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Healing Through Prayer

By Edna Lister

This excerpt from an Edna Lister lecture transcript is dated January 1933, Tacoma, Washington. Scribe: Clarissa A. Watkins. We owe a debt of gratitude to the enthusiastic and determined efforts of Clarissa A. Watkins, who rendered her notes into a series of typed manuscripts, found among Edna Lister's personal papers. In an attached note, Clarissa wrote, "To our Most Glorious Leader, Edna Lister: Here are my typed notes, and please do forgive the delay. We all believe that we should publish as many of your lectures as you will permit. No one has ever brought such a message to earth. Please accept this humble offering of service, C.A.W."

You must develop a mode of prayer that becomes a listening ear, an attitude of listening so that God's grace may flow to, through and from you. Be assured of this, it will if you live, move and have your being in the realization that God is your consciousness.


“Pray the moment an appearance of discord presents itself.”


You must pray the moment an appearance of discord presents itself to you. The moment for prayer is when you become aware of discord, when someone asks for help, not five minutes later. You are never justified in saying, "I'll pray for you in five minutes," or "I'll pray for you in an hour," or "I'll pray for you tonight." Such an attitude toward healing or prayer work is never justified.

When treating several individuals in prayer, you cannot think of them as one, then enter the golden silence and, by so doing, include them all. You must think of and treat each individual case by itself.

In reality, your prayer treatment does not do something to someone. Your prayer does not do something to something. Always remember this: You do not aim your prayer treatment at doing anything to anyone or anything. Real prayer treatment is knowing the truth. It takes place within you, and you do not project it onto anyone else. You never give a treatment to a person. You simply know the truth.

When someone asks for help and tells you the nature of his problem, you may remember and speak certain truths regarding such a situation, and that would be a treatment. Yet whether you know the nature of the problem, or the person, is really not important.

If you understand the principles of healing, then you know the conflict being presented has its source in the subconscious, which is not a mind, but a belief in two powers, God and self.


“Real prayer treatment is knowing the truth.”


This appearance, this discord has no law of God, no life of God, no substance of God. Therefore, the appearance has no real power to sustain or maintain itself.

If you know the truth in the instant the conflict comes to your attention, you are in no danger of first taking it into your consciousness, then later having to lift it out and up into the Light. You lift instantly by knowing the truth under the principle of nonresistance.

This does not mean that a healing result always will be instantaneous. You may hear later that the person or situation is better, worse, or just the same. You may have to treat again, but you always offer the prayer treatment the moment someone brings the claim to your attention.

If that person returns to your thoughts in an hour, you must immediately pray again. In other words, you cannot rest in peace until you have a sense of freedom within yourself about the case. If you recall it six, eight or ten times in the next twenty-four hours, you treat six, eight or ten more times.

When a call for help comes, instantly you realize that only the grace of God can and does operate as law according to your spoken Word. There is no law of disease, infection, contagion, or heredity. The only law is the law of God.


“The only law is the law of God”


All conflict arises from the subconscious belief in two powers, God and self. Do not turn from a person or case until you are sure you are not accepting the illusion, but you do understand the impersonal nature of the call.

No one is ever called to handle prayer rapidly until he is prepared to do it. In other words, at first you may have as few as three or four calls in a day, then six to ten, or twenty to thirty. By then, you are so in the spirit of realization, of realizing the truth, that you can see the illusion of conflict as rapidly as calls come, and instantly are able to turn to the next.

The proportion of effectiveness is the same, whether you receive six or thirty calls for prayer a day. The number of calls has nothing to do with healing or prayer work, but with the developed state of your consciousness.

You need not concern yourself with how your healing and prayer work will develop. If you begin with one call, handle that call completely, no matter how long it takes. You have only onetrue guide: If you were ill and calling for help, how would you like that person to treat your call? That is the way you must handle the calls you receive.


“You can see the illusion of conflict instantly.”


Be satisfied that you have given your utmost understanding and prayer treatment, so help you God. You can do no more. Then, whatever the outcome, you have a clear conscience that you have fulfilled your responsibility at your highest level in that moment.

Some make lists and offer prayer treatment every morning or night. However, if you handle a call when it comes, as often as you remember it, or as often as the person calls for help, then you fulfill your responsibility and are always up to date.

The finest results come from dealing with a situation in the moment it touches your consciousness, filling yourself, lifting it into Light, and being ready for the next call. So, you never delay praying, or "wait until tonight."

Meet the need at its point of contact with your consciousness. Eventually, this is so simple that you can do it in the space of a two-minute phone call. This takes practice and development, and you can do it only by thoroughly handling one case at a time.


“Deal with the call for prayer instantly.”


At first, you may need to devote an hour to one person to be thorough. Later, you will need only two minutes, because you will have attuned your consciousness and accepted the principle of nonresistance.

Nonresistance is the principle of healing because you never use Power to heal anyone of anything. You learn in this work that you cannot use spiritual Power. You can use physical power, you can use mental power, but you cannot use spiritual Power. When you enter the realm of Spirit, Power uses you; you cannot use Power. Power is omnipotence, and you are its servant.

Therefore, when you work according to the principle of nonresistance, you do not use Power to cure disease, to provide supply for anyone, or to overcome sin. You just know the truth that every appearance of evil is simply a form of mental malpractice. It is nothing more than the subconscious, which has no law, no cause, no life, no substance and no activity other than what you give it.

Healing is not something you do. God's Power does the healing by using your consciousness as its servant, when you let it. My Father worketh hitherto, and I work. – John 5:17. When you know the truth, you become still and let God speak the Word as you. Then you will hear the "still, small voice," and come to know that this Voice thunders regarding error.


“Become still and let God speak the Word as you.”


God is the reality. God is the goal of life. To live without harmony, health, abundance and companionship is living a very barren life, a life lacking God.

Ascension of consciousness recognizes only God as a goal, only the search for God as a goal, only the attainment of God as a goal. Then you discover the greatest mystery of all — that in attaining God, you have attained health, harmony, wholeness, completeness, companionship, home and abundance with twelve baskets-full left over to share.

"My creed is love. My path is service. My goal is God." Once you accept God as the goal, only your mode of attainment remains in question. You are not seeking things, but seeking that Mind, which is God, that consciousness, which is God.

Then watch how the Christ consciousness, which is God, becomes your individual consciousness, becomes the substance of the harmonies of life. When you ask, beg, plead, and attempt to get from God only, all harmony becomes automatic.

God as consciousness appears as form, and that consciousness and form are you.

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Edna Miriam Lister
1884 –1971
The original Pioneering Mystic
minister, teacher, and author

Edna Lister


References

The Compact Edition of The Oxford English Dictionary: 2 volumes. E.S.C. Weiner, editor. Oxford University Press, 1971.

The Holy Bible. King James Version (KJV).


Healing Disclaimer

Good health and healing, which is the return to good health, is a matter is common sense.

All information on this site is provided for informational purposes only and in no way is intended as medical counseling or medical advice. By no means is any information presented herein intended to substitute for the advice and/or treatment provided to you by your own physician or a health care provider. Do not use any information contained on this site to self-diagnose or personally treat any medical condition or disease or prescribe any medication. If you have or suspect you have a medical condition, you are urged to contact your personal health care provider or a qualified medical professional.


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