its spiritual truths are caught sight of.
 To let go of mortality, to stop agonizing over how to heal a physical body when the need is simply for spiritualization of thought, to drop the notion of being a mortal and wholeheartedly accept one’s immortality, is the route to freedom—spiritual freedom, where pain is no more.


In a consciousness of immortality, there is no pain. All is peace.

Prayer defied doctor's expectations

I made a new friend who visited my church Sunday with family and shared with me an inspiring story of healing.

Several months ago, she was being treated by doctors for a serious health problem. An angiogram into her brain caused a series of severe health problems for this woman, including three strokes, paralysis of her face and front part of her body, and bleeding on the brain. Her case became so severe that the doctors lost all hope of saving her and predicted she would pass on in a day or so. They gave up and quit trying to help her medically.

This woman comes from a close knit family, several of whom practice Christian Science to varying degrees. They were notified and immediately began praying for their dear one the best they knew how. She was in a coma at this point.

She did not die, but continued to live, defying all the doctor's expectations. She came out of her coma, regained her mobility, was restored to strength and fully recovered.

She stood before me beaming with joy and love as she told her story.

She explained that she did not understand how the recovery was happening, but knew something very spiritual was occuring in her life.

She recounted that during this recovery, she experienced a mass purging of darkness from her thinking. She said that all kinds of hate, resentment, and fear from decades of her past melted away. It was an incredible transformation, she impressed me with. She became a whole new person from the inside out, she stated. All the darkness vanished, and she couldn't even identify with it anymore.

As she told me about this transformation, a brother-in-law standing nearby pointed at her and said, "You can see it in her face. She never used to look like this." And she was glowing with joy, love and purity, as she talked to me.

She said that after getting out of the hospital and thinking it all through, she could then see that she had a spiritual healing. The evil inside was wiped out, and the body was freed.

Even to this day, the doctors are befuddled and can't figure out what happened.

And we agreed, the doctors haven't figured it out yet, because they're looking into matter for an answer, and the answer can only be found in thought where the real improvement occurred first.

Glory be to God in the highest! Prayer heals. Never give up! There's always hope, no matter what the doctors say.

Love is the most powerful healer in the world.

The Christian Science approach to healing

If a problem does not yield quickly to prayer, sometimes students of Christian Science struggle between total reliance on God for healing and seeking a medical option.

The textbook of Christian Science, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, makes provision for temporal help when prayer has yet to reach its desired outcome. Mary Baker Eddy wrote, “If Christian Scientists ever fail to receive aid from other Scientists, — their brethren upon whom they may call, — God will still guide them into the right use of temporary and eternal means.”

She continues to point out, though, that temporal aid is what it is—temporal. And that all issues have to be ultimately resolved spiritually to bring genuine reformation from the inside out. She went on to state, “Step by step will those who trust Him find that ‘God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.’” If one seeks temporal help, that is fine. People need to do what they think is the wisest thing to do under their circumstances. But it is most desirable to find permanent help in God to begin with, if possible, and not have to take a circuitous route to genuine healing.

One truth that helps break the mesmerism of unfulfilled prayer is to understand that the primary purpose of Christian Science is not to fix a material problem, but to reveal spiritual truth. Jesus Christ, the master healer of all time, taught, “Know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” Disease is error of belief, and truth is its antidote. It’s knowledge, or understanding of Truth, God, that brings spiritual freedom from physical suffering.

A friend recently shared a story that highlighted the difference between a medical approach to healing and the method Jesus Christ taught.

She had been suffering from pneumonia for several days, and her condition was worsening. Despite dedicated prayer by herself and her family, the lie was not yielding. With the situation looking desperate, a couple of family members decided she needed to go to the hospital, and they pressed her to let them take her. She did not want to go, but something needed to change quickly or the picture was not going to be good.

When pressed again to seek medical help, suddenly a light went on in her thought. She bolted upright in her bed and declared, “A doctor cannot tell me anything about who I am as a child of God.”

She swiftly realized the distinction between a medical approach to healing and the Christian Science approach. The two are strikingly different. A medical doctor views a patient as a physical body and sees disease as a real condition that needs to be treated materially. Christian Science views man as spiritual, and in perfect health as God’s image and likeness. Disease is seen as illusion about God’s perfect man, and is cured by understanding the spiritual truth that dissolves the illusion.

