Christian Science: Spiritual Awakening

A new spiritual awakening is playing a significant role in forming the contours of a In the first decade of the 21st century, even the most conservative Christian.
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This was amazing to me since she was the only person at the meetings. What did she do during the portion of the meeting when time is set aside for the congregation to give testimonies of healing? With those words, my thought cleared. To behold such consecration to Christian Science and to church instantly wiped away the ingratitude and selfishness that I had been harboring in my thought. I thanked her and walked away thinking that if she could express such joy and dedication to church, then so could I.

A moment of spiritual awakening / Christian Science Sentinel

After all, I had a church family to go to; members not only to interact with but to love; and I had a sweet family, a husband and daughter to love and cherish. What on earth was I anxious about? Leaving the dining room, I went right to the small reading room the facility provided, and for the first time in weeks was able to read the Christian Science Bible Lesson and enjoy every word. The next day I returned home feeling completely renewed. The anxiety left, and not long after a new career opened up for my husband.

We were able to close our business without any financial penalty and go forward in a completely new direction, which has blessed us many times over. What was it that lifted me out of the doldrums and into a higher, more spiritual atmosphere of thought? It was the Christly love that dear woman expressed, which shone its light on everything and everyone, like the rays of the sun. This healing love permeated the atmosphere. She expressed practical wisdom by not allowing me to hide in my room but, instead, insisting in my expressing an unselfish love to others. Regretfully, I never asked the name of the woman I met that day in the dining room, but my gratitude for her has never waned.

Her example of joy, consecration, faith, commitment, and unselfed love—of loving God with all her heart, mind, and soul—could not be ignored or suppressed. It inspired a true, spiritual awakening moment for me that will never be forgotten.

Christian Science

We hope you enjoy the content that has been shared with you. To learn more about JSH-Online visit our Learn More page or Subscribe to receive full access to the entire archive of these periodicals, and to new text and audio content added daily. By Name Withheld April By Nathan Talbot April By Peter Ross April By Annette Kreutziger-Herr April By Michele Newport April By Maya April By Holly Bolon April By Elys Renata Carvalho April By Sharon Granzin April If suffering from a belief in sickness, you will find yourself suddenly well.

Every such healing also illustrates another statement from Science and Health p. We do not come into the whole of our God-given freedom at a single bound. While healings are many times instantaneous, in other instances there may be various phases of wrong thinking to overcome before a healing is complete. This involves a willingness to accept and abide by the truth to which we awaken.

Jesus laid down a vitally important condition John 8: Sometimes the struggle with fear and doubt may seem severe, but always the evil we face must yield when, through study and prayer, we gain and maintain the true understanding of God and of man in His likeness. For Truth annihilates error as light annihilates darkness. This sort of healing is not a matter of will power; indeed it is a matter of letting go our own willful human sense of things and accepting the divine revelation of good.

We must be willing to put God, Truth, first in our lives, and then persist faithfully in our acknowledgment of Him. But it is always Truth that does the healing, not our own imperfect human sense of it. Even Jesus declared John 5: Jesus was able to do his wonderful works because he kept his thought in close communion with the divine Mind, his Father-Mother God. We too have the opportunity to keep our thought spiritually awakened through the study of the Bible and "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy.

Thus we can arouse ourselves from the dream of life in matter to "the glorious liberty of the children of God" Rom. With the Psalmist we can turn to our heavenly Father with the confident assurance Ps. I shall be satisfied, when I awake, with thy likeness. We hope you enjoy the content that has been shared with you. To learn more about JSH-Online visit our Learn More page or Subscribe to receive full access to the entire archive of these periodicals, and to new text and audio content added daily.

A moment of spiritual awakening

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About Subscribe Log In. Download MP3 Buy online. Every thought that lifts itself above the belief of life in matter to the apprehension that Life is God, is resurrection, or spiritual fruitage. Jesus' life among men was evidence of continuing resurrection, the true idea of freedom. He accepted no other but spiritual consciousness.

He proved that God was his Mind; Soul his only sense of being; Spirit his substance. Through his daily, hourly resurrection from the tomb of mortal beliefs, he gave evidence of his own at-one-ment with divine Principle, and out of the fullness of his demonstration he taught others how to prove theirs.

A difficult experience that seems afflictive and crushing to one will inspire another to lift his thought above the belief of life in matter and achieve victory. Is it not because to one the experience is accepted as a crucifixion, while to the other it is a resurrection? We learn in Christian Science that resurrection is awakening to a more spiritual sense of life, a yielding of the material sense to the spiritual, of fear to Love. This occurs in every demonstration of Christian Science, and resurrection becomes the inevitable law of existence.

Thus every human sense of crucifixion becomes merely a challenge to reach higher goals of spiritual achievement, because no matter what the testimony of the senses may suggest to the contrary, only the spiritual is real - only the spiritual, the real, is actually going on. Christian Scientists unite in their church organizations to give evidence of the great resurrection that is taking place in human consciousness. At their Wednesday evening meetings speaker after speaker rises from his seat to give grateful testimony to a resurrection that has taken place in his human experience.

Very often after you have heard an account of remarkable healing of some physical difficulty you will hear the speaker say something to this effect: The fourth step in progress is the day of spiritual enlightenment, when God says, "Let there be lights in the firmament of the Heaven.

Christian Science: A spiritual revolution

This is the day when divine Science, typified in the Revelation of St. John as "a woman clothed with the sun," illumines the consciousness of each worker in Science with spiritual light and power. The spiritual sense of Christian Scientists shines like stars in the firmament of heaven.

