Category : Positive Written Sermons

Positive Written Sermons is a FREE service of Positive Christianity to those ACTIVE IN CLERGY MINISTRY to ease your burdens in ministry.

08Aug

POSITIVE WRITTEN SERMON – Fully Living

POSITIVE WRITTEN SERMON - Fully Living

Time Sensitivity: none

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.

_____________________________________

Today I wish to give you some wisdom. These are the golden rules for living:

If you open it, close it.
If you turn it on, turn it off.
If you unlock it, lock it up.
If you break it, admit it.
If you can’t fix it, call in someone who can.
If you borrow it, return it.
If you value it, take care of it.
If you make a mess, clean it up.
If you move it, put it back.
If it belongs to someone else and you want to use it, get permission.
If you don’t know how to operate it, leave it alone.
It it’s none of your business, don’t ask questions
It isn’t broken, don’t fix it.
If it will brighten someone’s day, say it.
If it will tarnish someone’s reputation, keep it to yourself.
If it will tarnish someone’s reputation, keep it to yourself.

Those are simple rules.

Today I am going to talk about your life odyssey. I am going to talk about taking control of your life and living your life fully. Not just the overall picture of where you want to go, but day by day living your life and finding enjoyment in it; more than enjoyment, finding magic in your life in the moment.

This is what life is supposed to be.

John 14:6, “Jesus said to him, `I am the way, and the truth, and the life.’ … ” We have to follow on the Way.

We have to live in the Truth of God and be totally alive in the Life of God.

Henry Miller once said, “Every man has his own destiny; the only imperative is to follow it, to accept it, no matter where it leads him or her.”

In Proverbs 3:5-6, it talks about the lead we all should follow. “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not rely on your own insight. In all your ways acknowledge God, and God will make straight your paths.”

So many times, from human mind we have our own insight. We think we should go this way or that way. Yet if we go apart for a while in prayer to discover what God wants us to do with our life, we are going to find something very powerful – the correct path for us to be on. That path will guide us around the negative potholes of all kinds.

What you can do today as one person following the path of God is GREAT. It concerns me that so many are giving so much attention to the negative, There are millions of people right now with smiles on their face and doing the right thing, wanting to create a better world through positive focus. There will always be one person who can cause havoc and gains media attention. Over time we tend to give the squeaky wheel the grease.

There also can be one person who creates light. One person can make a huge difference in the world.

We have committed to the one-person way of God, to allow our own light to shine, to become all we can become in the world. We can never be pulled down by the little bit of negative because the good always overwhelms the negative. It does right now. Literally the good is millions to one.

I have a story to tell you of one person, an ordinary woman by the name of Florine Thornhill in Roanoke, VA.

She was 73 years of age when this story took place.

She walked to town with an extraordinary request of city hall. She wanted to borrow a lawn mower to make her part of the city better. For some time, she had passed an overgrown lot. One day she passed the lot and she noticed a woman was passed out in the high grass. She walked on. When she was having breakfast that morning, she said to herself, “Wait a minute, how could I walk on? There was a woman there who was unconscious in the high grass.

Have I become so accustomed to the blight of the neighborhood that doesn’t bother me anymore?”

She asked herself the question, “What would Jesus do in this instance?” She walked to city hall and asked a very suspicious clerk, “Could I borrow a lawnmower, so I can cut the grass?” She took the lawnmower back and with the help of her son she woke up this lady who was passed out and took her to the hospital.

Then she cut the grass on this one lot.

The neighbors started to watch what this 73-year-old woman was doing, and they started to wonder what this was about.

Then they told her, “You are just one person. You can’t make a difference. There are drug dealers on every corner of this neighborhood. It is going downhill and there is no way you as one person can fix this up.”

She went on and said, “Well, you can join me or not, but I am going to do what I can possibly do as one person.”

This 73-year-old lady had nine children, including one child with mental disabilities. She borrowed the mower and cleaned that one lot. By next week, 15 middle-aged and elderly residents were picking up trash and mowing vacant lots around the neighborhood. In city hall within weeks, the officials started to notice the once declining neighborhood had begun to shine. In 1980, Roanoke city officials asked Thornhill and her Gibner neighbors to join in a pilot project with three other city neighborhoods. It would allow them to set goals for their city, to show the officials how to turn their poor, urban areas around.

The experiment was successful, thanks to Thornhill and other ordinary people like her. Over 25 neighborhoods are working in the system to improve Roanoke. Other Virginia cities have followed Roanoke’s lead. The model is being studied across America, as government officials try to involve the people they serve. Thornhill and her group, the Northwest Neighborhood Environmental Organization, won the 1994 President’s Volunteer Action Award for volunteer efforts that changed a community. Thornhill said her real measure of success was not in the White House recognition. It is in the children playing at a fully equipped park that was once an open-air market for drug dealers. It is in the homes her group was able to buy and rebuild with housing grants they tracked down and won with the help of city officials. It is in the professionals they have been able to entice into helping.

Friends, the good overwhelms the bad. But in order for it to happen in this country, we have to be willing to be brave enough, to dare enough, to stand up and be willing to let our light shine.

When we do, things change.

When we do, we become leaders and people follow and they help.

People have an innate desire to do good. They are just waiting for someone to follow to do that good. People do not want to follow the bad. They want to make a difference in this world. Everyone in this room can make a difference in some way. Life is a real adventure and, today, live that adventure.

The best adventure in the world is called your life.

As a child, Mary Groda did not learn to read and write. Experts labeled her retarded. As an adolescent, she “earned” an additional label, “incorrigible” and was sentenced to two years in a reformatory.

It was here, ironically, in this closed-in place, that Mary – bending to the challenge to team – worked at her task for as long as 16 hours a day. Her hard work paid off. She was awarded her GED high school diploma.

But more misfortune was to visit Mary Groda. After leaving the reformatory, she became pregnant without benefit of marriage. Then, two years later a second pregnancy resulted in a stroke, erasing her hard-earned powers of reading and writing. With the help and support of her father, Mary battled back, regaining what she had lost.

In dire financial straits, Mary went on welfare. Finally, in order to make ends meet, she took in seven foster children. It was during this period she started to pray. She asked God, “I have tried to do this with my own mind, but I am asking now for your path and your direction for my life.” She received the idea to take classes at a local community college. On completion of her course work, she applied to and was accepted by the Albany Medical School to study medicine.

In the spring of 1984 in Oregon, Mary Groda Lewis – she’s married now – paraded in full academic-regalia across the graduation stage. No one can know what private thoughts went through Mary’s mind as she reached out to grasp this eloquent testimony to her self-belief and perseverance. Her diploma announced to all the world here stands on this small point of planet Earth a person who dared to dream the impossible dream, one person who confirms for all of us our human divineness. Here stands Mary Groda Lewis, M.D.

Life is an odyssey; it is extended, adventurous, and wandering.

Napoleon Hill once said, “Cherish your visions and your dreams, as they are the children of your soul; the blueprints of your ultimate achievements.”