The mesmerism of a “real disease” broke in my friend’s mind. She saw clearly that she was not physical, did not have a disease, and had all she needed coming from God right where she was at home. She couldn’t learn anything more about her true spiritual identity at a hospital then she could at home. The pneumonia broke and she was quickly and happily on her feet again, well.

This story is useful because it illustrates the difference between medical treatment and Christian Science treatment. It is also a red flag for examining how a student of Christian Science approaches healing.

If one views disease as a real condition that needs to be eliminated, efforts to heal it may feel hopeless and even in vain, and rightfully so, for it is the wrong approach. Disease is not a reality. It is an error of belief in the human mind. The belief that disease is real automatically puts thought in the medical camp to begin with, and thus leaves the mental door wide open to believing that the condition can only be resolved through material means.

As my friend realized, spiritual healing is about discovering who we spiritually are. Our spiritual individuality is healthy, well and secure in God’s image. This is an unchangeable fact and provable in the here and now of everyday experience. This truth dissolves the mortal mind lie of disease as being part of that individuality, and healing happens, first in thought, then in the body governed by that thought.

Going into the practice

I occasionally talk with individuals who would love to go into the full-time practice of Christian Science healing, but entertain many fears and doubts as to their readiness or capacity to succeed.

Questions and concerns frequently voiced include, “Do I have enough understanding? Are my prayers effective? Will anyone ask me for help?”

When I hear these worries expressed, I point out that going into the practice is all about wanting to help and heal others. Success grows out of genuine desire to see other people cured of their suffering. It’s not a function of how many years one has studied the truth or how well known they are in community circles. It’s a function of love.

For instance, take the comforting instinct of a caring mother. If her child is in physical distress, she does not walk away into a different room and ponder first whether she is qualified to help. She immediately comes to the aid of her child and does whatever she can to relieve the suffering and bring comfort. She does not stand around worrying first about whether she can help. She jumps in and helps, and through prayer, listening, reasoning, thinking and responding, brings comfort to her little one. Her qualifications to help are her unwavering love and absolute care for her chidlren. Her concern for their safety and well being impels her to their aid no matter what. There is no question in her mind about whether she should help or not. She does it because it’s the right thing to do and she always finds an answer that makes a difference.

The Christian Science practice is about loving others, helping others, coming to the aid of those in distress. Success grows out of desire to make a positive difference in other people’s lives.

The real question is not, “Do I have enough understanding?” It’s “Do I have enough love? Do I care enough?”

When we genuinely want to help our neighbor, we find the resources to do it. Our ability to help grows out of our love and yearning to restore hope, promise, health and healing into the lives of our friends, relatives and neighbors.

Like the Good Samaritan Jesus talks about in the Bible, the person who truly loves his or her neighbor cannot walk by someone who is suffering and in pain and ignore them. It’s impossible. The heart of Love goes out to those in need and yearns to see comfort and healing restored.

A person who loves their neighbor cannot idle hours away in the lounge chair of indifference and selfish satisfaction while a neighbor across the street struggles in pain and teeters on the edge of death.

Love for God and neighbor is what impels success in the Christian Science practice. It’s all about taking what one knows about the infinite love of God for man, and demonstrating that love in real life circumstances.

Millions of people suffer today, feeling hopeless, lost, confused and full of fear. They need help. They need comfort. They need healing. They need the Christ-touch of Love that Christian Science is capable of giving them. Those who are ready to respond will be given the understanding, support, confidence and faith they need to make a positive difference. God will ensure that, for God blesses the right unselfish desire and the honest effort.

The big question is: Will you respond? Do you love enough?

“Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils: freely ye
have received, freely give.” Jesus Christ

“Millions of unprejudiced minds — simple seekers for Truth, weary wanderers, athirst in the desert — are waiting and watching for rest and drink. Give them a cup of cold water in Christ's name, and never fear the consequences.” Mary Baker Eddy

Healing words and love

A couple of weeks ago after a lecture I gave in the Northwest, a lady told me about her experiences with residents at a home for elders she lived in. She was quite talkative, full of stories and goodwill toward others. She was a happy individual and her love for humanity poured out through her personality.

