POSITIVE WRITTEN SERMON - God is Your Help in Every Need
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“Have faith in God,” Jesus answered. Therefore, I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you will receive it, and it will be yours.”
Mark 11:22, 24
There was an American who was visiting in England in a small British town. While there, he lost a valuable dog. He went to the local newspaper to put in an advertisement about the lost dog, and offered 100 pounds for its return. The newspaper came out that afternoon. Later in the afternoon, he went out to his mailbox to look for the paper, but it was not there. He went down to the corner to look for the newspaper, but he found, to his dismay, that there was no paper. He went to the newspaper office and he saw a small sign that read: There will be no afternoon edition today. We are all out looking for a lost dog.
We should grasp the opportunity when it comes and go for it. We should know that, as we go for the opportunity, we are not going alone; God is going with us.
Here is a story from a newspaper about God’s wonderworking power.
One day in the city of London in November 1971. A young man, a talented architect, became depressed and decided to take his own life.
He was going to jump in front of the next train that rolled into the station. In a few minutes, the young man heard the faint rumble of an approaching train. He inched up to the edge of the platform where he watched the subway headlights reflecting off the tracks. As it got closer, he took one last, deep breath to calm himself. As it rounded the curve, he jumped.
The engineer saw the young man jump, and he instinctively reached for the brake. Even as he did so, he knew it would be too late, for there was no way he could stop that train in time to save the young man. The front car had already begun to roll over the man lying there on the tracks. Just when it seemed as though they were going to crush him completely, the train screeched to a stop. The engineer stood there, amazed. He knew that his brake had not stopped that train. But what did? Firemen and ambulance attendants scrambled to the scene. They could not believe how close the man had come to getting killed. He was squeezed so tightly under the first car that they had to get special equipment to jack up the train and free him. But the man was alive, and he was unhurt.
In the meantime, subway officials had arrested a man who was on the same train. They charged him with pulling the emergency brake (which locks all the brakes on the train) for no reason. They had planned to take him to court, when they discovered that it was the emergency brake, and not the engineer’s brake, that had stopped the train and saved the young architect’s life. Once they heard this, they quickly dropped all the charges. Now, here is the strange thing about the incident. The man who pulled the emergency brake was much too far back in the train to see anyone jumping off the subway platform. Yet, he managed to pull the brake at just the right time. If he had waited a second or two longer, it would have been too late. If he could not see anyone, why did he pull the brake? When subway officials asked him, he couldn’t give them a satisfactory explanation. He said that all he knew was that he had an uncontrollable urge to get up, walk over to the side of the railway car, and pull the brake. He did not find out until months later that his uncontrollable urge had saved someone’s life.
God has great power. God has much more power than just working through your mind. God is working through everyone’s mind, even when we are not aware of it.
In New York, in the subway station, a young man had an epileptic seizure and fell onto the tracks of an approaching train. A man standing nearby witnessing what was happening jumped onto the tracks to pin the man down, between the two tracks, and protect him. This true hero did not have time to assess the situation, or even think about his own safety, he just followed his overwhelming urge to be of help to a fellow human. Both men miraculously were all right.
We need to realize that when we have the courage to stand up and take action and go the way we need to go, to follow that uncontrollable urge within us to do what we need to do to follow our dreams, that we’re not doing it alone. God IS with us!
There will be other people along the way to help us. There will be thoughts that come inside of us to help us. We need, from our adult minds, to find again that innocence of a child that knows we can accomplish what we wish to accomplish.
Recently the movie “Sister Act II” replayed on late-night TV.
This movie takes place in a school.
Teachers are some of the great unsung heroes in our society. The movie shows the power of one human and the effect they have on a group, who had forgotten their dreams and had given up at an early age.
Second, it shows kids they can dream and they can accomplish. This is what we do here in this ministry. We urge people–to follow their dreams.
We urge people not to listen to any of the negative talk outside of them (or inside of them), and to go for their dreams believing they can be accomplished with God’s help.
God inspired spiritual maturity is:
– The ability to stick with a dream until it’s finished.
– The ability to do a job without being supervised.
– The ability to carry money without spending it.
– The ability to bear an injustice without wanting to get even.
Spiritual people dare to dream for themselves and others. We do not have one dream in a lifetime – we have many. I was talking with a friend recently, and he was talking about his different dreams and the different opportunities and careers he had taken. This is what life is. When we live our dreams and manifest them in positive ways it influences many others to do the same.