Tucked away in our subconscious is an idyllic vision. We see ourselves on a long trip spanning the continent.

We are traveling by train. Out of the windows, we drink in the passing scene of cars on nearby highways, of children waving at a crossing, of cattle grazing on a distant hillside, of smoke pouring from a power plant, of row upon row of corn acid wheat, of flatlands and valleys, of mountains and rolling hillsides, of city skylines and villages.

But uppermost in our mind is the final destination. On a certain day at a certain hour, we will pull into the station. Bands will be playing and flags waving. Once we get there, so many wonderful dreams will come true, and the pieces of our lives will fit together like a completed jigsaw puzzle.

How restlessly we pace the aisles, waiting, waiting for the station!

When we reach the station, that will be it. When I’m 18, that will be it. When I buy a new Mercedes Benz, that will be it. When I put my last kid through college, that will be it. When I have paid off the mortgage, that will be it. When I get a promotion, when I reach the age of retirement, then I will live happily ever after.

Sooner or later, we must realize there is no station, no one place to arrive at once and for all.

The true joy of your life is in the trip. The station is only a dream. It constantly out-distances us.

Relish the moment is a good motto, especially when coupled with Psalms 118:24, “This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.”

It isn’t the burdens of today that drive humans mad. It is the regrets over yesterday and the fear of tomorrow. Regret and fear are twin thieves who rob us of today.

So, stop pacing the aisles and counting the miles. Instead, climb more mountains, eat more ice cream, go barefoot more often, swim more rivers, watch more sunsets, laugh more, cry less. Life must be lived as we go along. The station will come soon enough.

An effective way to make your life an adventure is to look at your experiences in terms of a book, a novel, or a story. You don’t necessarily have to write a book, but if you begin to view your days as if they were going into a book then every circumstance and every event takes on a brand-new dimension.

One day a South Dakota school teacher complained her job was getting her down. She had recently been caught in a blizzard in her isolated schoolhouse and was snowed in for seven days with thirteen pupils. I said to her, “What a story!”

She said, “What do you mean what a story? I almost went out of my mind.”

I said, “Think of the dramatic material – snowed in with thirteen pupils in a 12 by 20 room for a solid week.

Think of the people who would envy you for such an adventure. Think of the human interest, the things the kids did and said, the resourcefulness you had to demonstrate, the funny as well as the sad things that must have happened.”

“Well,” she confessed, “I wouldn’t give up the experience for anything, but I don’t want to go through it again.”

This is exactly the point. The highlights of life have a price tag. If they did not, we would soon forget them. We should look at the extraordinary situations in our life as a writer looks at her life or his life, then the events take on a brand-new meaning.

There was a coal turner from Harlan, Kentucky who said he just hated his work. He was given this idea, to go in as if he were a writer. Over the next six months, his life totally turned around.

As a matter of fact, it so turned around he was having a spiritual experience every time he went into the mine at night.

He was saying, “Even though it is dark down there, the night is different. It is as if the Earth stretches and groans. When the dust would fall around me it was like stars falling from the sky.”

He said that he would always go in and God became so real as he was writing the story of his life day-by-day. It was as if he could hear the voice of God. What happened? He became happy. His burdens were taken away.

When your burdens are taken away, it does not necessarily mean the load is lifted from your shoulder of what you do. Your attitude changes. Your whole outlook on life changes. You may do the exact thing you are doing now, but you are going to do it with a new mind and new eyes.

If we were to go right now to Yellowstone Park, we would see signs everywhere we went. The signs say, “Do not feed the bears.” You would think because these signs are all around it is because the bears are dangerous to the humans. Not so, months after we depart from Yellowstone Park, the bears so dependent on us for food die. They forget how to do it themselves.

We have to realize God gives us a great power to do what we are to do. It is up to us to enjoy

the moment in the doing. We can if we will but try.

Try

by Margaret Finefrock

What in the world would our life be like?
If no one ever tried?
What if Columbus let others convince him
He would fall off the other side.

Where would we be if the Wright Brothers
Decided man couldn’t fly?
Or if Thomas Edison just gave up
And thought his goals too high?

What kind of life if Martin Luther King
Had not kept on with courage?
What if Eleanor Roosevelt had quit?
The first time she became discouraged.
What kind of life can I create for myself?
If I never even, try?
Everything is possible if I know
My abundant Source of supply.
The strength to try is my very first step.
I know I can do and be
All things necessary for my highest good
Through the Presence of God in me.

I was in a plant nursery a while back buying some plants for my yard.

I saw a sign there I loved:
“The best time to plant a tree was 10 years ago. The next best time is today.” Ten years of constant devotion to spiritual disciplines would be ideal. If you haven’t done that over the past decade, then the next best ideal is a commitment this morning to begin. What a difference your journey will be over the next 10 years!

In the world of academics there is a specialty I used to specialize in. It is called “cramming.”

It is the practice of procrastinating on studies until the last possible moment. When the day of reckoning arrives, the coffee pot is stoked, and we duct tape ourselves to our desk for an all-night journey with our books.

Cramming is a phenomenon unknown in the agricultural world.

Farmers don’t cram. They can’t delay planting crops in the spring and then hit the ground really hard in the fall to do it all in one day. If a harvest is expected in the fall, planned and scheduled procedures must take place throughout the year. Maybe this is why Jesus used so many agricultural illustrations. Spiritual growth doesn’t come like grades that are salvaged by intense periods of last-minute cramming. Christlikeness comes from a lifetime spent seeking God in the moment, not just on Sunday morning and not just in a night of intensive cramming. God can, and God will come to you.

God will come as you.

Jesus has said, “You are the salt of the earth … ” (Mt. 5:13) There are 14,000 industrial uses for salt.

You might say, “Well, I’m doing this, but I am not really doing the Lord’s work.” Who says?

When God works through you, you are doing God’s work.

I remember in 1981, the whole country was saddened when President Reagan was shot. Thank God he was OK, when the President went through the attempted assassination, our government did not stop.

It continued on as if nothing happened.

However, the very same year, the garbage men of Philadelphia went on strike for three weeks and brought the city to its knees. Although most would say the Presidency is far more important than domestic sanitation, it was the trash men who proved to be indispensable. Likewise, right where you are no matter if you are the garbage man or the president of a major corporation – if you allow God to come through you, you are going to be a light to your world.

John Maxwell has said, “History’s greatest accomplishments have been made by people who excelled only slightly over the masses of others in their field.”

Perhaps you have an idea from the mind of God. It does not exactly fit what you are doing.

I am going to ask you today in your life odyssey to act on that idea. Some of the greatest inventions of all time have been made by people who prayed for an idea and then got an idea and acted on it.

There was a veterinarian who was caring for a horse someone had brought to him. He was really struggling and disliked his career path, but during the struggle he had an idea for a tubeless tire.

It was kind of out of his field. His name was John Dunlop.

A cork salesman named King Gillette had an idea for a safety razor.

