The words of the Lord's Prayer have power. You've felt it. You've seen it.
But where exctly does that power lie?
The same place where all words have power: in their meaning - and in your understanding of, and response to, their meaning.
Just repeating words, even good words, doesn't light up those words with meaninng. It doesn't inspire you. And it certainly doesn't motivate you to actually do anything!
Words that aren't understood can't be acted on. And if words aren't acted on then, well, they're just words. Hence St. Paul's saying "the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life." Or as they like to say in Texas, "All hat and no cattle!"
And if this is your approach to the Lord's Prayer - just saying it, instead of actually praying it - well then, that's just about useless.
Would you "pray" your grocery list and expect the refrigerator to stock itself?
No.
But if you read your grocery list and then act on it - actually go to the store and buy what you need to feed you - then you'd be understanding what the grocery list means by putting it into action.
So consider approaching the Lord's Prayer with the same intent: to put what it means into action with all your heart and soul and mind and strength. Let it change you. Let it move you. Let it scrub you down and clean you up. Let it awaken you to who you are as God's likeness. Let it save you.
So don't say it, pray it!
As you do, you will blessed in ways you never could imagine.
"For Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever."
For divine Mind is infinite - is right here with you - is all the power there is, all the Life there is, all the Truth, all the Love; is over all, and All.
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Meeting Jesus in the Lord's Prayer
Have you ever stopped to think that every time you pray the Lord's Prayer, it's like meeting Jesus? meeting him in your heart? in your consciousness?
And have you ever wondered what it must've been like to have been in his personal presence all those thousands of years ago? Wondered what it would've been like to feel his gaze lock onto yours, even for a moment? To be seen, really seen, by his Christ-consciousness? To be immediately healed - in an instant - of everything in you that's unlike God?
And whether you received comfort from him (or a rebuke!) it would've been the most profound and life-changing blessing you could possibly imagine.
So offer yourself that same way to his Prayer, the Lord's Prayer. Pray it as if you were hearing it for the first time, straight from Jesus. Because this Prayer is the closest thing we have to being in his conscious healing presence, of being part of his constant communion with God, Our Father.
And it is this Christ-consciousness that permates Jesus' Prayer. And when you pray it (not just say it) but really honestly yearingly pray it, and it comes directly to your consciousness with "healing in His wings."
So meet Jesus in his Prayer. Let his healing Christ-consciousness be yours. Let that Father-Mother love of God that Jesus knew so well embrace you and awaken you to your already all-harmonious being in Him.
"For Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever."
For God is infinite - here and now - all-power, all Life, Truth, Love, over all, and All.
And that "All" certainly includes you.
And have you ever wondered what it must've been like to have been in his personal presence all those thousands of years ago? Wondered what it would've been like to feel his gaze lock onto yours, even for a moment? To be seen, really seen, by his Christ-consciousness? To be immediately healed - in an instant - of everything in you that's unlike God?
And whether you received comfort from him (or a rebuke!) it would've been the most profound and life-changing blessing you could possibly imagine.
So offer yourself that same way to his Prayer, the Lord's Prayer. Pray it as if you were hearing it for the first time, straight from Jesus. Because this Prayer is the closest thing we have to being in his conscious healing presence, of being part of his constant communion with God, Our Father.
And it is this Christ-consciousness that permates Jesus' Prayer. And when you pray it (not just say it) but really honestly yearingly pray it, and it comes directly to your consciousness with "healing in His wings."
So meet Jesus in his Prayer. Let his healing Christ-consciousness be yours. Let that Father-Mother love of God that Jesus knew so well embrace you and awaken you to your already all-harmonious being in Him.
"For Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever."
For God is infinite - here and now - all-power, all Life, Truth, Love, over all, and All.
And that "All" certainly includes you.
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Deliver us from evil
"And lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil."
And God leadeth us, not into temptation, but delivereth us from sin, disease, and death.
Where does evil come from?
Jesus gives the best explanation when he calls the devil (evil) "a liar and the father of it."
Evil is a lie.
Does a lie have power? Only if you mistakenly (or willfully) accept the lie as truth. Then evil can seem very very real indeed.
And what can save us from sin, disease, and death - especially when they feel so very very real?
Only one thing: the Christ: God's Truth, accepted and understood and demonstrated.
