POSITIVE WRITTEN SERMON – Renewing and empowering failed resolutions

Time Sensitivity: 4-5 weeks after the new year

A FREE GIFT FOR CLERGY

Positive Written Sermons is a FREE service of Positive Christianity to those ACTIVE IN CLERGY MINISTRY to ease your burdens in ministry. Each positive sermon is non-denominational; feel free to tailor to your denominational needs, or personal style. We consider our sermons to be 90% complete; they await your personal stories and anecdotes.

______________________________

CALL UPON YOUR RESOURCES

(Molly) (or a name that is not common within your congregation) made a New Year’s Resolution towards midnight on December 31st, 2000. She resolved to stop smoking. She decided this would be the year. Molly has already failed to keep her resolution.

Did you make a resolution on New Year’s Eve? Did you keep that resolution, or did you fail in keeping it? The experts say, that most human beings forget, or fail, at their New Year’s resolutions within the first three weeks after making the resolution. The reason for this is because they were not changed at the core of their being. The New Year’s resolution didn’t become a part of them.

Most of us are in a constant state of recovery. We are always recovering from something. Maybe we’re recovering from that bad cold, or maybe it is a business or career situation in which we are experiencing a low point. We are dreaming of the day when we can return to the height that we once were.

But if we keep on living this way, on the roller-coaster of life, even when we are at the high point we fear it because we just know it won’t last. We say, “Dear God, this can’t last. Something will go wrong.” The minute we do, we begin recovery again.

The economy is in a constant state of recovery. Alan Greenspan is making weekly adjustments. What happens when you go to God and you say, “God, here I am. I bring You my physical body and my mind. I’m tired of the up and down roller-coaster living I have been experiencing, and I want to be changed. God, I’ve read the Bible and Jesus says it’s possible for me. He did it. He said I could do it. Now is the time.” “I’ve tried to keep my New Year’s resolution. Some days I’ve done well, but other days I have not done so well. I want to be changed at the core of my being. When will this happen, God? How does it happen? Can it happen to me?”

On the computers we use, we have a feature called “system restore”, God I need your help to restore my system. “God, it seems I just don’t have the power in me to do what I want to do, and really want to do it. I think I do, but then I keep on going back to old ways of thinking. Why? Why can’t I have the power within myself to be changed once and for all? I want it, and I want it desperately.”

You ask, “how do I renew and empower a failed New Years Eve resolution?”

There is a realm of discovery within each of us. That discovery can come at a low point in our lives. We do not need a spiritual experience only when we’re at the very top peak of the life’s mountain and everything is going well. It’s easy to have a spiritual experience when that happens because we feel so good. We feel empowered and we feel as if we could do anything, and God could do anything through us.

A spiritual experience is also possible when you are going through what Jesus called a crucifixion. When people at work are not very nice to you, or something in your home environment is not going very well, or a habit that you want to give up is crucifying you, that may be the best time to realize the power of God. Spirituality is the depth of your bliss in the middle of your problem.

When things are not going right, you can go within yourself in the “now” moment, and change your whole world–change your whole mind and body and go through a transfiguration. You know the power of God without a doubt. You know God can be relied upon in the bad times as well as the good.

In Matthew 16:22 Jesus was talking to the disciples. Imagine you are one of the disciples. We are sitting around a campfire and Jesus is talking. He says, “I face some hard times ahead of me. I’m going to be crucified, and then I’m going to go through a resurrection.”

As you sit there, you can’t believe that this Man you have followed, who has talked to you about living the Christ life, is talking about bad things happening to Him and how He will deal with these bad things. You don’t want to hear it.

Think about this: What if the one you loved most in life came to you and said, “I need to talk. Something is going to happen to me, and we need to face this together.” Wouldn’t you just want to close your ears, not listen, and say, “This can’t be true? Things need to remain the same?”

In human mind, more than anything else, we may want the normal to stay the norm; for things to remain the same. Sometimes we DO NOT want change. This is what the disciples wanted.

After Jesus had said this, Peter took Him aside and rebelled Him saying, “God, forbid it. Lord, this must never happen to You.” But He turned away from Peter and said, “Get behind me, Satan!”