There was a bookkeeper who was struggling and not doing well at all. He had already gone bankrupt once and he prayed for an idea to better his life. He was the founder of Kodak, George Eastman.

When we go to God, God comes through us every step of the way.

There is a legend told in every generation and every culture. It tells how the gods on Mount Olympus once met to determine where they should hide a human’s divinity.

“For,” said the gods, “a human’s greatest adventure will be the search and discovery of this elusive factor.” One god suggested that it be hidden in the sea, another in the clouds, and a third proposed that it be buried deep within the earth. It was then that the oldest and the wisest of the gods proclaimed, “Let us hide a human’s divinity in the heart of the human, herself or himself. For that is the last place they will ever look.”

Life is a matter of an approach, an attitude, a point of view. We are not to be controlled by circumstances. This mental attitude works, and it will bring about a direction in our fives, a channel of our highest good.

We can be “content” with our lot in life or we can rise above it. We can stay where we are, or we can go on to greater things. We can be mastered by situations, or we can master them.

The whole point of your life odyssey is to make it an adventure. You have been given one of the greatest gifts from God, a lifetime to live. This is the whole idea: coming to terms with yourself in your life. No one can do it for you. No one will take the incentive for you. No one will step forward and say, “I want to carry the load for you.”

Even the tantalizing words which are at the heart of the Christian Gospel, “Come unto me … “(Mt. 11:28 KJV) imply there is work to be done on our part.

Life continually evolves and gets better. It involves assignments and we should not ask to be spared from them if we would live fully and richly because we are all in a school and it is called life.

Look about you, see for yourself how the adventurous spirit changes people, how it spells the difference between a zest for life and a bored acceptance of life, how it spurs humans on to great achievements while others stand still, how it fills people out of the commonplace, makes every day a new beginning, transforms human’s jobs, gives them something to live for and makes the world a thrilling place to be.

Why are we here if not to make the most of our life, to some the hidden beauty? to explore the hidden depths, to unlock the hidden doors. Why are we here in a? universe still waiting to be discovered and an inner life still waiting to be known and secrets upon secrets still waiting to be solved, if not to be challenged by all of the potentials which are ours? How quickly the years pass and, with what remorse, we will look back upon our past if we don’t co-work with God? Co-working with God is the workable plan. Life changing ideas will come. It is apparent everywhere, in everything you do, in everything you say, you can find a partnership with God, a great directive for your life.

I want to close with this piece of poetry:

When God made the earth,
God could have finished, but God didn’t.
God left it as raw material to tantalize us,
To start us thinking and experimenting
And risking and adventuring,
And therein ties life’s greatest meaning.
God gave us an unfinished world
So that we might share with God
The joy and satisfaction of creation.

A partner with God in the joy and satisfaction of creation – It is a most wonderful approach to living an integrated life.

Let us pray.

This day I release the past and begin a new life in Christ. Christ is my strength and my power to overcome all adversity. Christ is my answer. Through the Christ spirit’s help, I am free to begin a new life and to realize that each moment is a stepping-stone to joy.

Dear God, build in me the understanding that I have a place and a purpose in Your universal plan. And You will work through me and make me shine right where I am planted. Dear Christ, bring me new life, new purpose, and meaning. I open my heart; I open my mind to Divine guidance. I know I am going to be directed on a right path. I decree in Jesus Christ’s name as you prepare to leave and go home that you are renewed and made whole through your awareness of God’s presence in your life.

In Jesus Christ’s name it is affirmed … Amen.

Prayer / Meditation_________________

In this prayer time, I ask you to join me in prayer.

Allow our minds to agree as I decree God’s Truth about you and about the success in your life. I decree that God’s law of success is the basic pattern of your being. Asleep or awake, God’s law of success is the rhythm and right action of the divine plan and purpose of your life.

I decree in Jesus Christ’s name that success precedes you. It is your essence and follows you everywhere you go. You are in God’s law of success in every detail of your life.

You love God. You love success. You think success. You practice and bring success into every department of your life. Through the power of God in prayer you claim your success and press your claim.

Rest in the silence of prayer …

Your success claims you. It is impossible for you to escape the success on every hand which your God has ordained for you. Success is the constant, continuous nature of your being and all being.

Knowing the power of success in you, you are always keen, poised, accurate, and alert.

There is a level-headedness, a common sense, a spiritual value in you which keeps you success oriented, safe oriented, secure oriented, and stable. God is your source. God is the substance and power of your success. You acknowledge God in all ways as the reason, cause, and effect of every bit of your success. In truth and love you are successful in everything you do.

You attract, radiate, and express success on every occasion. The sunshine, sparkle, and vitality of success flow through everything you think, do, and say. More and more successful God ideas come to you and arrange themselves in right application to pass on into successful right action.

Rest in the silence of prayer …

You expect the best, love the best, know the best, and give your best always. You are specific, definite, and positive about your success. You have an inner indestructible conviction in every atom and fiber of your being that God’s power of success is the absolute law of your being.

Business beliefs come, business beliefs go, but your success in God shall never pass away.

Rest in the silence of prayer and accept this God truth as the basic permanent pattern of your being …

In Jesus Christ’s name … Amen.

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Christopher Ian Chenoweth

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02Aug

POSITIVE WRITTEN SERMON – Wind at Your Back

POSITIVE WRITTEN SERMON - Wind at Your Back

Time Sensitivity: none

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.

_____________________________________

“Remember ye not the former things, neither consider the things of old. Behold, I will do a new thing; now it shall spring forth; shall ye not know it? I will even make a way in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert.” Isaiah 43:18-19

I want to share a story with you. It is a story from the Life and Leisure section of the Arizona Republic newspaper. It’s written by Alan Gathright. This is a story about a freedom rider. Here is what it says:

“For 74-year-old Melvin Manger, freedom is worth any risk. Paralyzed from the neck down since birth, he has spent more than half of his life shut in at home. Fourteen years before, he was liberated by a motorized wheelchair and reborn as Cactus Mel the legendary cactus peddler. A cross between the ancient mariner and the road warrior, Mel (as everyone calls him) is out rain or shine, seven days a week, guiding his wheelchair and the wagon he tows behind his wheelchair full of cactus for sale with a chin joystick.”

Let me explain what that [a chin joystick] is. The only place Mel can move is his head. His body is paralyzed from the neck down. So he has a joystick that is attached to his chain. A rod runs from his chain to the controls on the wheelchair.

“So far, Mel has survived four hit-and-run collisions. His body is banged and bruised, but Mel refuses to slow down. He embodies both human frailty and Herculean will. People tell of stopping to help Mel when his wheelchair breaks down, or someone can’t understand his slurred speech, only to have him teach them a lesson about courage and independence.

“He was born with cerebral palsy in 1917. Mel has been at home most of his life. He was kept home by his parents to shield him from the taunts of the outside world. After they died, he was sent to a San Jose nursing home. There, two cousins and a friend (Marta Hessman), urged him to seize his dream of independence. But how do you become independent if you’re paralyzed from the neck down?

