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BECOME CONSCIOUS OF GOD'S POWER
Metaphysical Application Ideas for the Christian Science Bible Lesson on

“Ancient and Modern Necromancy, alias Mesmerism and Hypnotism, Denounced”
for June 3, 2018

By Kerry Jenkins, CS of House Springs, MO
Kerry.helen.jenkins@gmail.com (314) 406-0041

It would appear that there are so many ways in which power seems to be manifest in human experience. Just a single glance at any current news topic, from gun violence, to disease, to sexual violence, to the world political scene, will report to our senses that there certainly seems to be a power that opposes the idea of an omnipotent and all-good God. How do we bring into our experience the clear view of God's supremely good government in the face of these suggestions? This lesson packs a punch in doling out ideas with which we can each combat the insidious belief that evil, animal magnetism, and all the "powers" listed in the title of this week's lesson, can stand in the face of Mind, Love, Truth—in the face of God's omnipotent goodness.

Golden Text: "With God's help we will do mighty things, for he will trample down our foes." This version from the New Living Translation (NLT) gives another dimension to the excellent version from the King James Bible. I just like that we will do "mighty things", and will "trample down our foes"! This might comes straight from God who provides us with power through reflection.

In our Responsive Reading the prayer of the Psalmist asks that we be led in a "straight" path, one that is unobstructed by the “twistiness” of lies, the "rockiness" of resentment or hatred. This prayer asks for our enemies (sickness, sadness, a lack of integrity, hatred, etc.) to be "…caught in their own traps" (NLT of Ps. 5:10). "You surround them with a shield of love" says this same translation in verse 12. And finally, 2 Timothy assures us that the only thing that God does give is the spirit of love, and power, and a sound mind. Interestingly, especially as we look into the suggestions of other mental influences in this week's lesson, "sound mind" can also be translated as "self discipline". Think of how Mrs. Eddy tells us that self discipline, or self government, is really government by God (SH 106:9). Hence a key to not falling victim to these false "powers" in our subject this week, involves a consciousness of how to best become exclusively aware of God's government.

Section 1: Nothing can oppose God's power (notice that MOUNTAINS AND HILLS will move, but not God's kindness! B1)

It's good to keep this fact in mind. There are many times a day that we are faced with the suggestion that this is not the case! But when we remember to acknowledge God's omnipotence, we can put these suggestions in their place as lies. It's important to recognize that just because our human experience is often fraught with challenges, does not mean that this experience is unchangeable truth. We prove the fact that God's power is the only true power through healing. Just recently I was up in Alaska to help my dad. The travelling and time change had me up initially for 24 hours. It was then clear that my dad needed around the clock attendance, which my brother and I took in shifts. On the third day I awoke with an awful headache. Because I needed to be spiritually alert while helping my dad, I immediately began prayerful treatment knowing that this was a hypnotic suggestion that our bodies are subject to all sorts of rules about sleep, scheduling, time zones and so on.

I also was attentive to the suggestion that I was spending a lot of time in a facility that, while loving and wonderful, was full of people in various states of physical distress and aging. I was quick to deny the suggestion that these images could represent anything fearsome or powerful to my thought. I could only behold man's beauty, dignity, ageless glory, and the freedom and restfulness that accompany a ministry of love.

Not only was I completely free of the headache just an hour or so later, but the overriding feeling I am left with after this experience is one of the power of Love that was reflected in every one of the nurses that were helping to attend to my dad. My brother, mom and I felt we were in the presence of some of the most inspired and deep love that we'd ever experienced. It was not death and dying that filled our thoughts, but love and the tender ministry of God's goodness and Life. This is divine power overcoming the mesmeric suggestion of life in matter.

Section 2: Love stands unopposed.

We are all "called" for God's "purpose" (B8). This purpose is good, never evil. We can only reflect the goodness of God who blesses all mankind. The suggestion that there is power in man to curse others is the belief in a mind separate from Mind or Love. The story of Balaam, who is a man of God, illustrates not only the way that God blesses man, but also the universality of this powerfully good God. Balaam was not a Jew, but clearly heard God's voice and listened, refusing Balak's request to curse the Children of Israel.