Too many times in life we look only at the disappointments and failures when we need to focus on the success.
All of us have had disappointments. All of us have had closures. The whole point of the matter is to get up again and with God’s ever present help, go after another dream, knowing that when one door closes, God opens others. God has many open doors in our future for us to go through.
Say yes to life through courage and faith. There is a new opportunity of God’s good ahead of you. The past is the past; it is gone. Don’t sigh. Go forward and accept new, wonderful things.
Genesis 32:22. This is the story where Jacob wrestles with the angel.
The same night, he got up and took his two wives, his two maids, and his eleven children, and crossed the ford of the Jabbok. He took them and sent them across the stream, and likewise, everything that he had. Jacob was left alone; and a man wrestled with him until daybreak. When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he struck him on the hip socket; and Jacob’s hip was put out of joint as he wrestled with him.
Then he said, “Let me go, for the day is breaking.”
But Jacob said, “I will not let you go, unless you bless me.”
So he said to him, “What is your name?”
And he said, “Jacob.”
Then the man said, “You shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with humans, and have prevailed.”
Then Jacob asked him, “Please tell me your name.” But he said, “Why is it that you ask my name?” And there he blessed him. So, Jacob called the place Peniel, saying, “For I have seen God, face to face, and yet my life is preserved.”
Jacob was left alone. There are many times when feel we are left alone, even when we’re in a crowd. Whenever we are facing a crisis in our lives, whenever we stand before the door of opportunity that we’re about to go through, we feel alone because no one can walk through that door but us.
But Jacob had the right idea. Jacob would not let the fear be just a fear, or the past just be the past, or the limitations he had inside of his mind remain as limitations. He wrestled with it. He held on to it and said,
“Listen, I’m not going to let you go until you give me a blessing; until you allow me to understand through my human eyes and my human mind, the blessing this has brought in my life. Help me to see the good so I can go on from here.”
He kept asking the angel’s name, but the angel said, “Why is it that you ask my name?”
This means “Why are you asking my nature? What’s important is your nature.” He changed his name (or his nature) to Israel. At this point Jacob called the place “Peniel” which means “to turn toward God in recognition.” It’s one of the most important things we can do.
The novelist Paul Bourget has said, “One must live the way one thinks, or end up thinking the way one has lived.”
We cannot move ahead with great effectiveness, if we are locked into the past.
To truly believe in God, we have to realize that we are not locked to the limitations of yesterday. We have the ability and the power to go forward. For example, you will become greater than you are now, in a short time. It has nothing to do with your past. It has everything to do with your future and your commitment, right now in courage and faith. God created you with forward movement in Mind. There is a reason that we do not have a rearview mirror on our forehead.
God does not want you to be a puppet on a string. Spiritually you have the power of choice.
You have free will. In that free will there is a part that is pre-destined, and that is the will of God for you and your life – God’s will OF GOOD. If something bad happens to a family member, he or she might throw up his or her hands and say, “This is God’s will.” Here is a way to see if it’s God’s will. If it’s bad, it’s not God’s will.
If it’s wonderful, if it blesses you, if it excites you at the core of your being, if it brings love into your life, if it brings health, if the spiritual thoughts renew you and bring you peace of mind, if it brings your family together again, that is God’s will.
It is God’s will that we accept Divine help and goodness AND help each other on our path.
As spiritual people, eventually we will have an inner goal leading our own thoughts to the glory of God – to bring forth God’s perfect pattern. We will eventually reach this supreme goal. A human’s destiny is to go from God’s glory to glory.
As you reach the high spiritual heights, you will reach out to help others that are struggling. God is with you to help make it so.
One of the hardest things that can happen to a person is having to leave their job, for one reason, or another. Yet, we always see that if they hold on to the fact that there is another glory that’s coming, it works out for absolute good.
A famous museum in the Midwest city has an interesting exhibit. On one side of the exhibit, there is a rolling pin from the year 1850.
It looks like a rolling pin you would have in your kitchen. On the other side of the exhibit, there is a small piece of deformed wood. They say it is the same, exact rolling pin, but that one has been stored and unused, while the other remains in use and is well-preserved. The old saying is true, “use it or lose it.”