“A social worker had told Hessman that Manger was a deaf-mute. But when she listened, she heard a man pouring out the frustration of being trapped in a crippled body. ‘He’s telling me all these things and I’m going to help him. There’s somebody real important inside of there.'” When Hessman suggested an electric wheelchair, the tears just flowed down Mel’s cheeks.

“It was like rebirth. Suddenly, at age 60, the man who had never ventured very far out of his own room, who had never taken a step toward the open road, was going like crazy. Mel said, ‘My heart was in my mouth. I was afraid to get off the sidewalk. But in about two or three months I sneaked off and went to my first movie all alone. Boy, were they mad at the nursing home. I just told them that I didn’t need that place.’

“Since then, failing health has not kept him off the streets. Neither has traffic. Once police had to pull him off the on ramp to Interstate 280. Mel is an incurable flirt and he relishes his ‘Hell on Wheels’ reputation.”

There’s a lot that can be learned from people like Mel. We may be handicapped in some way. There is a part of all of us that has stayed inside of a room and has not ventured out for most of our lifetime. We do not so much need the vehicle of an electric wheelchair. We need the vehicle of faith in God in that one particular area of our life.

We need to know that we can do what we’ve failed at in the past. We have to know again that we have the power to go where we want to go. And if we have that belief, (and I know that you have that belief in most of the areas of your life), in that one area of our life that is still a little weak, we can change our lives with God’s help.

There are so many ways that we limit ourselves.

GOD NEVER LIMITS YOU!

God never gives you a handicap that you cannot overcome. If there is any area in your life that is not up to God-perfection, God is also giving you the power and ideas to overcome once and forever that handicap that may have held you as a shut-in way too long.

Take a firm, positive stand in refusing to admit that there is lack of any kind in your life. When you look with your all-seeing, all-discerning eye of faith, you see God’s abundant help manifesting to meet every need of yours.

Affirm in prayer and realize that God’s wisdom and good judgment were implanted in you from the beginning. You are now making your way illumined and prosperous. You would not think of closing your eyes and walking around saying that you can’t see and don’t know where you’re going. So why close your eye to the waiting good of God by saying, “I don’t know what to do.” Repeatedly affirm that with God’s help, you do know what to do.

This is the way to make your God-wisdom work for you and guide you in paths of plenty.

The world needs you. You have God given talent and capability that you can use to the glory of God and the honor of humans will bring a rich reward. “You become what you believe.” Oprah Winfrey

There is something that you can do better than anyone else can do it. Through the loving, efficient service you can render, you will fulfill a need in the world.

As you discover and develop your inner resources and capabilities, the way will open for you to cash in on your talents. When the way seems dark, pray for spiritual illumination and guidance and bring all your thoughts into light. You will become a radiating center of light, joy, and optimism.

You will inspire success and others will have confidence in you. Through the understanding of spiritual laws, you have a potential gold mine to prospect inside of you. God helps those who put forth the effort to use their faculties and abilities righteously. We are God’s executives. God needs humans to use God’s good ideas and to make God’s good things manifest.

Each one of us is an avenue through which God works.

We are praying with you and for you. Great is thy faith. Be it done unto thee even as thou wilt.

“We have escaped like a bird out of the fowler’s snare; the snare has been broken, and we have escaped.” Psalm 124:7

You have a knowingness inside of you that is not of you. It is of God. God is not separate from you. God is not a million miles away. God is closer than breath inside of you, and God knows what to do.

GOD NEVER LIMITS YOU!

If you are shut-in in some area of your life, if you feel handicapped in some area, God knows what to do. God knows what to do to bring you back into health or prosperity.

We are made up of many “thought-people” inside of us. You are many different people and these thoughts are all speaking to you, (sometimes all at the same time). Some are jabbering away saying, “Joe, you’ve got what it takes. You can do this!” Others are saying, “Joe, why try? Give up. You’re wasting your time and efforts.” They are all inside of you. The funny thing is, they all have your voice. You need to learn to lead those thought-people to higher ground. Try to direct all these individual thoughts to think about God in total faith.

There is something inside of you, (a potential gold mine), to develop. Now, if we have a gold mine; we have to dig in the earth. Sometimes the digging is hard, granted. But we have to keep digging and we’ll find that core vein of gold running through.

If we dig deep inside of us and we find gold there, we find a vein. Then, with God’s help we refine it, until it is pure. You will find all you need for every day of your existence.

There are many aspects of you. Often the thoughts held in mind focus on aspects of us that are not working so well, instead of mining those aspects that could turn to gold.

The Bible often refers to humans as sleepers. A great deal of your life is spent sleeping. The Bible tells us to wake up to our possibilities. We are that, but we are more. We are also the active person, the playful person and the serious person.

You have the Mind of God that is constantly working through your mind. Not one of us ever needs to say, “Well, I’m a dummy. I just don’t know what to do. I feel so frustrated.” We may say that from our lower human self. We need to turn to the all-knowingness of God. God is accessible to work inside of us.

It is the gift of God to you. God brings out ideas for your personal life. They are custom tailored ideas that you can use. God does not just give you the idea and say, “Okay, you’ve got the idea. You’re on your own now.” No. God helps you to express that idea through you. That’s the way it will always be.

The power that comes to your life is not the result of luck.

There was a lady whose name I will call Maude. When I first met Maude she had a plastic replica of Jesus on the dashboard of her car. She had a rabbit’s foot on her key chain which she kept in her pocket at all times, and she had a 3-leaf clover in the plastic wallet of her purse. Those were her lucky charms. She would stroke the rabbit’s foot. She would look to the plastic Jesus. And every once in a while, if she really needed luck, she would touch the 3-leaf clover. She would hope and pray that God would look upon her with mercy because, as she said to me, “These things had power.”

One day she was on vacation with her son about 180 miles from where she lived. At one point she saw that the plastic replica of Jesus was not in the car, the rabbit’s foot was not in her pocket, and she had left the shamrock at home. She had a panic attack. She knew it was silly, and yet she couldn’t control herself.

Her son said, “Mom, what is wrong with you?” She started to gasp for air. Her son said, “Well, I’m going to turn around and take you home right now.”

She said, “No, no. I don’t want to ruin our vacation. Go ahead. I’ll get over this.” But it just kept coming. She broke out in a sweat. Then, all of sudden they passed a billboard on the highway that said, “GOD IS WITH YOU NOW!” At that moment she said, “Yeah.” She was still in a sweat and was nervous, but over a period of time, she started to think about God and how God works in our life. She realized that God was with her right now. She thought that if God was with her right now, what could go wrong in her life? Nothing could go wrong. It changed her life.

Montane said, “Man is certainly stark mad. He can’t make a worm, and yet he will make gods by the dozens.” What have we made gods of in our lives? Sometimes we make gods of even our limitations, the things that imprison us. We may think that it’s funny that we would make a god of our own prison cell, but we have. We do it every day.

We have gotten comfortable in that prison cell. We need to get out of it. We need to walk out.

