What Charles Fillmore Said About The Prayer of Faith
§13 We believe that the prayer of faith will save the sick, resurrect the body from “trespasses and sins,” and finally overcome the last enemy, death.
Meditation in the Silence
1. Choose a time and a place where you will be alone and undisturbed for at least 20 minutes.
2. Assume a comfortable position so that there is no feeling of tension or strain in your body.
3. If sitting, place both feet flat upon the floor. Put your hands comfortably in your lap with either both palms up to receive blessings, or with the left palm up and the right down to receive and give a blessing.
4. Close your eyes, be still, and relax.
5. Focus your attention upon your head and begin to relax the muscles in your scalp, face, and neck. Say sofdy or silently:
In the name of Jesus Christ relax, relax, relax. Peace, be still; wait upon the Lord only.
6. When you are ready, move your attention to trunk, arms and legs and repeat:
In the name of Jesus Christ relax, relax, relax. Peace, be still; wait upon the Lord only.
7. Now bring your attention to the throat and the power center where the creative Word is forming to give life, substance, and intelligence to your declared word of faith. Affirm sofdy and then several times silently:
Every cell of my body is spiritualised and electrified and LAM made whole; Through faith, I perceive the radiant spiritual energy and intelligence that make every cell glow with perfect God-life.
8. Rest in the silence letting the affirmation reveal its Truth to you.
9. When you are ready, return your awareness first to your physical body, and then to your surroundings as you re-enter your world.
James said, “...and the prayer of faith will save the sick man, and the Lord will raise him up; and if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven.” (James 5:15) Paul wrote to the Corinthians, “The last enemy to be destroyed is death.” (1 Cor. 15:26) These form the foundation for this section of the Statement of Faith.
Charles Fillmore wrote, “The prayer of faith is not supplication, a begging God to give things to man. Prayer at its highest is the entry through faith into a realm of mind forces that when rightly contacted change the character of every cell in brain and body.” (Dynamics for Living, p. 104)
If Jesus and his disciples and even the early Christians did miraculous things through their deep faith, we can all do the same. Jesus told us that the things he did we could do and even greater things. Faith is something that we always have because it is one of the twelve divine faculties in man. It is the power of the mind to perceive, the ability to see beyond appearances and lay hold of the invisible reality which lies behind all human existence. Faith has an investment quality. Since we always have faith, the question we need to ask ourselves at any moment is, “Where is faith invested?” Is it in the presence or the absence of God—in the presence of life and health, or in their absence which appears as disease or death?
The prayer of faith is the perception and affirmation of divine Reality. Affirm life and health within you until even cell is spiritualized and electrified. Without ceasing or wavering, establish within your consciousness Truth principles until limitation and error cannot stand in your presence. Even the “last enemy” fades in the presence of such an enlightened consciousness.
For many generations man has seen the horizon he called death and feared it as ultimate reality. Jesus lived to show us that death as we have conceived it is not a reality. He willingly chose to walk across that horizon and return, proving that the end we had perceived and feared was only the limitation of our physical sight and human understanding. We pair life and death as opposites but it is birth and death which are opposites. Birth is the movement above the horizon like the sun’s rising while death is the forward, progressive movement beyond the horizon of the setting sun. We all know without question that the sun still shines and will be visible again in a brief period of time. The “last enemy” to overcome is the fear of our misconception of death.
What Jesus accomplished at the resurrection can be done again by anyone whose faith is correcdy invested.
According to the Correspondence Course material:
True prayer is intercommunion with God; it is a common union of man’s consciousness and Divine Mind, God... In true prayer the consciousness of the individual is turned wholly to God, the source of divine ideas of Absolute Good. When this is done, there is no room for any limited concept to find entrance into his being.
—Series 1, Lesson 1, Annotation 3.
Praise brings us in tune with Divine Mind; praise opens the mind and heart to higher aspirations, wipes out fear and doubt from our consciousness, enlarges or magnifies our good, and increases our capacity to enjoy more of God’s love, wisdom, joy, and presence.
—Series 2, Lesson 7, Annotation 10.
Faith produces a feeling of deep inner conviction, a state of being certain in our mind that a desire for something will be fulfilled in the outer at the right time.... Faith is possessing in mind a picture of a thing desired in the outer world.... Faith brings into actuality or manifestation whatever we have fixed our attention and our expectations on.
—Lessons in Truth, Lesson 6, Annotation 1.
A spiritual realisation of health is the result of holding in consciousness a statement of health until the logic of the mind is satisfied and man receives the assurance that the fulfillment in the physical must follow. In other words, by realising a healing prayer man lays hold of the principle of health itself and the whole consciousness is illumined; he perceives principle working out his health problems for him.
—Charles Fillmore, Jesus Christ Heals, 39.
Man’s body is made up of centers of consciousness - of light - and if arranged so thy radiate the light within you, you will shine like the diamond.
—Charles Fillmore, Atom-Smashing Power of Mind, 49.