At one point, she relayed how she had told a co-resident that God loved her. She put great emphasis on how she had told this woman she was loved. She didn’t say the words quietly, hesitantly or carefully. Her words gushed out with conviction as a fire hose flooding water out it’s nozzle at full force.

The object of her affection was a woman who evidently needed a lot of love. She hadn’t spoken a word in five years, according to this lady. Shortly, the woman started talking again, and hadn’t stopped chatting and sharing since, my storyteller chuckled.

It’s a simple story, but a stirring reminder how simple words, fearless sharing and powerful truths can dramatically change people’s lives.

What needs to change?

A reader sent in the below thoughts with a spiritual conclusion I just love…

I was listening to a gal on a Christian Science CD yesterday speak of her years as a teenager when she smoked, drank, experimented with speed and then developed an eating disorder. At one point, she realized she could die. As she discovered Scriptures and learned about God’s goodness and love and who she was spiritually, the bulimia, smoking, and drinking all fell away. She felt spiritual and whole,....which I find an amazing thing.

I liked her comment at the end, which was this:

I realized I didn’t need to change who I am.
I needed to change my view of who I thought I was.

Excellent point! And this is how Christian Science healing works. We don’t change who we are. We’re already perfect in God’s image. Healing is a discovery of what is spiritually true, and eternally so.

Christ in you

Before leaving earth, Jesus told his disciples,

I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. Before long, the world will not see me anymore, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live. On that day you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you. John 14:18-20 NIV

In the above quote, Jesus is talking about his material disappearance and spiritual appearance to the human consciousness as Christ, untied to material form. And he said, “On that day...”, or when we understand the power in his life to be Christ, pure divine Mind, we “…will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you.”

Think about the implications of this promise…

When Jesus restored legs to the lame, eyes to the blind, and ears to the deaf, it was not any human power that cured the ill. It was Christ at work through Jesus.

In the above promise, Jesus is telling his followers that the same Christ at work in him is at work in us too. We need only to realize it.

The same voice and curative power that commanded, “Rise, and walk,” and then restored crippled legs to soundness is in us.

Do you hear the voice? Are you aware of its presence within you? It’s there, and through it you can be healed and heal the sick around you.

The power of Christ is God. Christ is in you, and you are in Christ.

What are you waiting for? You’ve got it all...

You can be a healer

Last week, I lectured at a Christian Science Youth Summit in Chicago, Illinois, and had a wonderful time talking with dozens of teens and college age students.

My talk was recorded and has been posted on tmcyouth.com as a podcast.

The intro states:

Would you like to be able to heal people? Christian Science lecturer Evan Mehlenbacher shares some tried and true rules for healing that come from the most advanced form of healing there is today: Christian Science.

If you want to listen, click here, "You can be a healer."

The healing power of Love

Two weeks ago, my daughter came home after school feeling very poorly. I didn’t know about the illness until I heard, “Mom, will you read to me from Science and Health?” Science and Health is a book all about spiritual healing. It’s the textbook of Christian Science.

I was cooking dinner, so as soon as I settled cooking pots on the stove down long enough to leave, I went into her bedroom to see what was happening.

Jenna lay in bed under thick covers. I sat down at her side and rested my hand on her arm. She was burning up with a raging heat and complained of a horrendous headache. She rarely complains about anything, so for her to even mention a problem meant it was no little struggle.

As I listened for angel thoughts to share, I just loved her. I looked into her eyes and saw a beloved child of God. I reminded her of how loved she was. I reassured her of the healing presence of God that works to keep her well. I reminded her that God made her healthy and keeps her healthy. We recognized together that Truth could push any error out of her experience, and quickly! She soaked every truth in like a dry sponge put to water.

After a couple of minutes, I could see a response in her face. Mom was patiently waiting for me to finish. I kissed her, gave her a big hug, and left the room confident that she was fine. Mom continued to read to her from Science and Health.

As I finished dinner in the kitchen, I rejoiced in knowing that she was spiritual and well as a child of God. A spiritual idea of God does not get sick or suffer. A spiritual idea of God is always healthy and well. My daughter was not susceptible to error influence, nor was she an unsuspecting or vulnerable mortal. She was immortal. Her spirituality was her immunity to illness, and since she was totally spiritual, not material, she could not suffer. I felt a great peace about her situation.

