Getting rid of ‘yeah, buts’

Have you ever had someone ask you for advice, but then they respond with “yeah, but” to anything you offer – signifying their objection to actually overcoming their roadblock? Sometimes the “yeah, buts” come from ourselves.

Moving forward depends on getting rid of this negative state of mind by consenting to success, since Christian Science shows that our mental state governs our experience. Our ability to give consent comes from our oneness with God. God is the one divine Mind, which we, as His spiritual creation, reflect. And our unity with divine Mind endows each of us with the intelligence, spiritual insight, and perspicacity to make sound decisions, including consenting to receiving all the good God has prepared for us.

Christ Jesus demonstrated this oneness in healing others. Turning to God, whom he called his Father, he found limitless potential to achieve good in everything he did, and he showed others how to do the same. Because each of us has that same relationship to God, divine Love itself, we can find the courage to accept and accomplish any inspired undertaking.

Mary Baker Eddy, a spiritual pioneer who discovered the law of God and named it Christian Science, wrote in “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures,” “The devotion of thought to an honest achievement makes the achievement possible. Exceptions only confirm this rule, proving that failure is occasioned by a too feeble faith” (p. 199). She knew whereof she spoke, because it was in her later years, when others were heading toward retirement, that she wrote this groundbreaking book about spiritual healing.

It is essential that we listen for God’s guidance as to what we should be doing and consent to success in doing it, knowing as St. Paul said, “It is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure” (Philippians 2:13). And it is God’s good pleasure that we accept success bravely and wholeheartedly with no argument as to why things won’t work out.

While my husband and I were building our first home, I held some skepticism about and resistance to the project because of its size. My worst fears about the undertaking were realized when a contractor was delayed and everything came to an abrupt halt right in the middle of construction. Weeks went by with no forward momentum.

Then one day I read an account given by someone involved in the building of a church edifice for The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, Massachusetts. He described a time when work was moving slowly: “I bowed my head before the might of divine Love, and never more did I have any doubt.

“... I noticed that as soon as the workmen began to admit that the work could be done, everything seemed to move ...; the human mind was giving its consent” (Mary Baker Eddy, “The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany,” p. 61).

Immediately, I realized I had been mentally dragging my feet about our project. I saw that I, too, needed to prayerfully consent to accomplishing the good work in front of us. As soon as I did, the work began again and our house was finished on time.

So what if the problem needing to be resolved is monumental – like a world event so devastating that we become numb to answers? We want to pray, but the “yeah, buts” are overwhelming, and we succumb to defeat before we even begin. Christ – the manifestation of God’s love, power, and presence with us – doesn’t allow us to concede defeat and languish in hopelessness. Christ empowers us to shut down the resistance and find ourselves divinely inspired and ready to behold the new heaven and new earth that St. John witnessed.

This is a new view of reality – the kingdom of God that is present here and now. It brings with it “the peace of God, which passeth all understanding” (Philippians 4:7), because we see that nothing can really impede us from attaining God’s goodness right here on earth. Then all the arguments and roadblocks disappear, and we move forward confident that success is at hand. This is the holy way that our heavenly Father has designed and equipped us to take, now and for generations to come.