Isn’t that a strange thing for Jesus to say? Isn’t it strange for Jesus to call Peter “Satan”? It is, unless you realize what “Satan” means. Satan means tester. He was saying, “Peter, don’t test me. Don’t even try to sway me. This is what must happen. In human mind, this does not sound very good, but this is Divine and it is going to prove the Divine.”

[Matthew 16:24]. Then Jesus told his disciples, “If any want to become my followers … “Who here does not want to become a follower of Jesus Christ? You want to hold the ideals of what was taught because these are universal ideals.

How do we become a follower? Many believe that becoming a follower means that somehow we will follow the man Jesus; or if Jesus came back in body we would follow Him down the path He was walking. Wherever Jesus wanted to go, we will go too. We will leave behind everything without question and follow Him.

But this is not what Jesus said. He said: If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me [daily]. This is before the crucifixion, and yet He is talking about a cross.

“I have a cross to bear,” you say, “and it’s a heavy one.” This is a saying we’ve all heard, and I think it was a saying in that day too. People were crucified daily. Often they would carry their own cross to the crucifixion site.

But is Jesus saying that I must deny my lower human mind, my lower thoughts, and my lowest habits and carry a cross daily. The cross Jesus referred to often meant crossing out error beliefs inside of us. If we are truly following Jesus, we have to think about how we follow Jesus in our minds and hearts, and then in the outer world.

What does it mean to deny ourselves? In some places in the world it means that you would take a chain and hit the body because the body is no good. But Jesus said the body is the temple of the living God. Your body, where you are, is a cathedral, a church, and a place where all the cells in your body temple are holding a worship service. They are singing in joy and having a wonderful time in worship.

But you have burdens. You are living life, and you have challenges and problems. This is a normal activity of the human being. But how do we deal with these challenges?

We deny human thinking and produce Divine thinking. Our problems cannot be solved at the same level of thought in which we created them. We have to lift ourselves higher. We have to go to Divine Mind.

Imagine you were hiking with a backpack on your back. In that backpack you had a million dollars, but in your pockets you didn’t have any money all. If you went into McDonald’s and they wanted you to pay, and you said, “I can’t pay. I don’t have any money in my pockets. I guess I’ll just have to starve. I guess I’ll have to go without. I guess I cannot solve this problem.”

Yet, if you simply call on your resources–what you have with you already–and go within, you can have whatever you want.

But sometimes we have to deny ourselves. Our human mind is saying over and over again in loud chattering voices, “You don’t have any money. You don’t have the ability. You don’t have the ways to carry this off. There is no way you can save this business, or this relationship, or do what you need to do. It’s hopeless.” Human mind continually chatters, while Divine Mind is with you every step of the way saying, “Wait. Deny that thought of your lower human self and come to Me. I have already prepared the solution for you.”

Jesus goes on and says [Matthew 16:25]: “For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.” As I said earlier, we want to have the norm. We want to stay in what we know. We want to find solutions in our own human mind. We don’t want to go into a mode of discovery of new, wondrous good in our lives. We just want to, somehow using the power of thought we have already, get back to where we were before. Then we’ll be happy.

But you are not meant to do that. You are here to explore and discover. You are Christ-o-nauts, and your mission is to explore a new frontier. You are to explore something that you cannot even imagine in your mind–a whole new world, a whole new environment–that can be yours. Unlike an astronaut exploring outer space, you are an explorer of inner space.

In order to do that, you are going to have to lose the concept of who you think you are. You are going to have to lose the concept of everything you hold dear in the things you want to get rid of in your life.

We hold things tightly–even the things we want to be rid of in our lives. That’s why we don’t change. When we have the courage to say, “Okay, I let go and let God,” we loosen our grip and we go into an area that is not fearful or scary at all. It is wondrous and good. But we must lose our life as we know it in that situation and follow the Christ. Everything will be gained.

[Matthew 16:26]. “For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life?” We have known many people who had a life beyond anything you can imagine. They had riches and everything you dream in your wildest fantasies would make you happy. But they have been empty human beings because so much has been lacking in their lives.

The most important ingredient of happiness is not in the material world; it is in the inner world, the soul realm. And when we gain those things in the spiritual realm, we discover a happiness that is beyond belief.

