POSITIVE WRITTEN SERMON – Asking For and Using God’s Help

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“Do not worry about anything, but in everything, by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be known to God.” Philippians 4:6

Is Life Overwhelming? I have heard some people say in the past, they do not want to bother God unless it is a crisis emergency situation. Some have said that God’s help is not to be used for small things.

Sometimes, life can become overwhelming. No matter how much we plan, or how much we prepare for it, sometimes things happen, and we feel out of control. We feel as if we do not have the power that we had before. Something has happened, but we don’t know exactly what.

Do you remember the story of the giant in “Gulliver’s Travels?” Here was a person, like us, who was all-powerful. Here was a person who could walk above problems. Here was a person who could seem undefeatable but the giant’s thoughts were working against him.

The giant in “Gulliver’s Travels” falls asleep on the beach. While he is sleeping, all these tiny, little people come, put strings over him, and then stake down the strings.

A few strings would be no problem at all. He could easily pull those up, sit up, and go about his way. But these little people worked all night long. Each tiny, little person came up to the giant and placed strings across him.

The giant wakes up and finds that he cannot move his arms or legs, and he cannot sit up, no matter how hard he tries because he is all tied down.

You and I have been the same experience, haven’t we of being all tied up in the thoughts and worries about momentary circumstances of our lives.

These little people are those little worries, those human thoughts, those little things that scramble around inside of your mind and that seem so uncontrollable. Every time they move across, they take a string with them. Soon you are tied down. Soon you are weak in thought and you don’t feel like you can get up again. Soon you think the weight of life is pulling you down.

You might say, “God, can I ever stand again? Can I walk tall and free? Can I ever be all I once was?”

You can! You can! With God’s help you can.

Sometimes, the things that happen to us can seem so overwhelming. But whatever they are, you can! You have the power – because God has the power and the know-how.

We have the ability to have a transfusion of thought where we totally change our mind; where we have a fusion (if you will) with a Mind that is greater than our mind, God’s Mind that knows how to lift us up and out of our problems. When we are free from selfishness, limitation, greed, fear, anxiety, hatred, and inferior feelings we can stand up to anything.

Revelation 21:4-5: “The former things are passed away … Behold, I make all things new. “

Who is “I?” The “I” is God. Imagine if God came up to you, tapped you on the shoulder, stood right by your side, looked into your eyes, smiled at you and said, “Don’t let the past burden you. Don’t let it tie you down on the beach of life anymore. Don’t worry about those waves. The past is no more. It has passed away and you have a brand-new life in Me.”

To truly follow Jesus Christ, we have to do this in our prayers, inside our own thinking.

There are four biblical keys to Jesus unfoldment, and four biblical keys to our own unfoldment.

Let me go through the biblical keys. In many original texts of the Bible Jesus is referred to four different ways. These four ways have real keys of mystery.

The first degree of unfoldment: Jesus.
The second degree of unfoldment: Jesus Christ.
The third degree of unfoldment: Christ Jesus.
The fourth degree of unfoldment: Christ.

I’m going to relate this to you because everyone goes through the same experiences as those people in our beloved Bible. In our own spiritual growth, if we are following Jesus, we must go through the same experiences Jesus did.

“Most assuredly, I say to you, he who believes in Me, the works that I do he will do also; and greater works than these he will do, because I go to My Father.” John 14:12

The first degree is Human/Jesus. This is the outward-directed human with aspirations of more spiritual consciousness. The outer child, in spirituality, that questions his powers and abilities. This is when you are totally outward directed. You wake up in the morning, you wonder, “What kind of day am I going to have?” You turn on the television and listen to the weatherman to help you determine what kind of day you are going to have. You go to work and see how others treat you. That determines what kind of day you’re going to have.

Outer events totally determine how you feel inside of yourself.

You are outward directed, but somewhere inside of you, you know that there is more. The thoughts you have that are not outward-directed are just “toy” thoughts.

Let me explain what I mean by “toy” thoughts.

Toy thoughts are the young person playing with dreams of the future or the old person playing with memories of the past.