And that is like turning on a light in a dark scarey place. And that darkness is powerless against the light.
Here's a little of what "Science & Health" as this to say about this:
S&H 16:15
"In the phrase, 'Deliver us from evil,' the original properly reads, 'Deliver us from the evil one.' This reading strengthens our scientific apprehension of the petition, for Christian Science teaches us that 'the evil one,' or one evil, is but another name for the first lie and all liars.
S&H 186:17
"Evil is self-assertive. It says: 'I am a real entity, overmastering good.' This falsehood should strip evil of all pretensions. The only power of evil is to destroy itself."
S&H 207:8
"God is not the creator of an evil mind. Indeed, evil is not Mind. We must learn that evil is the awful deception and unreality of existence. Evil is not supreme; good is not helpless; nor are the so-called laws of matter primary, and the law of Spirit secondary. Without this lesson, we lose sight of the perfect Father, or the divine Principle of man."
S&H 285:7
"What, then, is the material personality which suffers, sins, and dies? It is not man, the image and likeness of God, but man's counterfeit, the inverted likeness, the unlikeness called sin, sickness, and death. The unreality of the claim that a mortal is the true image of God is illustrated by the opposite natures of Spirit and matter, Mind and body, for one is intelligence while the other is non-intelligence."
S&H 540:5
"In Isaiah we read: 'I make peace, and create evil. I the Lord do all these things;' but the prophet referred to divine law as stirring up the belief in evil to its utmost, when bringing it to the surface and reducing it to its common denominator, nothingness. The muddy river-bed must be stirred in order to purify the stream. In moral chemicalization, when the symptoms of evil, illusion, are aggravated, we may think in our ignorance that the Lord hath wrought an evil; but we ought to know that God's law uncovers so-called sin and its effects, only that Truth may annihilate all sense of evil and all power to sin."
S&H 507:24
"Infinite Mind creates and governs all, from the mental molecule to infinity. This divine Principle of all expresses Science and art throughout His creation, and the immortality of man and the universe. Creation is ever appearing, and must ever continue to appear from the nature of its inexhaustible source. Mortal sense inverts this appearing and calls ideas material. Thus misinterpreted, the divine idea seems to fall to the level of a human or material belief, called mortal man. But the seed is in itself, only as the divine Mind is All and reproduces all--as Mind is the multiplier, and Mind's infinite idea, man and the universe, is the product. The only intelligence or substance of a thought, a seed, or a flower is God, the creator of it. Mind is the Soul of all. Mind is Life, Truth, and Love which governs all."
"The great fact remains that evil is not mind. Evil has no power, no intelligence, for God is good, and therefore good is infinite, is All."
"For Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever."
For God is infinite, all-power, all Life, Truth, Love, over all, and All.
And God leadeth us, not into temptation, but delivereth us from sin, disease, and death.
Where does evil come from?
Jesus gives the best explanation when he calls the devil (evil) "a liar and the father of it."
Evil is a lie.
Does a lie have power? Only if you mistakenly (or willfully) accept the lie as truth. Then evil can seem very very real indeed.
And what can save us from sin, disease, and death - especially when they feel so very very real?
Only one thing: the Christ: God's Truth, accepted and understood and demonstrated.
And that is like turning on a light in a dark scarey place. And that darkness is powerless against the light.
Here's a little of what "Science & Health" as this to say about this:
S&H 16:15
"In the phrase, 'Deliver us from evil,' the original properly reads, 'Deliver us from the evil one.' This reading strengthens our scientific apprehension of the petition, for Christian Science teaches us that 'the evil one,' or one evil, is but another name for the first lie and all liars.
S&H 186:17
"Evil is self-assertive. It says: 'I am a real entity, overmastering good.' This falsehood should strip evil of all pretensions. The only power of evil is to destroy itself."
S&H 207:8
"God is not the creator of an evil mind. Indeed, evil is not Mind. We must learn that evil is the awful deception and unreality of existence. Evil is not supreme; good is not helpless; nor are the so-called laws of matter primary, and the law of Spirit secondary. Without this lesson, we lose sight of the perfect Father, or the divine Principle of man."
