Listen to Stormy Falso speak about her experience about finding her relationship with God when she was is great need of healing click here
Author Archive
Your relationship with God Leave a comment
What’s actually real? Leave a comment
What we perceive with our physical senses doesn’t always accurately convey what is actually true. Contributor Deborah Huebsch explores in this Daily Lift how an understanding of what is real can leave us unaffected by those things that just seem to be. It’s a simple but potent prayer: “Father, show me Your reality.”
Click here to listen to this short inspirational program
Perspicacity and uncommon sense Leave a comment
The first time I saw artist René Magritte’s self-portrait “Perspicacity,” I was completely captivated by it. He portrays himself sitting at his easel, studying an egg, yet painting a graceful, fully grown bird in flight. What a powerful depiction of imagination and creativity!
Over the years, I’ve come to realize how Magritte’s painting actually presents even more than that. To me, it illustrates what’s possible when we turn our perception away from mere surface appearances toward more discerning views.
In one dictionary “perspicacity” is defined as “acuteness of discernment or understanding.” I like to think of it as uncommon sense – the ability to rise above the conventional and customary view that would look at an egg and then, well, paint just a replica of the egg.
The teachings of Christian Science encourage the spiritual seeker to consider a sense of reality that is different from – deeper than – what the physical senses present. Mary Baker Eddy, who discovered this Science, describes throughout her primary work, “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures,” how a spiritual perspective has a practical impact. For example, she says: “A knowledge of the Science of being develops the latent abilities and possibilities of man. It extends the atmosphere of thought, giving mortals access to broader and higher realms. It raises the thinker into his native air of insight and perspicacity” (p. 128).
I’ve often seen how understanding God can and does meet our needs by inspiring thought to appreciate and apply the extraordinary spiritual concepts that God is constantly communicating to us, such as the idea that as divine Love itself, God is the source and sustainer of harmony for all of us.
Read the full article from The Christian Science Monitor’s Christian Science Perspective column which includes the author, Kevin Graunke‘s experience of using this kind of ‘uncommon’ perspicacity in his work place here
Live as ‘children of light’ Leave a comment
In the Bible, the Apostle Paul says, “Be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God” (Romans 12:2). The Message by Eugene Peterson interprets the passage this way: “Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.”
I decided to be alert from that moment on to every thought I entertained about my fellow countrymen. I made sure that I was always aware of each as the loved child of God, who is Love.
How freeing it was for me to know that in God’s kingdom there are neither victims nor aggressors—neither victims nor enforcers of a false system of government—and that every man, woman, and child is a citizen of the world…
I turned in prayer to the Bible for the answer and read in Ephesians, “Now are ye light in the Lord: walk as children of light” (5:8). This was my answer. This was God’s creation, these were God’s children, and I loved what I was learning…. God’s creation reflects the fullness of Soul’s colorful creation in its myriad individual ways.
I felt great peace come over me. With joyous expectancy, I drove into the township the next day, and all I could see were children of light. Light seemed to be wherever I went, as I met only love, kindness, beauty, and thoughtfulness. The meeting with the students included no barriers at all. There was no restriction between us because of color, no restriction because of age, no restriction caused by any belief of inferiority or superiority, no restriction because of the different tribes and cultures present. Only citizens of the world were present, and we were claiming and expressing our divine right, the “liberty of the children of God.”
Read or listen to here how Yvonne Prinsloo changed her experience after growing up under apartheid, to one that was all-inclusive and race was not a factor in her article Dissolve racism: Live as ‘children of light’ published in The Christian Science Sentinel
How can I get the most out of my prayers? Leave a comment
Photo by Victor Freitas on Pexels.com
I used to do a lot of weight lifting. When I lifted with my coach, Joe, he would always say, “Squeeze the muscle at the top.” What Joe meant was, in order to get the most out of the work, pause and squeeze harder than ever before at the peak of the lift. The lesson I learned from this was to resist just going through the motions or counting repetitions without getting the full benefit of whatever I’m doing.
I’ve applied his coaching to the way I pray. When I pray, I like to ask God what He knows about me or about the situation I’m dealing with. Once I hear God’s response, I “squeeze” the insights God has given. Meaning, I deliberately value the spiritual facts that have come through prayer.
I let my heart be moved—I keep praying until I really feel God’s tender guidance, or sense just how known and special I am to Him.
Once my heart moves, I know the healing is happening. And then I see the changes in my life……..
When I sit down to pray, I really show up. I’m vigilant to not just warm the bench. I check in with myself and ask what new ideas I’ve heard or what familiar ideas I’ve applied in a fresh way.
It can be easy to go through life on autopilot. It’s easy to coast—whether in school, at the gym, or in our spiritual growth. But when I look at my spiritual role models, Christ Jesus and Mary Baker Eddy—the Discoverer of Christian Science and author of a book called Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures that helps me to understand Jesus’ teachings—it’s clear that neither spent even a day coasting. They were fully engaged with their prayers, fully committed to a life of living and loving God. The results were life-changing for the people they encountered and for the world.
Loving the spiritual facts we perceive and gleaning everything we can from these ideas is a great way to get the most out of our prayers.
Click here to read the entire article which includes a good example of healing when the author, Piper Foster Wilder, got hurt during training
Sheltered ‘under the shadow of the Almighty’ Leave a comment
Photo by Tatiana on Pexels.com
He who dwells in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty. I will say of the Lord, “He is my refuge and my fortress; my God, in Him I will trust.” … He shall cover you with His feathers, and under His wings you shall take refuge.
– Psalms 91:1, 2, 4, New King James Version
Step by step will those who trust Him find that “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.”
– Mary Baker Eddy, “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures,” p. 444
To listen to or read more click here
If you’re feeling doubts about God Leave a comment
‘If you’re feeling doubts about God’, if evil seems so much bigger than the good, it might help to shine light on the question of evil and the reality it claims to have. Listen to this contribution by Chet Manchester on the All-power and ever presence of God, good here