Ten minutes later, while I was setting the table, Jenna came bouncing out of her room into the kitchen and asked in her normal boisterous, full confident voice, “What’s for dinner?” I looked up a bit amazed, I must say, for she was a picture of health. I was not expecting her to eat dinner. But the ill Jenna I had seen in bed minutes previously was gone. She wanted to eat and then head off to chem lab at school. I quickly accepted the healing. We ate dinner, and all was fine.

Over the next few days, she started coughing. I didn’t pay much attention to it, at first, which was a mistake. But when I realized it was persistent and not yielding, I specifically addressed it with her one morning before she went to school. I told her to not accept the coughing as something to put up with or figure would go away in the future. It was error, and was not necessary. We decided together that it had no place in her experience as a healthy child of God and off to school she went. I never heard another cough.

As a parent, I’m so grateful for Christian Science. It gives us spiritual remedies we can put into practice instantly to help our children. And the side effects are so totally wholesome.

Remove the leading error

A friend shared a graphic analogy with me yesterday that has given me much to think about.

He had been feeling great frustration and grief over seeing many problems in his life that needed to be healed. The number of ills, complaints and evidence of lack appeared overwhelming, and he didn’t know where to start in his prayers.

While seeking comfort, a picture of a funnel filled with sand appeared in his mind, and the sand was trying to pour out the bottom of the funnel. But there was a little pebble stuck in the spout of the funnel preventing the grain above from flowing down through the opening.

He interpreted all the grains of sand to be the many different problems he faced. He realized that if he removed the one pebble blocking the way out, all the rest of the sand would flow effortlessly through the hole leaving a nice clean space behind.

The heaviness he’d been feeling about “healing all those problems,” lifted, and his prayers became filled with hope and promise once again.

His story reminded me of Mary Baker Eddy’s words

"Through different states of mind, the body becomes suddenly weak or abnormally strong, showing mortal mind to be the producer of strength or weakness….Remove the leading error or governing fear of this lower so-called mind, and you remove the cause of all disease as well as the morbid or excited action of any organ." Science and Health

Sometimes, problems and complaints we face are numerous, like many branches on a prolific tree. But rather than sometimes tediously loping off every branch, we get faster results by aiming the axe of Truth directly at the trunk, and toppling the whole beast at once.

What is the “trunk” of error? The belief that life, intelligence and substance reside in matter…

Vigorous denial works

It was the oddest experience I’ve had in a long time.

Two nights ago, I looked at a part of my body and blinked twice, because conditions didn’t look normal. I thought, “No, this can’t be.” I blinked again, and the situation just wasn’t right.

Horrible images of what might be wrong started erupting in thought.

“You have a disease!” Mortal mind was yelling loud.

In my healing ministry, I hear dozens of descriptions of disease every week, often associated with names people dread. It is my practice to remain unimpressed and immediately know the spiritual truth about the person voicing the error. This has not been hard for me to do.

At this moment, though, descriptions of a particular disease I had heard about many times from patients came to the fore, and I started wondering if I had it.

This type of thinking was so Not Me! But nonetheless, it was happening.

Fear was knocking hard at my mental door.

It was time to go to bed, so I went to the bedroom, but I did not go to sleep. I vigorously defended myself from these very aggressive suggestions. And that is exactly how I viewed the situation—as aggressive suggestion.

The condition looked very physical, but Christian Science had taught me to view physical conditions as suggestions only, never as fact.

If one thinks a problem is physical, he or she might lose hope, because it’s sometimes hard to see how prayer can change a physical condition. But if one sees the condition as suggestion, logic follows that suggestions can be rebutted, denied and silenced.

It took me several hours of vehement and constant rebuttal to silence the error and quiet the fear. But eventually, the voice of error died down, the suggestion disappeared and I fell asleep in peace.

When I awoke in the morning, it wasn’t until later that I remembered the struggle I had gone through the night before. There was no more evidence of a problem. I was fine.

From this experience, I can see how one symptom can lead to another if a person let’s their imagination run wild with fear. Thought will start to outline its growing fears on the body. But, thanks to Christian Science, these symptoms can be checked and prevented from growing into something worse. Or, if they seem to have grown worse, they can still be checked, for every condition, no matter how physical it appears, is still suggestion. It’s never reality.