S&H 285:7
"What, then, is the material personality which suffers, sins, and dies? It is not man, the image and likeness of God, but man's counterfeit, the inverted likeness, the unlikeness called sin, sickness, and death. The unreality of the claim that a mortal is the true image of God is illustrated by the opposite natures of Spirit and matter, Mind and body, for one is intelligence while the other is non-intelligence."
S&H 540:5
"In Isaiah we read: 'I make peace, and create evil. I the Lord do all these things;' but the prophet referred to divine law as stirring up the belief in evil to its utmost, when bringing it to the surface and reducing it to its common denominator, nothingness. The muddy river-bed must be stirred in order to purify the stream. In moral chemicalization, when the symptoms of evil, illusion, are aggravated, we may think in our ignorance that the Lord hath wrought an evil; but we ought to know that God's law uncovers so-called sin and its effects, only that Truth may annihilate all sense of evil and all power to sin."
S&H 507:24
"Infinite Mind creates and governs all, from the mental molecule to infinity. This divine Principle of all expresses Science and art throughout His creation, and the immortality of man and the universe. Creation is ever appearing, and must ever continue to appear from the nature of its inexhaustible source. Mortal sense inverts this appearing and calls ideas material. Thus misinterpreted, the divine idea seems to fall to the level of a human or material belief, called mortal man. But the seed is in itself, only as the divine Mind is All and reproduces all--as Mind is the multiplier, and Mind's infinite idea, man and the universe, is the product. The only intelligence or substance of a thought, a seed, or a flower is God, the creator of it. Mind is the Soul of all. Mind is Life, Truth, and Love which governs all."
"The great fact remains that evil is not mind. Evil has no power, no intelligence, for God is good, and therefore good is infinite, is All."
"For Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever."
For God is infinite, all-power, all Life, Truth, Love, over all, and All.
Sunday, May 24, 2009
God's will done in you as it is done in Heaven
"Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven." Enable us to know, as in heaven, so on earth, God is omnipotent, supreme.
Enable us to know, as in Heaven so in us, God sees His omnipotent supreme will being done.
Right here where you are, you have the ability to see the universe as it really is, as under God's complete control, as all-harmonious, under God's perfect care and revealing. His will is done in earth - in your present state of consciousness - just as it is done in heaven - His state of consciousness, which yours reflects.
To the extent that you awaken to this, you experience God feeding your need of Love, forgiving all dreams of debt or lack or loneliness, leading you and delivering you from any nightmare of sin, sickness or death, revealing in you His kingdom, already present, already complete, already all-harmonious.So you see that this is not mind-over-matter, or even Mind-over-matter. It is an awakening to the fact that you are, in fact, completely spiritual! That you are actually already - here and now - God's perfect image and likeness, without a single material (i.e., limited / mortal) element.
This is how God knows you. This is how God sees you. This is how God creates you. And it is your divine right to know, see, and be His exact image and likeness. In fact, it is more than your divine right. It is your actual present state of being. And it is the actual present state of being for everyone and everything around you: your neighbor, your community, the world, the universe.
Mrs. Eddy put it this way: "Jesus beheld in Science [just like God does], the perfect man where sinning mortal man appears to mortals. In this perfect man, the Saviour saw God's own likeness [God actually being made manifest], and this correct view of man healed the sick [awoke the "sick" to their already-present perfection as God-being]."
And God's will leads us not into trials or temptation - dreams of sin, disease, death - but His omnipotent will always delivers us from every wilfull, uncomfortable, limited sense of ourselves. Because His kingdom is already come, and His kingdom is already "within you."
Monday, May 11, 2009
A simple answer
What if your prayer is simply to be able to accept all that God is pouring out to you today? to receive all His gifts? His ideas? His inspirations and intutions? and then be grateful for them by living them out loud in your life?
What if you entered into what God is doing for you? What if you accept that you get to see the flawless unfolding of God's day, today? that you get to be the flawless unfolding of God's day today? that you get to declare the flawless unfolding of God's day today?
Then your prayer would simply be: Thy will be done.
What if you entered into what God is doing for you? What if you accept that you get to see the flawless unfolding of God's day, today? that you get to be the flawless unfolding of God's day today? that you get to declare the flawless unfolding of God's day today?
Then your prayer would simply be: Thy will be done.
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
Spiritual sense and prayer
"Spiritual sense, contradicting the material senses, involves intuition, hope, faith, understanding, fruition, reality."
