Prayer and Supplication

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To many people the terms prayer and supplication are synonymous, but in Christian Science we find that prayer means that God’s will is done, not shall be. In supplication we usually want our way, and instruct God as to what we think is necessary. That doesn’t work. His universal kingdom is complete. No part of it expresses lack or incompleteness.

Real prayer is quite different from what people consider prayer. To pray right is to know His will is done; to know that He has made and finished all things, and that His creation is good. It is to understand and acknowledge God’s allness, and to be peaceful as His perfect spiritual children.

How many of us are willing to pray, not to have our will done, but to let God’s plan govern our lives? Let me illustrate. One day I became ill. I prayed through the day without much effect, and while closing my office in the evening, I fell to the floor unconscious. As consciousness returned, a prayer in the old way was partially spoken, “Oh, God help,” but that sentence was never finished. At once I corrected the belief that man, God’s child, could be unlike Him, or that he could be sick, and then be healed. I saw that man was never sick, and never had to be healed, and the recovery was instantaneous.

The first expression of prayer was one asking God to do my will: the second was recognition that God’s will is already done.

Jesus told us to “pray without ceasing,” which surely means to understand and acknowledge without ceasing that God is All, that He reigns supreme, that His kingdom of peace, joy, and plenty are here, and that nothing exists or has power outside the realm of God.

If we see this, what do we have to supplicate for? If God is All, can there be any lack? Didn’t Jesus say, “When ye pray, believe that ye receive?” God has given us all, can we ask for more?




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