"Exclude from mortal mind the offending errors; then the body cannot suffer from them." Mary Baker Eddy

I’m grateful for the quick moving through this experience to a right outcome. It reinforces what I’ve learned over the years that denial of a lie, affirmation of Truth, and sticking to our arguments of Truth until the error fades, works.

A remarkable healing

I received the below account from a reader, and asked permission to share it with you.

A must read…


Here’s a sweet testimony I heard at Wednesday night testimony meeting.

Three young children had a kitten. Their garage door was defective and one day crashed down on the kitten. The evidence said, "This cat is dead." The mother called a practitioner, and he asked the children to declare, "God is the only Life," every time they thought about the kitten. They placed the kitty in a shoe box with a warm blanket. Every time any one of them thought about the kitty, they obediently insisted, "God is the only Life!"

When their father, who is not a Christian Scientist, came home, he declared, "This cat is dead." When they would not agree, he took her to the vet, and he declared, "This cat is dead."

On the way home, the father heard the cat sneeze and took her back to the vet who said it was a phenomenon that sometimes happened, but nevertheless, "This cat is dead." The cat sneezed again several times in a row, but when the father checked her, the evidence said, "This cat is dead."

When he got home, the children insisted on keeping the cat in the box in the garage no matter what anybody said. They were still declaring, "God is the only Life."

The morning of the third day, as they were having breakfast, they heard some loud mewing coming from the garage. When they opened the door, the cat came bounding into the kitchen perfectly well and strong.

The testifier said that she and her brothers had so lost sight of the furry evidence and were so filled with the truth they had been declaring that they SAW THE TRUTH THEY WERE CONSCIOUS OF. The cat did not have to get better. Their declarations for LIFE demonstrated LIFE never born, never dying, never hurt, never recuperating.

I reminded myself after hearing this story that God is our very own Mind. We can be conscious of Truth alone if God is our Mind, therefore we MUST SEE this Truth evidenced in our lives.

Focus on solution, not problem

A friend relayed to me the gist of a testimony she read recently about a woman who had struggled with a foot problem for over a year.

In an effort to rededicate her prayers and make some progress, she decided that she was focusing too much on the problem, and not enough on the spiritual truth that would heal the suffering.

The testifier evidently wrote something to the effect of, “If I got as much attention as I’m giving to this foot problem, I’d stick around too!”

In a moment of spiritual levity, she let go of worry about her foot, and finally accepted the truth that God created her okay and she was okay.

The problem vanished quickly, and the healing was complete.

Say No to colds

A friend was telling me how he heard a testimony where a teacher, who was a practicing Christian Scientist, was talking with a co-worker in school who was complaining about getting a cold. The teacher immediately told her friend that she wasn’t getting a cold and didn’t need to expect to suffer.

The next day, the friend reported that she had no cold and was delighted with the freedom. She asked, “What did you do?”

After thinking about the immediacy of the healing with a quick clear definitive reply of truth, the man telling me this story said that later in the week he was having lunch with his sister who started complaining about getting a cold, and described the on-coming symptoms in detail.

Without ado, my friend said, “No you’re not!” The sister did not agree, and argued that, “Yes she was getting a cold!” And continued to explain all the reasons why she would get a cold and suffer miserably. My friend held his spiritual position in thought that God’s child doesn’t get a cold, and let the discussion drop.

The next day, the two meet, and my friend asks his sister, “What happened to your cold? You look well to me.”

Caught off guard, and by surprise, she replied, “You’re right. I don’t have a cold. The symptoms are all gone.” She was not a Christian Scientist and didn’t understand what had healed her, but nonetheless, the truth still met her need and brought a cure.

Truth heals.

For healing, focus on solution

It’s a common concern in spiritual healing; the question of “How do I get rid of the problem I’m struggling with?”

The nagging doubt may come in the form of
How do I get rid of this disease?
How do I stop the nightmares?
How do I shake off the past?
How do I conquer fear?
How do I…?

One answer to these concerns is to reword the question.

Spiritual healing is not so much about getting rid of problems as accepting Truth.

The more productive questions are often,
How can I demonstrate health?
How can I maintain peace of mind?
How can I rejoice in my spiritual present?
How can I be confident of Love’s ever-present care?