Then spiritual healing becomes spontaneous, the unlabored action of Love "reflected in love," as our textbook puts it p. In this day of spiritual enlightenment, men are taught of Soul and spiritual sense. It is the Pentecostal day when, moved by the same Spirit, men meet "with one accord, in one place," in spiritual consciousness; the "day" when nations will have one Mind, one purpose, and shall dwell in peace together.

Let the prayer of ascending consciousness of God be to you a new vision of the first chapter of Genesis. Let a new sense of creation appear, the revelation of reality, the kingdom of heaven, here. True prayer is such an intimate consciousness of man's at-one-rnent or oneness with the Father that the experience which we describe as turning to God in prayer quickly becomes a consciousness of God's available presence and power, an illumination of thought so complete, so precious, so assuring, that notions of any other power, any other law, any other being, vanish before it.

Undesirable qualities of character are uncovered, rooted out and healed through such prayer. I heard a teacher in one of our well-known schools tell of such a healing accompanied by a convincing physical healing of a growth on the bottom of her foot. Her mental work uncovered the fact that the growth had appeared at a time when she had been deeply hurt by circumstances which, as she put it "had gotten under my skin. She said that in her mental work she realized that as a child of God she could be sensitive only to the good which He gave, and that in reality there was only this spiritual good to which to be sensitive.

She was healed of the super-sensitiveness and the growth loosened at the root and came out of the foot, never to return. What is the next step in prayer in our individual, spiritual progress, in recognition of true selfhood, the fifth day in the first chapter of Genesis? Ascending thought, leaving earth for heaven, illumined with lights, forsaking matter for Spirit, rises into spiritual altitudes, and reaches the day of aspiration, the fifth step in the progressive appearing of creation. Aspirations are typified in Genesis 1: They not only partake of the nature of, but appear as, God's thoughts.

Every hungering desire, aspiring to Truth, is supported and protected by God's thoughts, the lights in the firmament. Heavenly aspirations open the door of consciousness and let in the beautiful and good. True aspiration reflects divine power. The life of an active Christian Scientist is not one of ease in matter, but of spiritualizing thought and exercising God-given dominion. Our Christian Science churches are made up, for the most part, of men and women joyously working together in unity for our services, our Sunday schools, our testimony meetings.

Their problems of organization are being worked out from the standpoint of demonstration of the activity of the one divine Mind, instead of through personal political manipulation. This experience makes them better citizens through the actual practice of democracy. Mary Baker Eddy's definition of church in the Glossary of her textbook is well known to Christian Scientists. It is the basis of their prayer and their work for their church. The first part of this definition presents the spiritual idea of Church, the divine fact, of which the second part of the definition is the human concept, its expression in human experience.

The first part reads Science and Health, p. The structure of Truth and Love; whatever rests upon and proceeds from divine Principle. Nothing human or mortal can assail it nor interfere with the expression of its holy purpose.

More in this issue / June 25, 1955

It is as inviolate as the Christ, for it is the evidence of the Christ. The second part of this definition is: Only as healing appears in a community does the Christian Science church appear. The Church of Christ, Scientist, is unique in this respect: The aspiration of the Christian Scientist's thought soaring in the firmament of understanding, to take these steps in his own experience, to express them in his thought of and expression of Church, is measured by the clearness of his realization of Church, the true Church, the spiritual idea, "the structure of Truth and Love.

When hearts are chastened and pride rebuked, there comes a genuine aspiration for more of Christ's appearing. When we turn away from material things, we cast our net on the side of Spirit. In true aspiration the human is surrendered for the divine. True aspiration leads to the demonstration of the Science of Christianity in church and in individual life. In our church work, in our homes do we love enough to cherish and encourage the birth of spiritual aspiration in our neighbor, in our loved ones, in those whom we may be helping in Christian Science?


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Let us refuse to yield to their materialism, to satisfy their material and mortal self-aggrandizement, their worldly ambition for place, power, popularity. Then let us, like Paul and like our beloved Leader, eagerly tend and nourish spiritual aspiration in them, foster their new birth in Spirit, bring to them the lessons of the first chapter of Genesis. Then their ideas, spiritual sense, fly on spiritual wings in heaven the kingdom of the real. The sixth day represents the climax or fullness of creation. Aspiration united with demonstration lifts consciousness into the spiritual sense of being where Love is enthroned.

Beliefs and practices

The sixth day of unfoldment presents man in God's image the full representation of Mind, the conscious identity of Being, and man reflecting God's intelligence. This is the fully matured, complete, spiritualized consciousness, which is man's true or real selfhood. Today not only the peace of nations, but the protection of our own nation, of our homes, of our church depends to some degree upon the individual right knowing of every Christian Scientist.

How shall the Christ, Truth, be demonstrated unless by those who have a demonstrable understanding of Truth which heals the ills and sins of mankind? Our men and women in the armed services have proved to a wonderful degree that this healing prayer of Christian Science brings deliverance.

The basis for all demonstration of Christian Science in our human experience is prayer or treatment - the actual, workable understanding of God and of man's oneness with Him. Now, a Christian Science treatment should be as spontaneous as light. Spontaneity is characteristic of spiritual things. Treatment is not something you do to a person or to a church; it is something perfect you know about that which is already done, about that which already is.

Prayer in Christian Science is based upon the fact of spiritual perfection. It is based on the premise that everything is already created. Everything is, and because it is, and is perfect, the practitioner acknowledges this liberating truth. Eddy has said that Unity of Good, p.