The hardest point in Mel’s life was when he left the security and safety of that room that he had known all his life. When he first ventured out, it wasn’t very far. When he reached the sidewalk, he said his heart was in his throat. You can just imagine.

The hardest thing that you have to do will be to venture out in that area where you are unsure of yourself. But remember, God is with you now. Pretty soon you will be going further and further. We have evolved past the point where we need to depend on luck or charms. God has the power in our lives.

We need to know with certainty that God changes I can’t to I CAN inside of you. God is not I can’t. God is an I CAN God.

GOD NEVER LIMITS YOU!

God’s help is instant and automatic, the moment you ask for it. It keeps coming and coming and coming. You don’t have to depend on it. It is automatic. You just know that it is there. And in your knowing it continues to come through you.

There is no such thing as luck. Nothing comes by chance. All things happen as a result of faith or lack of faith.

My car has a six-speed transmission. The highest gear is sixth and it will get me up to highway speed. The highest gear inside of you is a gear of your mind that connects through prayer to knowingness. It is the highest gear of faith. It is the highest gear of belief. It is the knowing – with God I CAN. I know that God is with me now and I’m going to make it through.

Nothing can stand in your way because you are a child of God. Claim that right now, for yourself in faith.

I’m not talking about the kind of speed that will make you go faster in your outer life. Gandhi once said, “There is more to life than increasing its speed.” I’m talking about the stillness of prayer in which the quickening of freedom takes place. You’re in fourth dimension beyond the manifest world of the third dimension. You’re not so tense. You don’t have so much worry. You’re not spinning your wheels. Everything is working out okay. You’re consenting in that moment to God, and that becomes a powerful prayer.

Do you remember the story of Moses at the Red Sea? His people were behind him. What were they doing? WERE THEY shouting, “Go ahead Moses! We believe in you. We know you can make it. We are so grateful you brought us here?”

No! They were ready to throw in the towel. I want you to hear this story. But instead of thinking of the Israelites behind Moses, think you are Moses and ALL the other people are your thought people inside of you. You’re going to do something that you’ve wanted to do for a long time, but you have listened to the voices of the thought people instead of being a leader, instead of leading by God’s working through you.

And they said to Moses, “It is because there are no graves in Egypt that you have taken us to die in the wilderness. What have you done to us bringing us out of Egypt?”

Now, keep in mind that in Egypt the Israelites were slaves. They had the worst possible existence. Now they’re free. But like thought-people do in their new freedom, they complain.

“Is not this what we said to you in Egypt? Let us alone and let us serve the Egyptians. For it would have been much better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the wilderness.”

In other words, the thought-people will say inside of you, “Why are you bothering me? Why do you want me to go into this new freedom? I am happy here in the hell that I’m in. I don’t want to go and venture out into some new area. Please leave me alone.”

Moses said to the people, “Fear not. Stand firm and see the salvation of the Lord which will work for you today.”

Now, the salvation of the Lord is not a one time, one event thing that happens in your lifetime. It is a multi-event that happens every day, every moment of your existence. When you are in a problem state and you’re beginning to listen to your thought-people, stand firm and wait for the salvation of the Lord which will always bring good to you.

“For the Egyptians who you see today, you will never see again.” [He’s talking to the thought-people here.] “The Lord will fight for you. You have only to be still.” The Lord said to Moses, ‘Why do you cry to Me? Tell the people of Israel to go forward.'”

Here’s Moses with the water in front of him, and yet he is being told to go forward. This is a lesson that has been told over and over again. When you can’t see, the reason you can’t see is because your thought-people have blinded you to the good. There is going to be a firm foundation underneath your feet with your walk.

“Lift up your rod, stretch out your hand over the sea, and divide it that the people may go on dry land through the sea.”

You stretch out your hand and you say, “I believe in God.” You admit that you are frightened, (your thought-people are frightened), but you know that God is going to provide a way for you. Then, whatever that sea of adversity is in your life is going to part in front of you and you are going to walk through safely and on dry land. There is no way that you’re not going to succeed, because God inside of you is not a God of failure.

“For the Lord is the Spirit, and wherever the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.” 2 Corinthians 3:17

Put your knowingness into high gear. Today, give yourself the gift of knowing that you are connected with God. Give yourself the gift to become a leader of your thought-people. Give yourself the gift that you are going to unlock that prison door. You are going to rise above your handicaps. You are going to affirm in positive prayer what you want to happen in your life, even if outer appearances say the opposite. Then you are going to speak your affirmation and you are going to feel and believe it totally from the core of your being. You are going to expect your good to come through your God. Then you are going to walk forward, giving thanks because you’re walking on dry land with new found freedom over personal bondage.

Let us pray.

Dear God, I pray for the power of personal freedom.
I pray for the power to get up and go to new heights of awareness and living.
I pray for new blessings that I cannot see from this vantage point.
I pray You will be with me, empowering me, so that I may make a difference with my life.
I am ready to go beyond my fears, beyond what I can see with my eyes, into my good that You have already prepared for me.

In Jesus Christ’s name … Amen

God bless you!

PRAYER / MEDITATION_________________________

In John 8:32 it says, “You will know the Truth, and the Truth will make you free.”

This is the answer to the desire in your heart and soul for freedom.

No matter what you may feel yourself to be in bondage to, perfect freedom can be yours.

I pray that it happens during this prayer time. This freedom comes to you through your greater understanding of God’s Truth. God’s Freedom begins within you. It does so now.

Ask for God’s help to have freedom over personal bondage,

Rest in the silence of prayer …

If you feel bound, or have a sense of inferiority in some respect, begin right now, with the help of God to set yourself free by lifting up your thoughts about yourself. You can’t think about the God Truth about yourself and at the same time be fearful or unhappy. God’s Truth about you is that you are God’s beloved child. You are created in God’s image and likeness. In God you live and move and have your being.

Instead of being a frail, human creature living in an uncertain world, you are in reality a child of God, a spiritual being. You are living in a spiritual world. You are governed by spiritual ideas. There are no limitations on God and therefore there are not limitations on you. In your True Godlikeness you are free. You are glorious. You are inspired and inspiring.

Rest in the silence of prayer …

Prayer is the means that God has provided for you to use, to draw strength and power from the Divine. Through prayer, you will learn that you have undreamed of capabilities. You will learn how to develop them. You pray with faith, and then you act with confidence in the realization of your Godlikeness.

Now, I ask you to pray with faith, in the silence.

Rest in the silence of prayer …

You are filled with new confidence in God and in yourself. You are God’s beloved child. Any mistakes of yesterday are forgiven by God. They are forgotten.

Any fears or apprehensions about the future disappear. You are a new person. You are a confident person. You are a successful person with God’s help. Stronger in faith than ever before, you know that God is with you. You know that in God you live, and move, and have your being.

Where before you have doubted your ability, you now place your faith in God’s ability to do all things through you.

God cannot fail, so you cannot fail.