I learn lessons from my efforts to play tennis better.

When missing the ball, I don’t stay mentally glued on all my misses. I zero attention in on hitting the ball more accurately. I find it more constructive to spend time and energy improving my strokes rather than condemning my errors and getting depressed about them. As I hit the ball more successfully, my improvement automatically precludes the problem from occurring again.

The same rule applies to curing disease.

When praying for relief, the more thought is focused on disease, the more the disease appears real, and this prevents thought from recognizing the spiritual truth that destroys the false sense of disease—the enemy to begin with.

The question of, “How do I get rid of a problem?” is better when replaced with “How do I demonstrate the solution?”

If a budding mathematician claimed 5 multiplied by 5 equaled 27, and the error was pointed out. The mathematician would not agonize over the 27 to understand what to do next. He would go back to the original equation and resolve the problem correctly.

The “original equation” in Life is, God + man = perfection.

When error presents itself, the sooner we cease agonizing over the error the better. It’s more helpful to get back to the original equation and solve the problem correctly.

God + you = perfection.

This is the spiritual perspective Jesus held, and it works for us too!

Jesus beheld in Science the perfect man, who appeared to him where sinning mortal man appears to mortals. In this perfect man the Saviour saw God's own likeness, and this correct view of man healed the sick. Mary Baker Eddy

What do you expect to happen?

It’s an absolutely crucial question to ask when praying for healing.

What do you expect to happen?

Do you expect the body to get better?

Honestly now, don’t just mouth the words, “Yes, I expect the body to get better.” Do you honestly believe and know beyond a shadow of a doubt that the truth you are praying is going to heal you mentally and physically?

We’re always expecting a certain type of result. When struggling with a physical illness, we need to know whether we’re expecting to get better or expecting to get worse. Typically, one choice or the other has been made whether we’re aware of it or not.

Too often, I’ve noticed, patients expect to get worse. Doctors have told them the illness is incurable or will go through stages, and the patient believes the doctor, agonizes over his opinion and fears the consequences, and then lives them out. Even though they believe prayer heals, their faith in the doctor’s verdict is stronger than their faith in God. Their expectation is formed more by the doctor’s opinion than by the spiritual truth. And this mesmeric hold has to be broken to improve one’s expectations and move the weight of thought onto the side of the healing Truth.

We have to be on vigilant guard to defend our expectations from evil influence. Mortal mind wants us to believe in error, to accept suffering as natural and normal, and to give into increased distress. That’s the whole agenda of mortal mind, to perpetuate and increase suffering.

But Christian Science comes to the rescue and declares, “You don’t have to suffer. There is a spiritual healing to be had. Disease is not the reality it appears to be. Health is the reality and is yours to demonstrate today. Christ is at work on your behalf making it so.”

When my eye was hit severely by a tennis ball last year and the evidence of damage in my eyeball was highly distressing, I included in my prayer an expectation of physically getting better. I knew there could not be a disconnect between what I was knowing spiritually, and what I was experiencing humanly. If it was spiritually true that my vision was indestructible and that God gave me a seeing eye, then I could not have destroyed vision or an unseeing eye, in the spiritual or in the so-called physical. This meant that the physical evidence of a damaged eye had to disappear. And it did.

Mary Baker Eddy said it well,

"Stand porter at the door of thought. Admitting only such conclusions as you wish realized in bodily results, you will control yourself harmoniously. When the condition is present which you say induces disease, whether it be air, exercise, heredity, contagion, or accident, then perform your office as porter and shut out these unhealthy thoughts and fears. Exclude from mortal mind the offending errors; then the body cannot suffer from them."

So, back to my original question, “What do you expect to happen as a result of your prayers?”

It’s not enough to outline what we expect to happen in order to be healed, but it is a strong indicator of how much faith we have in the Truth we’re praying to demonstrate. The more we believe the truth and understand it, the less faith we have in error, and the stronger our expectations become of making progress morally, mentally, spiritually and physically.

When Jesus commanded, “Rise, and walk.” The man arose and walked. Jesus expected physical recovery as a result of his spiritual treatment, and physical recovery came.

We can have the same type of expectation, and results! God helps make it so...

What is your healing?