Let’s suppose one day you get fed up with being tied on the beach and you say to yourself: “Isn’t this interesting? I’m tied down. I can’t move my arms or legs. I can’t go where I want to go or do what I want to do.”

Perhaps you feel tied down in your career. You know in that moment that there is more. You say: “Wait a minute! I can have more. With God’s help, I CAN be a success. I can do what I dream of doing. I don’t just have to play with these thoughts anymore. I CAN do it!”

There was a point sometime in the past, in your life, when you were seemingly tied down. Sometime, somewhere, when you dreamed about it, but you went BEYOND the dream.

You have to go through this again, and again, and again, to get beyond where you are, to go beyond the imagined potential.

If Jesus would have just imagined and daydreamed, He would not have lived up to his potential and His mission.

The second degree is Jesus Christ. This is the human consciousness merging with Christ consciousness. This is when you are merging your mind with God’s Mind, but you are still putting worldly things first. That is when you are still putting the weight of the world first, but you have a strong anchor of God consciousness somewhere inside of you. The Jesus Christ consciousness is growing, evolving, and becoming more in you.

The third degree is Christ Jesus. This is when the spiritual now comes first in your life. You have a Divine indifference to outside appearances.

That is like when you go into the doctor’s office and the doctor says, “I have a dying-nosis for you, it doesn’t look good.”

You say: “Wait a minute.” That’s not true, and through prayer you give yourself a living-nosis. It is a spiritual knowing about the healing power of God with you. You are more than you see within the image of the mirror.

Or it is like when someone says to you, “You really think you can build this business?”

There are always people in your life to give you a negative message. They do not know any better. They are looking just to outer appearances, not knowing about the spiritual help that is available behind the appearances. God is the great untier of your life, God is the great unbinder of all that has held you down.

You will have a Divine indifference to a negative message. You know you can do more because you are not alone. You know you can go beyond – be more, do more – because you have a knowledge of God who is bigger than any appearance that you, and others may see with their human eyes.

The fourth degree on our quest is the Christ. This is when we are in the world but not of it. This is when we no longer MAKE TIME for our faith, we now place God first; our faith comes first, and we have to make time for all other things. This is a HUGE difference.

Previously, we might have said: “Oh, God, I don’t have time to pray today because I’m so busy. I’d feel better if I had time to meditate, but you don’t know the pressure and deadlines I’m under.” How much better it is to allow faith to come first, to pray, and to meditate.

When you do this, you are recharging; you are getting ready; you are going apart for a while like Jesus did, and then you are coming back into the world fully powered, super-charged, ready to perform miracles. Nothing can stand in the way of the Divine power coming in and through you. You are then FULLY working with God. You are so much of God in action and God’s love in demonstration that people cease sensing you and they sense God. That is the Christ.

We have seen, or sensed those in life that manifest this degree. Mother Teresa is an example that comes to mind.

Is this a one-time experience? It’s not even a one-time daily experience. It is something we have to constantly decide upon, choose, and do. When we do, we truly follow Jesus, we live up to our potential of all we can do and be.

Jesus told us: “Leave your nets.” These are nets of personal involvement. What do your nets pick up? If you are putting down your nets in your human mind and catching things, your nets are picking up thoughts of people who are telling you that you can’t build your future, you can’t prosper, or the dying-nosis that says you can’t rebuild the cells in your body with God’s help to produce new wholeness and life.

Jesus said, “Leave your nets – and follow me.” What does that mean?

It does not mean to follow Him with just your feet. It means to follow Him with your head and heart.

There are a million miles between the two. We can run to every church and religious service and still never “get it.”

But we can close our eyes wherever we are in prayer and “get it” right where we are – in an instant. You have it within you to rely upon.

It is discipleship.

Discipleship means to perfect who I am, and to fully expect to perfect myself. Now, this is quite a difference. I can stand here and talk about perfecting, but I am not talking theory. This is practical, useful, life-changing practice.

We are taking it from theory, putting it inside of ourselves, and agreeing right now, in this time: “I will walk the talk. I will act in this way.”