Today you face life fearlessly. You express a happy, confident spirit. You meet all persons in a spirit of love and understanding. You handle every challenge with wisdom and discernment. Those whom you contact are inspired through faith because they see in you the very Spirit of God in faith expression.

You are unbound. You are free. You are triumphant. You are glorious. You are splendid. You are free!

Rest in the silence of prayer …

Dear God, we ask for grace to bear the irritations of the day, the little unimportant things that try my patience.

Lord, I pray,

For poise and wisdom to discern the good each small test holds for me, to see each as a steppingstone to ultimate self-mastery.

I decree for you in total faith: YOU ARE CREATED IN THE IMAGE AND LIKENESS OF GOD. YOU CONFIDENTLY CLAIM FREEDOM AND SELF-MASTERY.

In Jesus Christ’s name … 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,
Christopher Ian Chenoweth

Read More
25Jul

POSITIVE WRITTEN SERMON – Speak of Talking

POSITIVE WRITTEN SERMON - Speak of Talking

Time Sensitivity: none

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.

_____________________________________

I begin by reading from Kahlil Gibran’s book The Prophet:

“And then a scholar said, Speak of Talking.

And he answered, saying:

You talk when you cease to be at peace with your thoughts.

And when you can no longer dwell in the solitude of your heart, you live in your lips, and sound is a diversion and a pastime.

And in much of your talking, thinking is half-murdered.

For thought is a bird of space, that in the cage of words may, indeed, unfold its wings but cannot fly.

There are those among you who seek the talkative through fear of being alone. The silence of aloneness reveals to their eyes their naked selves and they would escape.

And there are those who talk, and without knowledge or forethought, reveal a truth which they themselves do not understand.

And there are those who have the truth within them, but they tell it not in words. In the bosom of such as these, the Spirit dwells in rhythmic silence.

When you meet a friend on the roadside or in the marketplace, let the Spirit in you move your lips and direct your tongue.

Let the voice within your voice speak to the ear of his ear.

For his soul will keep the truth of your heart as the taste of the wine is remembered when the color is forgotten, and the vessel is no more.”
Kahlil Gibran

An old Chinese proverb says, “We have two ears and two eyes but one tongue in order that we may see and hear twice as much as we speak.”

Words are your most powerful agents of your mind. Words are the tools of the mind that create the conditions and experiences in your lives. You are always using the power of the spoken word, whether you are aware of it or not.

The big questions are this: What words are we speaking? And what conditions and experiences are we creating with our words?

Our lives are the results of the words that we speak.

Scripture says this: “By thy words, thou shalt be justified and by thy words thou shalt be condemned.”

Do we have a God condemning us?

No. We ourselves do the condemning and the judging constantly, every minute, by what we say and what we believe.

One man went to his Minister for help. He had many health problems. In a short while, it was quite evident to the Minister that this man was excessively negative. The Minister invited the man to affirm this next statement 20 times a day: EACH DAY I AM HEALTHIER AND HEALTHIER.

Well, the man returned in a week looking and feeling much worse.

His complaint this time was that he couldn’t use the affirmation very well because he kept losing count. The Minister said, “Well, take a string and tie 20 knots in that string.

Every time you say the statement, move your fingers down to another knot and you won’t have to count.

The man left pleased. When he came back the third time, he was looking worse than ever. “What are you doing?” asked the Minister. “Just what you told me,” said the man. “Twenty times a day I say, ‘Each Day I’m Getting Healthier and Healthier … knot.’

He was negating every positive statement that he made.

When you listen to yourself, I pray that you will hear wonderful things; not frightening things. The problem is, a lot of people say and believe very negative things about themselves.

They are their own worst enemy.

They are constantly talking themselves down. Then they come to a friend or a Minister for prayer and the Minister prays with them. But the Minister cannot change a whole lifetime of negative thought about themselves unless they want to change.

I’ll give you an example. Let’s say that every moment of the day, every day of the week, you talked and believed negative things about yourself. Then you came to me, and we prayed.

That is like if we had a huge tub of water here, the size of this lectern, and the water is at 70 degrees. Then, we pour in one glass of 90-degree water. It’s not going to change the temperature of the water that much.

Prayer changes you, not God. It aligns your awareness with God-thought. But, you have to go the extra mile and change all the other thoughts that are negating that prayer inside of you.

What are you saying to yourself? What are speaking aloud to others about yourself?

Now, let’s suppose that I have a tub of water at 70 degrees, and I pour in a lot of 90-degree water. Pretty soon, all the water is going to be 90 degrees. So, the spiritual temperature inside of you will raise towards God-consciousness as you begin, through the power – of your spoken word, (both audibly and silently), to raise your consciousness.

Changing consciousness through prayer involves all levels in your mind.

To be born again is an ongoing activity. It is talking about a rebirth of your spiritual thought structure inside of yourself; how you think and how you speak.

The conscious level of your mind is your field of awareness. You’re aware of many things, right now. As you’re sitting here listening to me, you’re also thinking about what is for lunch. And you’re thinking about many other things. This is your awareness, right now.

We all have multiple thoughts.

Then we have a sub-conscious level of our mind that is everything that is stored up from the past. It is our memory. Your conscious and your sub-conscious combine together to make your field of awareness in consciousness.

There’s another level of mind, too. That is your super-conscious level of mind.

This is that part in you where spiritual inspiration comes.

Let’s say you sit down to write a letter and you don’t know what to say to a friend. All of a sudden the words are coming, and you are writing that letter. You sit down and don’t know how to do something in a business venture. But as you get into it, the ideas are given to you. That’s God working in your life in a very practical way through your mind.

I’ll give you another practical example. I want you to imagine that the screen of your computer can be compared to your conscious level of mind. It allows you to display the data with which you presently work. This data is called up from the memory of the computer.

The memory is like the sub-conscious level of your mind.

And then, connected to your computer is a modem. That is the part of the computer that allows you to connect with any database anywhere in the world, via the Internet. This could be compared to the super-conscious level in your mind that allows you to tap into the all-knowing mind of God.

A minute ago, I gave an illustration that you are a three-fold being. You are Spirit. You are also soul. You are also body.

Your body is your soul expressing. The soul includes the conscious and sub-conscious minds.

Soul makes the body. The body is an outer clothing of the soul. Bodily health is in exact correspondence to the health of your soul.

Now, how do we raise the health of our soul? Well, we program our human computer differently. Through the power of the spoken word, we say yes and no to our thoughts. We say no to negative thinking. And we affirm inspirations saying YES that come from the super-conscious level. The result inside of you is an overall elevation of your entire awareness system.

Saying no – Jesus said, “Let all your words be yes, yes or no, no.” Why did He say that? Because He was talking about God-given power, inside of you, to take control of your own mind. Jesus was giving you the power that has been held secret for the ages.

He was saying, “You can say no to what you don’t want in your life, and it will get out. You will evict it from your mind. You have a God-given power to reject unwanted habits and addictions. And you will say yes to what you do want, and it will become part of your mind and life.”