While conversing with a friend today I realized that the healing we’re looking for is not always the healing we first need.

When faced with a bodily complaint, the temptation is to assume we need the ache or pain to go away before we are free. We put a material condition on our freedom, and then hope, even wait, for something to happen physically before we proceed with our life. This may or may not be the need.

For example, several years ago, while lecturing around the country on Christian Science, I was in a large theater in S. CA preparing to go on stage. I was battling a splitting headache and sickness that would not release. I was in no shape to speak before 300 people, and it was ten minutes to starting time.

Hiding in the balcony in a quiet corner where I could get my thoughts collected, I prayed to understand better that God would give me everything I needed to fulfill my responsibilities.

As I affirmed the immediacy of my spiritual perfection and the unfailing care of divine Love, I saw clearly that I did not need to wait for the pain to go away before I could proceed.

God is All. So, in essence, God was the speaker, God was the speech, God was the presenter, and God was the energy, health and poise that would make the lecture a success. I did not have to wait for something to change materially in the body before God could do the job well.

Confident that the outcome of the event was totally in God’s hands, I headed for the lobby and then to the stage. The closer I drew, the less pain I felt. By the time I stood in front of the audience and greeted them with a big verbal bear-hug Hello! the illness and pain was gone. I was off and running with my talk, and the lecture was very successful.

I learned many lessons from that experience.

When I was suffering, my initial prayer was to be rid of the pain. But the pain persisted. Under the pressure of the moment, and with no choice but to go on stage, I yielded my worries entirely to God, acknowledging that He was doing all the doing, and if I really trusted Him, I could proceed without fear. I obeyed, and as I obeyed, the physical suffering rapidly diminished and I was able to follow through.

My healing was a strengthening of trust in God’s omnipresent and ever-active health and harmony. The physical healing was secondary.

It takes discernment and focused listening to decide the need of the moment when praying for relief. But one truth is for sure. All spiritual healing is in internal job. As we yield to spiritual truth, the pertinent truth we obey will take the fear away and any physical suffering it causes and lead us to the total freedom that is rightfully ours.

Giving treatment

Ever wondered how to give a Christian Science treatment?

I’m frequently asked by inquirers how to proceed in their prayers when seeking to heal a specific problem. There is no formula for giving a treatment, and there are many different ways to pray for relief, but here’s a basic outline of one approach that works.


Affirm Truth
Deny error


To affirm Truth, or God’s presence, is to know and declare what is spiritually true in spite of what appears to be materially wrong. Generally, the more specific your affirmations are to the problem you’re facing, the more decisive their impact.

To deny error is to put down and undo the evil claim you’re facing. Like dismantling the argument of an opponent in debate, prayer must annihilate any basis or claim to truth that evil is declaring.

After a successful affirmation of Truth and effective denial of evil, a certain peace settles into thought that assures you of safety and freedom. Fear vanishes, spiritual reality becomes apparent, and a confident feeling of wellness takes over mind and body. Healing happens!

Unchangeable Truth

Some people who practice Christian Science worry that hatred in world belief toward spiritual healing inhibits their healing progress. Christian Science teaches its students to not be naïve about malice toward spiritual healing, but it also teaches that hatred is powerless to stop Truth from having its rightful effect in our experience.

Truth is Truth, and can never be anything less.

If 50% of earth’s inhabitants, centuries ago, believed the world was flat, did their belief make the world flat? No. They lived a limited experience because of their belief, but their error did not change the truth, and it did not limit the possibilities of those who understood differently.


Discoverers and adventurers who knew the world was round ventured upon the ocean without fear. They were not limited by the ignorant thought. And they made glorious new discoveries as a result.

Prayer in Christian Science is based upon perfect God and perfect man. It doesn’t matter how many millions of people believe contrariwise, for Truth is true. Ignorance and hatred never weaken or alter the facts of being or the effect they have on our life.

So, if our prayers are based on fixed spiritual truth, and not on shifting personal opinion or human belief, they will be protected from the world’s antagonism. Contemporary malice will not affect our prayers or prevent our progress. We will march on to success regardless of what our neighbor approves of or disapproves of.

Truth is true and remains forever unchangeable. On this basis you can stand spiritually tall and fearless in the face of enemies and make your demonstrations of health and harmony with confidence and surety.