By Keith Wommack
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Many years ago, I taught Michelle in Sunday School. A few years later, when she was a teenager, she went to a party and drank until she was drunk. Friends took her to a house and left her alone for several hours. When they returned at 3:30 in the morning, they found her unconscious and not breathing.
When firemen were unable to revive her, she was immediately taken to a hospital. At the hospital she was found to have alcohol poisoning and wasn't expected to live.
When Jill, Michelle's mom, arrived at the hospital, Michelle was comatose and on a number of life support machines. A doctor told Jill that Michelle had an alcohol content of .5 in her system. "At .1 you're drunk," he said, ".4 is usually fatal." He also said he did not think they could save her. He stated that even if she did survive, she would suffer brain damage because of being deprived of oxygen for so long. He also stated that damage to her lungs was irreparable.
After hearing these dire predictions, Jill began to pray and called on me to do so too. I began praying immediately and continued as I drove to the hospital. When I arrived, Jill was overjoyed. Michelle had awakened from the coma, and all life support systems had been removed. I was able to speak with both Michelle and her mom. As you can imagine, Michelle's friends were also relieved. They had been feeling guilty for leaving her alone.
A doctor confirmed that Michelle was out of danger from the alcohol poisoning and that there were no signs of brain damage, but he was still extremely concerned. He expected pneumonia to set in. We all continued praying. A day later, her lungs were examined and found to be fine -- no indication of pneumonia was present. Then the doctor released her with the staff calling her "the miracle girl."
Did Michelle experience a miracle or something natural?
If her healing was accomplished by an isolated moment of exalted inspiration or blind faith then, perhaps, Michelle’s experience could be considered a miracle. However, spiritual healing, as I know it, rests on understanding and demonstration. It includes scientific discovery and divine revelation.
It seems more and more people are becoming aware that spiritual healing is not only natural; it is reasonable and responsible care. For example: a survey of American family physicians found that 99 percent of these physicians are convinced that spiritual beliefs can heal. Further, 75 percent believe that the prayers of others can help a patient recover more quickly. Also, a Pew Research survey revealed that 36 percent of Americans say they’ve experienced or seen healing through prayer.
Explaining how a spiritually mental activity can produce changes in physical bodies is not an easy task due to the strong conviction that our thought is servant to our body. Yet, more than ever, it is being discovered that existence is more consciousness-based than believed.
As we ponder health as being more mental in nature, spiritual healing may be considered as coinciding with certain elements found in quantum mechanics. For instance, in the introduction of his book, Taking the Quantum Leap, Fred Alan Wolf, former professor of physics at San Diego State University, states "...quantum mechanics indicates that there is an order to the universe. It simply isn't the order we expected. Even describing the true order of the universe is difficult because it involves something more than the physical world. It involves us, our minds, and our thoughts."
Wolf continues, “Just how physics and our minds are to be brought together is a controversial subject. The gradual recognition that what we think may physically influence what we observe has led to a revolution in thought and philosophy, not to mention physics.”
So how does Wolf’s statement possibly agree with a Bible or spiritually-based treatment?
My experience has shown me that prayer improves physical conditions because the essential nature of existence is thought. Although it seems otherwise, thought, or consciousness, is the master of the body. In fact, thought constitutes the body rather than it being a machine.
Unlike a machine, the structure of human thought is able to change. However, the highest consciousness, the Mind that is God, doesn't change. It’s our concept of existence that is altered by prayer. Prayer brings our thought, and the body along with it, into the harmony that characterizes a God-governed consciousness.
Look at it this way: Imagine a football game where instead of the scoreboard changing because of actions taking place on a field, the play on the field adjusts according to merely revising the score.
Ross Rhodes, science writer and lecturer specializing in the philosophical implications of quantum mechanics, writes, "...the mathematical formulas that were initially developed to describe the behavior of the universe turn out to govern the behavior of the universe.
“It is as though you could create a good offense in a football game -- send the tight end racing down the sidelines and across the goal line -- by changing the numbers on the scoreboard. We are accustomed to thinking that the scoreboard describes and tallies the action on the field; in this analogy, we find that the action on the field is produced by the changing numbers on the scoreboard."
Spiritual healing should be considered natural instead of miraculous, if what we believe shapes our experience. Changes of thought (like changing the scoreboard) lead to adjustments in bodies and lives (like the action on the field).
Most importantly, though, a more spiritual consciousness will discern that we’ve always been in the hands of a loving and wise God.
After the doctor released Michelle, and as she was walking out, the firemen who'd rushed her to the hospital were walking in. They'd returned to find out when she had passed away. They were overjoyed to see Michelle alive.
And if I think about what Michelle's condition looked like to her friends or the firemen who rushed her to the hospital, perhaps darkness might describe it. Yet, our prayers for Michelle didn't ask the darkness how long it had been there, or how solid it seemed to be, or even how much momentum it'd built up. Our prayers glimpsed and acknowledged the light (God's presence). This action apparently removed the darkness.
Perhaps the solid substance and structure of existence is thought, God's thought, -- God seeing the goodness of His own creation. If this is so, then, possibly, each of our humble prayers enables us to view life from God's own perspective, to some degree. As we pray, we can witness God bringing love, health, and care to human conditions needing tender treatment.
– Keith Wommack is a Syndicated Columnist, Christian Science practitioner and teacher, husband, and step-dad. He has been described as a spiritual spur (since every horse needs a little nudge now and then). Keith’s columns originate at: http://texashealthblog.com/
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