When we speak, when we decree, we program our inner computer. Thoughts held in mind manifest after their kind in body and in our lives.

Let me make this practical. Here’s a true story. A man in New York always said, “I always miss cabs. The taxi invariably pulls away just as I arrive.” And, of course, he always misses taxis.

His daughter watched this all of her life. Now she says, “I ALWAYS catch taxis. The cab is sure to come just as I get there.” And, of course, she always catches taxis.

Well, are we praying to the “great taxi God?” No. We are becoming more aware. The man who misses taxis totally expects to miss taxis, so he does. He brings it to pass.

What, are you expecting to miss in your life?

Maybe it’s health in your physical body. Maybe your parents had illness and you expect to inherit it. Or maybe your parents were not the success that they always wanted to be, and therefore you believe that you can’t be a success.

How is your mind programmed?

Can you change it?

Yes! You can change it today. No matter what you were yesterday – this is a brand-new day and you make the conscious spiritual choice through the power of your spoken words to take positive action.

Every time you speak, you have a listening audience of a trillion cells in your body and mind.

Have you ever had an old-fashioned chat with a friend?

This “old-fashioned chat” means getting together with a friend and that “old-fashioned chat” would contain about 500-1,000 destructive words. The principle topic would be, “Poor Me” on the part of your friend: loss, lack, failure, and sickness.

Your reply should be, “No thank you. I’ve had enough old-fashioned chats in my life. And they’re too expensive. I would be glad to come over and have a new-fashioned chat with you and talk about what we want; not what we do not want.”

A person can only dare to use his or her words for three purposes: to bless, to heal and to prosper others AND ourselves.

We often leave out ourselves. We can see this for others, but we have to think about ourselves.

There’s an old farmer’s saying: “Curses, like chickens, come home to roost.”

Are you cursing yourself? If so, they’re going to come home. It’s going to be like the boomerang. It’s going to go out from you and it’s going to come back, hitting you.

In the Bible it says, “Thou shalt decree a thing and it shall be established unto thee.” It is the Truth about you, today. This works. And it works in the cathedral of your life, in the temple of your body.

There are invisible forces just on the other side of the veil; forces that we cannot see; forces that directly affect you. These forces are the forces of God the good. And they are just waiting for you to call forth those powers. They will not respond unless you call them forth. Make yourself a vessel of their creation.

I’d like to imagine that all your words came alive. Well, your words do come alive. Our words are King Kong and our body and mind like Fay Wray. The monsters that we are creating with our own words are real, and they only know how to attack us.

Let me close with this story. A man was driving in the country late at night when one of the tires on his car went flat. He had a spare tire, but he didn’t have a jack. It seemed that the only thing to do was to walk back to the nearest farmhouse and borrow a jack. So, he got out of his car and started to walk.

On the walk, he talked to himself. “It’s so late, they’ll all be asleep. They won’t

like a stranger who awakens them. Since they don’t know me, why would they trust me with their jack? Maybe they don’t even have one. Why, out of meanness they’ll probably refuse to let me have their jack.” He rang the doorbell. He had talked himself into such a state that when the door was answered, he shouted, “I don’t want your silly jack anyway!”

I invite you to give every sentence this test – Would a loving God speak this to me?

This week, I invite you to join me in forming a positive words club. I encourage everyone here to commit the only speaking positively to ourselves, to others, and with each other when you come together with friends and family.

A profound difference in the way you feel and the effect that you have on others will start taking place.

I close with Luke 21:15: “For I will give you a mouth and wisdom, which none of your adversities [that are inside of you] shall be able to withstand.”

God Bless You!

PRAYER / MEDITATION (place this AFTER lesson for today) __

I pray that you will pray and meditate on these words.

I will speak for you for success. My words become your words:

I now let go of worn-out conditions and worn-out things. God’s perfect Divine order is established in my mind, my body, and the situations of my life. Behold, God makes all things new. My seeming impossible good now comes to pass.

The unexpected good of God now happens. My tide of destiny has turned, and everything comes my way. The winds of success now blow to me and are my own. From North, South, East and West comes my endless good.

The Christ is now risen in my life. I follow God. I now fulfill my destiny. I am awake to my good, and I gather in the harvest of endless opportunities.

Rest in the silence of prayer and accept …

For prosperity.

I now draw from the abundance of the spheres my immediate and endless supply. All channels are free, and all doors are open in my life. My God is a God of plenty. And I now receive all that I desire or require and more. My ships come in over a calm sea, under grace in perfect ways.

I am fearless in letting money go out, knowing that God is my immediate and endless supply. Unexpected doors fly open. Unexpected channels are free. Endless avalanches of abundance are poured out upon me. Divine ideas are given to me in perfect ways.

Rest in the silence of prayer and accept …

For happiness.

I have a wonderful joy in a wonderful way. My wonderful joy has come here to stay.

Happy surprises come to me each day.

I look with wonder at that which is before me, and I give thanks for my permanent happiness, my permanent health, my permanent wealth, and my permanent love. I am harmonious, happy and divinely magnetic. I now draw to me my ships over a calm sea.

Rest in the silence of prayer and accept …

For love.

I love everyone, and everyone loves me. My apparent enemy becomes my friend right now, a golden link in the chain of my good. I am at peace with myself and the whole world. I love everyone, and everyone loves me.

Rest in the silence of prayer and accept …

For marriage.

I give thanks that the marriage made in heaven is now made manifest upon earth. “The twain shall be made one now and for all eternity.”

Rest in the silence of prayer and accept …

For health.

I deny fatigue for there is nothing to tire me. I am powered by the tireless God. I live in the kingdom of eternal joy and absorbing interests. My body is the body electric; timeless, tireless, breathless and filled with endless energy and vital wholeness.

I am a spiritual being, and my body is perfect; made in God’s likeness and image. The light of the Christ now streams through every cell. And I give thanks for my radiant health. I am undisturbed by appearances. I trust in God and God now brings to me the desires of my heart.

Rest in the silence of prayer and accept …

Nothing is too good to be true in my life because God is true. And God is with me. Nothing is too wonderful to happen in my life because nothing is too wonderful for God. I am not alone. God is with me. Nothing is too good to last in my life because God is eternal, and God is ever-expanding good in my life.

I wave these prayers over the situations of beliefs in my own mind. It is my magic wand.

Isaiah 55:11 states, “It shall not return unto me void, but shall accomplish that where unto it is sent.”

With the power of the belief in the spoken word, with the power in the belief of the teachings of Jesus Christ, the Truth of God surrounding me, and the Truth of God’s actions going through me, I give thanks. And I believe these statements of Truth about me in total faith, without doubt.

In Jesus Christ’s name … 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,
Christopher Ian Chenoweth

Read More
18Jul

POSITIVE WRITTEN SERMON – God Can Cleanse Hidden Thoughts

POSITIVE WRITTEN SERMON - God Can Cleanse Hidden Thoughts

Time Sensitivity: none

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.