There’s an old story of a master who was a great star in the early 1800’s. When this man was on stage, they said there were really two stars on the stage – this great man, Pagannini, and his Stradivarius violin. When he played, it was so magnificent that everyone remembered it for the rest of their lives. When he died in 1840, he requested that his Stradivarius be put on display, never to be played by another human being. They did as he requested. It was put on display in its diamond-studded case, never to be touched by a human being. Today the same violin remains on display, except you can’t see the violin anymore. You see a diamond-studded case and a pile of dust in the middle of the case. Wood, even handled just briefly, will remain strong. But if it is allowed to just sit and not do what it was intended to do, it will go to dust. There are Stradivarius violins from 1810 and 1820 that can be played today and sound just as wonderful as they did when they were first made. Do you know why? They have been used as they were intended to be used.
We have to do the same. We have to use ourselves as we are intended to be spiritually used.
Sometimes the easy life that we all dream of could be the worst thing for the development of our soul. We must be active, otherwise we atrophy.
A frog in a well might have a wonderful life in the well, but he can’t even dream of the ocean which is so vast. A butterfly with all the joys of being in the summer, cannot even talk about the winter ice. They cannot because they have boundaries.
The frog would not last in the ocean and the butterfly would not last in the winter ice.
But WE HAVE NOT yet reached our spiritual boundaries.
We are meant, as human beings, to be used and reused, continually striving anew. We are always regenerated in our mind power, we believe in an ever-fresh God inside of us, giving us fresh motivation and power.
We are no longer the mask of who we think we have been, but we constantly go from glory to glory, teaming up in a partnership with God’s to make our world a better place.
Life is be stimulating with God’s companionship. The worst thing we can do as human beings is to live a mediocre existence accepting the fate of yesterday as the only promise of tomorrow.
In this new day, agree with me that you will do something with God’s help, you will dare to dream through courage and faith, and therefore, continually stretch your mind and your life to do something bigger. With God, you can do it.
May God bless you!
PRAYER / MEDITATION_____________________________
In this moment, we enter into a togetherness of prayer. There is a prayer awareness that can be physically and mentally felt. We pray that, during this prayer time, we feel this collective spiritual consciousness.
People, everywhere, are praying with us in this ministry. Together in prayer, we join together by knowing that God and we are one. We are one with God.
Rest in this knowledge in the silence of prayer …
This is a prayer time of grateful acceptance, and we give thanks for the glorious truth of God.
We are one with the love of God. In the quiet of this moment, we set aside our concerns. We open our minds and hearts to the pure love of God, out of which we are created and in which we live, eternally.
In God’s love, now, we begin to feel the peace of God settling upon us, and dwelling within us.
The love of God fills our hearts with peace, in the silence of prayer …
We are one with the light of God. The light of God shines brightly within us and floods our minds with Divine wisdom. We trust our inner knowing, guided by this inner spiritual light of God which makes our way clear and smooth.
In the light of God, we see new doors of opportunity and understanding opening before us. We release all sense of limitation and proceed through each new door with courage and conviction.
Immersed in the light of God we pray: The light of God directs me to new beginnings. I go forward with confidence.
Pray this, in the silence of prayer, now …
Accept this truth for you now:
You are one with the life of God. The life of God within you renews the spiritual connection, as it moves through every cell, organ, and system to bring you wholeness. In your heart, you envision everyone for whom you pray as strengthened and renewed both in mind and body. In the stillness of prayer, you see all physical and mental tension dissolve and the way to good health open before you.
You rejoice in the transforming energy of God, moving to bring forth strength of body and peace of mind. The life of God renews your mind and body. You are well: rest in the God-given courage and faith.
Rest in the silence of prayer …
You are one with the good of God. Affirming in prayer abundance in all things, you turn your thoughts now to God’s prosperity – to the one true source of your good – God. God has richly supplied all creation with bountiful good.
You know this in your heart. You see, in prayer, the opulence around you, and give thanks for the teeming abundance available to you, in this new time of God-given opportunity your life.
You open your mind to the wellspring of Divine ideas that flows from deep within, and receive them to use for the blessing of all. The Divine ideas of God reveal new avenues of good to you.
Rest in the silence of prayer …
Your every need is met in prayer. During this sweet time of prayer and reflection, we have fully felt our oneness with the light, life, love, and goodness of God. Filled with this sense of completeness, we go forth from this sacred moment together with a grateful heart. We are renewed and ready to live more fully in the awareness of our oneness with God.
I decree in this moment of your life, that the light of God surrounds you; the love of God enfolds you; the power of God protects you; the presence of God watches over you. Wherever you are, God is!
In Jesus Christ’s name … Amen.
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