Intuition is the seed of desire, of prayer. Intuition speaks wordlessly to your receptive heart. It says "this is the way, walk ye in it, when ye turn to the right hand, or when ye turn to the left." It nudges that seed-of-desire in you into an awakening feeling that something wonderful is actually possible. This gives you hope.
And Hope is not just some vague wishful thinking. The Hope that God gives you is much more solid than that. The Hope God gives you is expectancy. And expectancy is what opens that seed of prayer. Expectancy is what knows - when the night is darkest - that the dawn will come. Hope is what carries you from indulging fearful thinking into risking prayerful thinking. Hope is a glimmer of "knowing before seeing." And when Hope reaches up from the light of spiritual intuition, it is never blind. Hope right now sees the flower in your sprouting seedling prayer.
Faith, which is Hope-put-into-practice, nurtures and supports the growth of your seedling prayer. Practicing your Faith by being faithful to your expectancy over and over and over again - strengthens your Faith. Practice teaches you what works and doesn't work, what's true and what's not true, what's real and dependable and what's false and worthless. All that practice builds your Faith-muscle! And that helps your prayer grow straight and tall, blossoming into:
Understanding. And when you actually now understand your desire, your prayer, you are awake to it. You are aware of it's real meaning. Your eyes are opened, and your mind is alert, and your practice is more sure and confident than ever. You shed the driftwood dreck that might have been sticking to your prayer - tossing aside the cheap imitation answers, seeing through this misleading sidetracks, ditching the counterfeit solutions. And so your experience the beneficial results of your prayer. You demonstrate through your intuition, hope, faith and understanding, what is spiritually true. You experience something new. You feel something solid and good and wonderful. Your prayer just naturally ripens into:
Fruition. And why? Because trusting God with your desire always bears fruit. And what is the fruit of your prayer? It is always:
Reality. Yes. Reality.
You can reach this point in an instant, an hour, or a lifetime. But time doesn't matter because even right now desire is alive in your heart. And this desire, viewed rightly, is always God stirring in you, drawing you closer, awakening you to who you really are, awakening you to your likeness to Him, your at-one-ment with Him, declaring what's really true: you are God being.
Rejoice then in God as All-in-all, and you as His perfect and complete image and likeness: pure, healthy, whole, and holy. This is who you always have been and always will be. And most importantly, this is who you are now.
"For Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever."
For God is infinite, all-power, all Life, Truth, Love, over all, and All.
Intuition is the seed of desire, of prayer. Intuition speaks wordlessly to your receptive heart. It says "this is the way, walk ye in it, when ye turn to the right hand, or when ye turn to the left." It nudges that seed-of-desire in you into an awakening feeling that something wonderful is actually possible. This gives you hope.
And Hope is not just some vague wishful thinking. The Hope that God gives you is much more solid than that. The Hope God gives you is expectancy. And expectancy is what opens that seed of prayer. Expectancy is what knows - when the night is darkest - that the dawn will come. Hope is what carries you from indulging fearful thinking into risking prayerful thinking. Hope is a glimmer of "knowing before seeing." And when Hope reaches up from the light of spiritual intuition, it is never blind. Hope right now sees the flower in your sprouting seedling prayer.
Faith, which is Hope-put-into-practice, nurtures and supports the growth of your seedling prayer. Practicing your Faith by being faithful to your expectancy over and over and over again - strengthens your Faith. Practice teaches you what works and doesn't work, what's true and what's not true, what's real and dependable and what's false and worthless. All that practice builds your Faith-muscle! And that helps your prayer grow straight and tall, blossoming into:
Understanding. And when you actually now understand your desire, your prayer, you are awake to it. You are aware of it's real meaning. Your eyes are opened, and your mind is alert, and your practice is more sure and confident than ever. You shed the driftwood dreck that might have been sticking to your prayer - tossing aside the cheap imitation answers, seeing through this misleading sidetracks, ditching the counterfeit solutions. And so your experience the beneficial results of your prayer. You demonstrate through your intuition, hope, faith and understanding, what is spiritually true. You experience something new. You feel something solid and good and wonderful. Your prayer just naturally ripens into:
Fruition. And why? Because trusting God with your desire always bears fruit. And what is the fruit of your prayer? It is always:
Reality. Yes. Reality.
