Daily Watch for the week of February 6th, – February 13th, 2022
From 500 Watching Points by Gilbert Carpenter
178 — WATCH lest you continue to mix the spiritual method with human desire, and believe yourself to be a progressive Christian Scientist. Mortals bring into Christian Science the human desire for ease and comfort in matter, and attempt to mix this with the spiritual method, which has for its purpose to free mortals from illusion. If they are not progressive, they will continue to use this method as an easier way of obtaining and maintaining human health and prosperity, than a material one. Such an attitude fails to perceive the value in human affliction.
A man digging a well is tempted to stop digging when he finds surface water. Yet unless he continues to dig deeper, his water supply will fail in a drought. Human harmony might be called surface water that tempts us to stop, in our search for the ever-flowing streams of spiritual good.
It sounds odd to say that if one does not watch, he will find himself tempted to use demonstration so that he can stop demonstrating. Mortal man yearns to find security in matter, and brings this desire with him into Science. Yet the right goal should be to reach the point where one cannot get along without demonstration, and must demonstrate every day in order to eat, sleep, walk, talk, and even exist! Only in this way will human weakness be dissolved in divine strength. Why? Because demonstration means learning to rely utterly on God.
A mortal who is prosperous, healthy, and merely refrains from certain things that are considered sinful, is not the ideal in Christian Science. We are seeking to throw off a finite sense of man so that God’s man will appear.
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from Watches, Prayers, and Arguments, as given by Mary Baker Eddy, page 49
“Hear, O Israel, for the Lord, our God, is one God.”
You are not to come in your own name to pray.
You are not to control any mind.
You are to come only in the divine strength, and know that God will rule and does, and that hypnotism and evil minds cannot, and do not, control men or governments.
All power is God, good.
This is my only formula to Christian Scientists for prayer, and God will give you faith that will remove mountains.