This tells us today that all mankind has that same opportunity to cultivate the ability to be conscious of Mind's voice to man, whatever our religious leanings. This point is driven home in Mrs. Eddy's statement about the "One infinite God, good…" who unifies men… in citation S12! This is an all-encompassing statement of God's power to govern with good, with peace, with intelligence and love.

When we are conscious of our divine purpose, we cannot be "paid" off to "curse" others, or hypnotized by the temptation to think that our good must come at another's expense. The temptation to participate in gossip or unkind action toward others because it would seem to secure a more stable place for ourselves in the social hierarchy is nothing less than the mesmeric suggestion that Love could isolate any of Her ideas. This belief opposes the truth of Love's nature as infinitely inclusive, and man's purpose as Love's reflection, loving all mankind.

Section 3: Hatred cannot rule.

To experience this fact we have to watch our thinking, or "Stand porter at the door of thought." (S18) This is a daily practice, not just to keep out something as ugly as hatred, but to keep out other mesmeric suggestions of sickness, sadness, anger, and so on. In doing "battle" with these hypnotic suggestions, we have to be careful not to get down in the "mud" and try simply to humanly reason our way out of problems.

Paul tells us in citation B10 that while we do "…walk in the flesh, we do not war after the flesh: (For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God..)". It is the all-power of divine Love, not limited human love, that will allows us to follow Jesus' command to love our enemies, as stated in citation B12.

We cannot "talk ourselves into" forgiveness and genuine love. These come through the realization of Love's all-power. When struggling to overcome unnatural feelings of irritation or hatred, these words of Mrs. Eddy are profoundly healing: "The wintry blasts of earth may uproot the flowers of affection, and scatter them to the winds; but this severance of fleshly ties serves to unite thought more closely to God, for Love supports the struggling heart until it ceases to sigh over the world and begins to unfold its wings for heaven." SH 57:24

Whenever it seems too difficult to replace resentment or hatred with love, we can be sure that the love we are reaching for is too bound up in limited, human emotion. We are mesmerized by a limited, human sense of love. It is our blessed opportunity to have that false sense torn away in the "wintry blasts", to be replaced by a more heavenly, deep love that reflects the infinite Love, God.

Section 4: There is no mind but Mind.

In citation B14 Jesus heals the insane man who lives [in the mountains as well as] in the tombs. The tombs represent, in the Bible, a place that is always unclean, separate from society. This is the same mesmeric suggestion that follows many who suffer from various forms of insanity today—that they are separated, and sometimes literally or figuratively dirty, and disheveled. This disorder presents itself often very forcefully even in violent behavior, or as suicidally depressed [or in the commuting between highs and lows as Cobbey Crisler PS#4 and Ken Cooper’s monologue PS#5 point out].

These aggressive suggestions of a power separate from Mind are dealt with by the Christ, whom God has continued to anoint today in our midst! (B13) In this particular story, this man appears to represent a great deal of "power", breaking chains and declaring that his very name is "Legion", which in Rome, was a force of four to six thousand soldiers! But this aggressive suggestion of a mind separate from Mind is firmly erased by Jesus. He sends this belief "packing"—into the pigs, which Biblically are symbolic of uncleanness themselves. And so this false hypnotic belief of a sick mind in matter disappears, we might even think of it as being washed away in the deep lake where the pigs supposedly fell. (I like to think that the pigs are wholly symbolic of this state of unclean mortal mind, separate from the divine Mind!) Getting the identity of this belief in whatever form is often a sure way to healing. (Jesus asked this man his name). I'm not speaking here of a diagnosis, but rather of a clear identification of the mesmeric lie behind this belief.

In one case of many years of deep clinical depression, one man I know, found his way to healing by identifying the source as a suggestion, in his case, of heredity. As soon as he identified that suggestion, he was able to see his freedom from the claim over a few months time.

In my case, I found that by properly identifying that my emotions were not reliable near the time of my menstrual cycle, I was better able to not "give" those feelings the kind of power/legitimacy that they would normally claim over my thought. What a relief to recognize that we are not governed by imbalance of chemicals or hormones of any kind.

Section 5: Healing comes from the power of Truth.