Here we are, (a month) after our New Year’s resolutions. We have decided, right now, to make the change. How do we go about it? How do we go through a transfiguration in our world?

[Matthew 17:1-4]. “Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and his brother John and led them up a high mountain, by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became dazzling white. Suddenly there appeared to them Moses and Elijah, talking with him. Then Peter said to Jesus, Lord it is good for us to be here; if you wish, I will make three dwelling places here, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.”

This Bible verse holds some keys about the truth of change inside of you. First of all, Jesus took three disciples with Him to be totally transfigured where He glowed with new life. Which disciples did He take?

The disciples of Peter, James, and John represent faith, judgment and love.

On New Year’s Eve, we have the Christ Mind power with us of faith. We think we can do anything. That faith creates wild enthusiasm that quickly dissipates. We have to add the power of judgment to that. We have to decide on the details of how to do this. We hitch the horse of our faith to the reigns of judgment.

Then we add the third to have the holy trinity of getting what we want in our New Year’s resolutions to come to pass. That third power is love. What do I mean by adding love? If I decide to quit smoking, I first build my faith that with God I can quit smoking. I add in my judgment on exactly when and how this is going to take place, and then I allow it to become me by loving the idea. I love the idea of days when I do not have a cigarette. I love the feeling of my body as my lungs regenerate. I become so in love with the idea that I become more in love with that idea than I love the cigarette in my mouth. With faith, judgment and love, I have real power.

Two other people appear–Moses and Elijah. Moses represents the law. Everything inside of you has to be based on law. What is the law? It is the teachings of the standards of the world; of living the Biblical teachings of Jesus Christ.

Elijah represents the utterances of the prophet. In other words, it’s not just getting our lives back to where they were, but going beyond with a new vision of what we can accomplish. Remember, if you team-up with God and make God your partner, you are no longer who you were. Do not limit yourself. But to go beyond, you must lose your former concept of yourself and say, “Here I am God. I am here to be transfigured. I believe that together, we can.”

Let me say this about the transfiguration: Transfiguration is always preceded by a change of mind. Our ideas must be lifted from the material, the physical, to the spiritual. But first we need to realize that it is possible for us to be transfigured as well as to understand the law by which transfiguration is brought about …

In our study and application of the Christian life we all have times when we are spiritually uplifted. Such a time is marked by a form of spiritual enthusiasm, which is brought about by statements of Truth; made by ourselves or others–prayers, words of praise, songs, meditations–any statement of Truth that exalts the spiritual realms of the mind.

Jesus was lifted up by Peter, James, and John (faith, judgment, and love). Whenever we dwell upon these virtues and try to live up to them, they are exalted in consciousness, and they go with us to the mount of Transfiguration. You may not always realize this. You may think that the uplifting was just a passing exaltation, but it stamps itself upon your soul and body and marks the planting of a new idea in the upward trend of the whole [human] …

Having once seen Truth, having once had the illumination, you find that the next step is to demonstrate it and not to be cast down or discouraged by the opposite. When the crucifixion comes and you are suffering the pangs of dying error, you may cry out “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” forgetting for the time the promises in the mount of Transfiguration. This is when you need to realize that you are passing through a transforming process that will be followed by a resurrection of all that is worth saving.

Molly WILL succeed in giving up the habit of smoking, and you WILL succeed in keeping the resolutions you made for 2001.

Let us pray:

I pray that this moment today is the beginning of a new fusion of Christ Mind with my human mind. I am ready to be transformed and renewed. I lift up my faculties–my Christ Mind powers of faith, judgment, and love–and I behold spiritual reality. I see my body as it is in Truth, my mind refined and revitalized in every cell, quickened and harmonized in every function, transformed into a new body of living luminous energy–beautiful, strong, whole, young, eternal, incorruptible.

Today, this moment, I become a true center of Divine energy. I thank You, dear God.
In Jesus Christ’s name … Amen.

PRAYER / MEDITATION__________________________________________________________

In this sweet time of prayer, I ask you to close your eyes and center on the power of God within you. Allow this meditation time to be a special time of power for you. Allow this meditation time to speak to your soul, to renew you, to cleanse you, and to cause a tremendous energy of God to be stirred within you.