When everyone around you is being unloving, you stand up and say: “This is it! Right now, if I really believe, if I am really going to follow Jesus Christ, I’m going to be loving RIGHT NOW.” Whatever it takes, make the spiritual decision, and live by it. No longer live in the means and ways of small mind.

Walt Whitman said, “I am not contained between my hat and my shoes, and neither are you.” You are much more.

Any time you think you are contained, you are like that giant tied down.

Any time you sit in a chair and think this is all there is to your life, you are like that giant tied down.

If something is going wrong and you’re depressed and you think this is all there is, you are like that giant tied down.

You need to go to a higher Mind than the mind that caused your problems, in order to heal your problems.

When you do, the strings just melt away. The burdens are no longer burdens because you have 1000 times the power. You follow Christ to your potential.

Christ IN YOU – the hope of glory!

We are not just to stand at the foot of the Cross and look up. We are to take Jesus down and follow Him by becoming what He said to become; by becoming an active student on the quest; by becoming that inside of ourselves, which will cause people outside of us to say, “Now there is an example – a sample of the great example – of Jesus.” We are active examples of our faith, OR not.

There is a story of a man watching a woman yelling at someone. He sees her open her car door which has bumper stickers of the church she attends on it. The man decides never to attend that church because obviously it’s not working.

Following Jesus, we become living examples of our faith. We sense it working in us, and so does everybody else.

We realize that Jesus did not have a sick, unhappy, vengeful, or judgmental God. We realize that He did not have a poor, limited God. We realize that my God is big enough to be your God, and bigger than any problem we both may EVER face.

We are not tied down to anything on earth, but instead tethered to heaven itself.

How do we do this?

There are three “D’s” to discipleship.

The first D – Discipline. This is renunciation and control over the little people who live inside of our minds, or those outside of us (the little people) who are shouting negativity that we have listened to for so long. Or maybe it is our own voice, which is saying: “I know how to get you. I know how to push your buttons. You have an inferior feeling right here, and this button is easy for me to push. This self-condemning voice can put you down for days.

Discipleship is standing up, inside of you, in the moment, becoming the giant you are, and not letting the little people tie you down any more. It is ending, once and for all, the tyranny of the unwanted in your life.

The second D – Dedication. It is a single-pointed focus. Matthew 6:22 Jesus states, “The light of the body is the eye: if therefore your eye be single, your whole body shall be full of light.”

In John 18:37 Jesus says, “For this I was born, and for this I have come into the world, to bear witness to the truth.” [RSV]

How would you bear witness to the truth if you decided to witness? IS IT to go to someone else to convince him or her to think the way we do? No. It is to live it. It’s to be a sample of the great example.

The only way you can ever really change a person is by him or her seeing something exhibited by you that he or she wants to become. This person will want it so badly that he will go after it himself, which means he will have to go in the same direction you did and in the same direction Jesus did.

The third D – Devotion. “Draw near to God and God will draw near to you.” [James 4:8]

This is an all-embracing attitude of devotion.

We have to change our self-image. One reason we often block off our good is we do not have an adequate self-image. We live in human mind and human body only, and we realize we are frail. We realize we can’t do all the things we want to do. We’ve hit our walls of life and it has hurt. We’ve learned our lessons well, and we won’t do it again.

When we are tied down and locked into that pattern of thinking, we have an inadequate self-image. We need to change our self-image, realizing that we are a partner with the larger spiritual Self.

We do not think of ourselves in wrong terms. In truth we are children of God. In truth, we are native citizens of the kingdom of God. And the kingdom of God is your house. God’s house is a mansion of love, joy, happiness, and a thousand other individual gifts awaiting your spiritual discovery.

The little thought people with the strings are always trying to tie us down.

Whenever anything in life gets you down, God can get you out of it. God can cut the rope that is tying you down. Nothing has to be an overpowering weighty experience.