You can reach this point in an instant, an hour, or a lifetime. But time doesn't matter because even right now desire is alive in your heart. And this desire, viewed rightly, is always God stirring in you, drawing you closer, awakening you to who you really are, awakening you to your likeness to Him, your at-one-ment with Him, declaring what's really true: you are God being.
Rejoice then in God as All-in-all, and you as His perfect and complete image and likeness: pure, healthy, whole, and holy. This is who you always have been and always will be. And most importantly, this is who you are now.
"For Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever."
For God is infinite, all-power, all Life, Truth, Love, over all, and All.
Sunday, April 26, 2009
God's gift of contentment
"Give us this day our daily bread."
Give us grace for today; feed the famished affections.
The meal that God, divine Love, prepares for you, is not just three times a day. God gives you His daily bread moment by moment.
His bread is the daily inspiration He gives you, the daily ideas He sends you, the loving intuitions that feed your deepest need. It is this continuous communion with Him, as shown in the Lord's Prayer, that awakens you to realize that you actually already have all that you need:
You have an adorably loving Father-Mother
You have a safe place to live (His kingdom)
You have sure training and guidance (His will)
You have all your needs met (His daily bread)
All your mistakes corrected (His forgiveness)
Deliverance from all evil (His leading and deliverance)
And so you have confidence to go forward (under His supremecy)
Keeping your eyes on Him - and off your human circumstances - takes practice. But it opens you up to actually experience the blessings He has already prepared for you. And as you awake to those blessings, and act on them, you find you can be content right now, right here.
This may be the greatest awakening there is: contentment - accepting what Love is giving you right now, actually receiving what Love is already providing and acting on it. You could say that the grace of contentment is the "peace, and joy, and power" of God being made manifest in your thoughts, your actions, your life.
As John Greenleaf Whittier's beautiful hymn says:
"Dear Lord and Father of us all, forgive our foolish ways;
Reclothe us in our rightful mind; in purer lives Thy service find,
In deeper reverence, praise.
"In simple trust like theirs who heard, beside the Syrian sea,
The gracious calling of the Lord, let us like them, without a word
Rise up and follow Thee.
"Breathe through the pulses of desire Thy coolness and They balm;
Let sense be dumb, let flesh retire; speak through the earthquake, wind, and fire,
O still small voice of calm.
"Drop Thy still dews of quietness, till all our strivings cease;
Take from us now the strain and stress, and let our ordered lives confess
The beauty of Thy peace."
Give us grace for today; feed the famished affections.
The meal that God, divine Love, prepares for you, is not just three times a day. God gives you His daily bread moment by moment.
His bread is the daily inspiration He gives you, the daily ideas He sends you, the loving intuitions that feed your deepest need. It is this continuous communion with Him, as shown in the Lord's Prayer, that awakens you to realize that you actually already have all that you need:
You have an adorably loving Father-Mother
You have a safe place to live (His kingdom)
You have sure training and guidance (His will)
You have all your needs met (His daily bread)
All your mistakes corrected (His forgiveness)
Deliverance from all evil (His leading and deliverance)
And so you have confidence to go forward (under His supremecy)
Keeping your eyes on Him - and off your human circumstances - takes practice. But it opens you up to actually experience the blessings He has already prepared for you. And as you awake to those blessings, and act on them, you find you can be content right now, right here.
This may be the greatest awakening there is: contentment - accepting what Love is giving you right now, actually receiving what Love is already providing and acting on it. You could say that the grace of contentment is the "peace, and joy, and power" of God being made manifest in your thoughts, your actions, your life.
As John Greenleaf Whittier's beautiful hymn says:
"Dear Lord and Father of us all, forgive our foolish ways;
Reclothe us in our rightful mind; in purer lives Thy service find,
In deeper reverence, praise.
"In simple trust like theirs who heard, beside the Syrian sea,
The gracious calling of the Lord, let us like them, without a word
Rise up and follow Thee.
"Breathe through the pulses of desire Thy coolness and They balm;
Let sense be dumb, let flesh retire; speak through the earthquake, wind, and fire,
O still small voice of calm.
"Drop Thy still dews of quietness, till all our strivings cease;
Take from us now the strain and stress, and let our ordered lives confess
The beauty of Thy peace."
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