As you rest and go within, you realize again that you are in the image and likeness of the perfect, eternal, whole God. Christ consciousness is filling you with unfailing faith. You abide in that faith. You are in the faith of the Almighty. God is quickened within you.

You have come here this morning, perhaps from a short way or a very long way away, in distance or in faith. You have come here to do worship, yes, but most of all you have come here to be renewed. You have come here to experience worth-ship. May that happen now in this moment.

God is within you; God surrounds you. Everywhere you are, God is. You live and move and have your being in God. Your mind is surrounded and infilled with Divine wisdom. Divine wisdom is awake in you, and you are expressing it.

There is, inside of you, a clarity of thought. Divine ideas flow through your human mind, and your whole body responds. And others are responding to you after your time in this deep awareness of who you are and what God is. Others respond to you in a different way because there is a Divine love flowing automatically from you.

God has not given anyone the spirit of fear, but a spirit of power, love, and a sound mind. I decree in Jesus Christ’s name that all power is given unto you in mind and body. Through the spirit of Truth within you, you know, you see, you hear, and you speak only God-Truth.

God’s love includes every living creature. God blesses you with wholeness and freedom. Peace fills your mind and heart. You know that God is present, and you trust God to establish in your mind, body, and world all that is right, good, and orderly. Your life is a living expression of the love of God within you.

In this prayer time, dear God, we are calm and poised in Your love. We pray that Your good and Your love is magnified and multiplied in our lives–not later today or tomorrow, but now.

We decree that the living Christ quickens our minds and hearts. We know that Divine love radiates through you and attracts only good into our lives.

Dear God, may my soul magnify the Lord, and my spirit rejoice in the power of the inner Christ to make all things right. We decree that all things are working together for our good. We are working with them in wisdom and in the power of Spirit.

Rest for a moment in the silence of prayer and accept this Truth as true for you now …

I have God within me as my partner to speak to the challenges and problems in my life. We say: “We now release you and bless you.” Divine love is adjusting my life. I abide in the peace of God.

God is in charge and all is well. Christ within me keeps me steadfast, positive, and secure. There is only God, and God is only good.

Christ in me frees me from all limitation. I am free now from all limitation that I hold in mind about myself. I free others from all limitation that I hold in mind about them. I free all situations and places from my opinions and concepts of limitation about them.

We are part of the resurrection of God this morning. We are being resurrected in thought and in life. We give thanks to God.

Dear God, I pray a personal prayer that there is a new vision created in each one of us that is so high that we have a transfiguration. I pray our very countenance is changed because of the thoughts we hold in mind. I pray that we are no longer in a mode of recovery, but that we are in a mode of discovery of our good, better, and best.

We give thanks to You, God, for new vision. God blesses everything turned over to God in thought in this sweet silence …

The Lord of my being is my life source. I am strong. I am vital. I am whole. I live in close communion with God, and my world (inside of my mind and body, and outside my mind and body) is blessed.

I decree these things are happening now. I am ready for the change, and I welcome it. In Jesus Christ’s name we pray … Amen.

_______________________________

Since 1999 – The worldwide PRAYER PLACE inside the Internet, serving well over 2 million every day. Welcoming all faiths, excluding no one. Reaching the ends of the earth with the positive message of God. Not connected to any church, Positive Christianity is a Prayer Ministry without walls, physical or denominational, that the world can instantly access and use without cost.

ARCHIVES of recent Positive Daily Inspiration is available on our homepage; use anything you wish.

FREE Encyclopedia of Prayers: http://www.positivechristianity.org/prayersearch.php

NEED PRAYER? Click here – if you have a prayer need, Positive Christianity will start praying with you, daily, for an entire month. There Is Never a Charge for Prayer.

DONATIONS Thank You for helping us with this great free work for ministers of every faith:
Instant online donation:
https://positivechristianity.net/donation-tithe/
By mail: Positive Christianity Box 7993 Woodlands, TX 77387

God bless you! Have a great week filled with God’s goodness.

Reverend Christopher Ian Chenoweth, Founder