You have a transcendent Christ who lifts you above everything you are facing in life. You have to change, in your mind, some of the things that human mind has locked you into. We have to change the human mind thought of criticism to the Christ Mind thought of praise and gratitude. We have to change the human mind thought of condemnation into Christ recognition. We have to change false belief into the truth of Christ. We have to change human mind sickness into the Christ Mind truth of wholeness.

We have to turn weakness into strength, limitation into fulfillment, fear into an all-knowing faith, hate into love, and prejudice into open-mindedness, compromise into integrity, falsity into honesty, ugliness into beauty.

I believe that with God as the center of your universe you can accomplish anything, and be happy doing it.

As we look at these words that are concepts of human mind and concepts of Christ Mind, we have to realize that, as native citizens of the kingdom of God, we have a free will choice – we can choose. I suppose that is the whole lesson and the destiny of each one of us. In this moment, tomorrow, and the next day we have the choice.

In the moment, do we follow the little people who are scurrying around on the beach trying to tie us down, or do we follow the Christ? If we follow the Christ, we have to get up.

At first, it may appear a struggle.

We may begin on our knees. We may have to struggle up the rest of the way until we stand.

BUT when we stand on the firm foundation of faith in God, we are the free soul.

We are flying high above our problems, looking down and saying: “My, don’t they look small and insignificant? I can’t believe that I allowed that to bother me so much.”

Let us pray.

Dear God, I know that I am more, I can do more, be more, and manifest more in my life. I agree to follow You, dear God in my spirituality. God, I totally consent to You NOW. Manifest Divine ideas through my human brain, words, through the words I speak, and the sounds I hear and perceive when I am hearing. Help me to keep my focus single, manifest through my eyes so that I am no longer blind – so I can see beauty everywhere in a new degree, higher, better and deeper than I ever have before. Manifest in my physical body temple so I can express radiant health. Manifest in my beingness so wherever I go I will radiate spiritual love to everyone without saying a word or making one action.

I give myself totally and completely today. I leave my nets, I follow, and I become.

In Jesus Christ’s name we so dedicate ourselves – each one of us – to this lasting truth of us.

Amen.

PRAYER / MEDITATION______________

I ask you now to relax and give up all the personal, heavy thoughts, and go within yourself, in prayer, on a quest to find God.

The same Christ spirit that was in Jesus is with you and within you. Jesus said that you are a child of God.

You find the Christ in your life and within yourself. And during this prayer time, perhaps in one of the periods of the silence, you realize that you are one with living presence of Jesus Christ.

In the silence of prayer …

Your soul now takes deep root in God. You are growing and unfolding, drawing upon the invisible and making God manifest in your life.

The power of the Divine presence of God is irresistible in you. Your part is to have faith in God, and to make God’s good things manifest in your life and affairs.

The Christ Spirit in you is a magnet to attract the Christ love. You are a true follower of Christ Jesus. You find that as you discipline yourself and your thinking to bring it in line with God’s Truth, your thoughts are formative. They are like seeds that produce after their kind.

In this prayer, you are cooperating with your Maker. You are training yourself to think life-giving, health-producing thoughts. You are in communion with God in prayer. You are praying for wisdom and guidance. You are open and receptive to the leading of Spirit, and it is revealed to you just what steps to take in order to do your part to establish Divine order.

Psalms 50:23 says, “To him that ordereth his conversation aright will I shew the salvation of God.”

In the silence of prayer …

There is no limit to spiritual unfoldment in you. The spirit of God’s Truth within your soul is giving you a right understanding of every experience that comes to you.

You are calling some of your inactive, unused soul powers into expression during this prayer. You are developing your soul. This is an important step. You are exercising your powers, and how much stronger they spiritually grow.

The assurance and satisfaction of knowing that your faith and all the rest of your spiritual faculties are being developed towards the Christ degree of unfoldment comforts you.

God has created your earth; God has created you. Instead of your own thoughts, you go to Christ Mind and you receive whatever you need; you heed the instruction.

In the silence of prayer …

Dear God, I thank You that the solution to every problem lays within us and within You, dear God, I find what I have been searching for my whole life long.

In Jesus Christ’s name, on our quest to that degree of unfoldment, we pray … Amen.

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