Truth is the only healer, as we find in citation B15 where certain Jews were attempting to heal through falsely representing themselves as followers of Jesus. Their motives were for personal adulation, rather than genuinely to bless as Mrs. Eddy states in citation S29. Of course, we cannot heal without the power of Love behind our work. Unless the healing brings us closer to Love, it is not genuine healing but hypnotism of the human mind.

Look at what we are told in that passage from citation S29: "The genuine Christian Scientist is adding to his patient's mental and moral power, and is increasing his patient's spirituality while restoring him physically through divine Love." This is a healing power that is never mixed with error of any kind. There can be no other "power" present beside God's. Often this kind of healing comes when we turn to the very Word of God, either in the Bible or Mrs. Eddy's writings.

In my family I can think of many instances where simply reading directly from these books brought rapid and sometimes instant healing, even when the person being read to didn't seem to be old enough to understand everything that was read. One time after our son Huck dropped a very large rock on his big toe, he was unable to find enough comfort to fall asleep that night. After praying and sharing thoughts with him, I opened Science and Health and read to him. Within minutes he fell asleep and slept through the night. This was followed by a very quick healing over the next couple of days, and by a 5k race that he ran and placed well in.

Section 6: Let Science "triumph over material sense, and Truth over error…" S30

Through our vigilant efforts to watch over our thought we can triumph over aggressive suggestions of fear, disease, hatred—all the forms of error that try to convince us that we live and die in matter. God is the only power, and spiritual sense, with which we are blessed by our Father-Mother, helps us become conscious of this fact!


For Your Support, PLEASE:
1. Still many, Many, MANY MORE CAMPERSHIP FUNDS ARE NEEDED AS MORE APPLICATIONS CONTINUE TO COME IN DAILY ONLINE! Thank you for giving the camperships that are greatly needed, life-transforming and forever appreciated by over 400 worthy recipients and their families and churches.

(You can see pictures of the opening of our best-yet summer this past weekend with a great group of 220 Family Campers and staff–as well as of our upcoming two-week, staff precamp before 1st session at www.cedarscamps.org or on FaceBook or Instagram.)

Especially helpful are your much-needed MONTHLY gifts, past and ongoing, that can be started and adjusted as you wish at:www.cedarscamps.org/giving ] All of your gifts add up to big blessings in the lives of today's Sunday School students (tomorrow's joyous workers in our Christ-centered church)!

2. CedarS “Adopt the Herd” Matching Fund is close to being met!

In the time since Giving Tuesday you helped raise ~$60.2k for the Riding Program, which will be doubled through the Adopt the Herd Matching Fund, for a total of ~$120.4k to help feed and care for CedarS wonderful horses. We still have ~$4.8k to raise to take advantage of the $65k Adopt the Herd match. (More info at http://www.cedarscamps.org/giving/adopt-the-herd/)

With advance and ongoing gratitude and love,
Warren, Gay, Holly & your CedarS Family

P.S. If you haven't yet given, or are blessed with more to give, we still have many needs, big and small, that you can help meet by clicking on https://www.cedarscamps.org/giving/tree/.

[You can also reach a member of the Founding family nearly anytime by
PHONE at 417-532-6699.

or MAIL to our Summer-Fall address at camp (in red below) your tax-deductible support to our 501-C-3 organization. (Our not-for-profit, Federal Identification Number is #44-0663883):

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[THANKS TO YOU PRECIOUS DONORS FOR YOUR ONGOING, GENEROUS and NEEDED SUPPORT OF CedarS IMPORTANT WORK!]

[CedarS weekly Metaphysical Newsletter is provided at no charge to the 1,200 campers and staff blessed each summer at CedarS, as well as to CedarS alumni, families and friends who have requested it. However, current and planned gifts are a huge proof of your ongoing LOVE made visible and are greatly appreciated!! They not only defray the costs of running this service but also provide greatly needed camperships and essential program and operations support.

[The Met application ideas above are provided primarily to help CedarS campers and staff (as well as friends) see and daily demonstrate the great value of studying and applying the Christian Science Bible lessons throughout the year, not just at camp! YOU CAN ALSO SIGN UP for weekly emails from past CedarS staff of possible ways to share Bible Lesson applications with older, as well as younger, Sunday School classes by clicking the "Subscribe Now" button (lower left) at http://www.cedarscamps.org/metaphysical/

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