_____________________________________

“Come to him, a living stone … chosen and precious in God’s sight.”
1 Peter 2:4

A long time ago in a kingdom far away, there lived a young prince who had just turned 21 years of age. His name was Prince Peter. He longed so for a bride. He asked his parents, “Is it time, right now, for me to get married?”

His mother, the Queen, who was a very kindly queen said, “Yes, I guess it is. But make sure that the girl you choose is a princess – a real princess.”

So, the search began. They began looking all over the kingdom for a real princess. Many young women came to the castle, but the Queen was not interested in them because not one could prove that she was a real princess.

One day there was quite a storm that came over the kingdom. It was the type of storm where the rain came down in buckets and the lightning flashed across the sky. Out of all this sound that was going on outside, there was a tapping at the castle door.

The King and Queen looked up and asked each other, “Did you hear anything?”

Prince Peter said, “I think that somebody is outside the door.”

They opened up the big door to the castle. Standing out there was a small, soaking wet young woman. She looked up and said, “Hello. I have come because I am a real princess.”

She didn’t look like a real princess. She was soaking wet. Her clothes were just hanging on her. Her soaking wet hair was hanging down in her face.

But the Queen said, “Come in, my dear. Tonight, we won’t worry about whether you’re a real princess or not. We’re going to get you dried off. After you’ve had a good night’s sleep, we’ll decide if you’re a real princess or not.”

Then, the Queen called over the head chambermaid and said, “Do exactly as I say. I want you to put a small, dried pea right in the middle of the bed. Then, on top of that small, dried pea, I want you to put 20 of our softest feather mattresses.”

The chambermaid did exactly as she said. When the young woman went into the room after her bath, she had to look up at the bed because all of these mattresses practically went to the ceiling. (She did not know about the small, dried pea underneath them all.) So, she climbed up a step ladder and got into the center of the bed.

While she was sleeping, all the servants were busy drying and ironing her clothes. The next morning when she got up and came down to breakfast, she looked more like a princess than anyone that they had seen. She was beautiful.

The Queen looked up and said, “My dear, how did you sleep?”

The young woman said, “Well, I do not mean to be impolite, but I didn’t sleep a wink. No matter which way I turned, I felt a lump in the middle of the bed. I tossed and turned all night long.”

The Queen looked at Prince Peter and Prince Peter looked at the Queen … but he was looking more at the young princess by now. Soon they were married, and they lived happily ever after.

You’ve read this story before about the small, dried up pea in the middle of the bed and the 20 feather mattresses on top of that pea, and how no one could feel a small, dried up pea.

This is not a story about a vegetable in the middle of a bed. This is a story about something that we “think” is hidden deep inside of us. The small, dried-up pea is really a small, dried-up thought, and the old anger, or an ancient resentment.

We have tried to cover-up that thought because it initially hurt us. So, we’ve pushed it down and covered it up with layers upon layers of years. But there are still times when you’re tossing and turning all night long and you can’t sleep and you don’t even know why, but, that small, dried-up pea sized thought is still inside of you.

It’s still there, and it’s still pushing out. It’s still affecting you. You don’t really even know what it is anymore because it is has been pushed so far down, for so long.

But what is pushed down, pushes up. It is like trying to hold the beach ball underneath the water the further you push it down, the harder it tries to pop back up.

You see, we are taught early to repress thoughts. We are taught in childhood that if it really hurts us, don’t face it now; just suppress it, push it down, and it will hurt less. That is error thinking. Actually that thing bubbles up all the time, pushes out all the time, and it hurts us constantly, probably affecting our health.

Well, the princess couldn’t rest. She felt discomfort. The princess was royalty.

That’s interesting because you, too, are royalty. You may not feel like royalty because you’ve had lots of small, dried-up pea error thoughts inside of you that tell you otherwise. But you are royalty.

On what authority do I say that? On the authority of the Jesus Christ teachings.

Jesus said, “You are a child of God.” You are a king. The only thing that keeps us from accepting that fully in our awareness – is our awareness – of the small, dried-up error thoughts that are inside of us. These small, outdated thoughts make us think that we are less than we are. They make us uncomfortable during the day, and often make us toss and turn at night.

The gift of God is rest; a mental cleansing that gives a good night’s sleep. The gift of God is a confidence from deep within to allow you to do things that you wouldn’t dream that you could do.

The gift of God is that extra foundation strength that is inside of you that is firm; that you know that you can stand on when you’re facing some adversity.

All life outside of you is an echo. Remember the images of the person standing on one mountain and shouting and then the echo would come back? Well, all life outside of you is an echo of everything that is inside of you in your awareness.

Even the small, dried-up thoughts, (the old, error thoughts that we should have cleansed out long ago), are STILL in there. They have a small voice, but it comes back many times magnified over. Every thought inside of our heads is like a seed. It can grow into something that is way, way out of proportion as the years go on if we give it the power.

There is a wonderful story that author Emmett Fox talks about a big old bear going into a campground. This big old bear is hungry. He sees a cast iron pot on the fire. The lid is just dancing because of all the heat. The bear licks his chops.

He comes into the campground and puts his arms around the kettle. And interesting thing happens next. That bear is scalded and burned so badly. The normal thing to do would be to scream and to drop the kettle. But a bear’s only defense is hugging. So, as the kettle begins to hurt the bear, he does the one thing that it can do … it hugs the kettle tighter, to the undoing of the bear.

But, you know, we do the same thing. When something hurts us, we push that back down fast so that it is not in our face. In doing that, it can live inside of us to come up another day.

You know, these thoughts are like the bubbles in Seven-Up. They continually bubble up. That is the grace of human consciousness. We have the chance to deal with those thoughts again to get them, before they get us.

These thoughts will continue to come up. And as they do, we have the opportunity to eliminate them.

Let’s look to what Jesus Christ says about the inside of you and what we should do with these small, dried-up thoughts.

In Matthew 23, [verses 25-26], Jesus Christ says, “Woe to you scribes and Pharisees for you cleanse the outside of the cup and the plate, but the inside is full of extortion and rapacity [covetous]. You blind Pharisee. First cleanse the inside of the cup and of the plate, that the outside also may be clean.”

What is He talking about here? Is He teaching humankind throughout all ages how to be clean? Is He teaching humankind throughout all ages how to do dishes? No. He’s talking about the human condition and He’s talking about your mind.

He’s talking about how we go through so much time putting on our suits and ties and combing our hair and doing everything we need to do to groom ourselves, but we forget about the cleansing of our human mind. It is too very important. Truthfully, it is more important than the exterior. The exterior will take care of itself once the inside is clean.

The second part of that teaching is talking about the exterior of all of your life. We spend so much time trying to clean that up. If we cleaned up the inside of us, the whole outside would be clean.

The Bible goes on. In verse 27 [of Matthew] Jesus says, “For you are like whitewashed tombs which outwardly appear beautiful, but within they are full of dead men’s bones and uncleanliness.” We have a lot of old, dead ideas inside of us. It’s time, once and for all, to cleanse those out of our consciousness.

I’m going to share with you the same teaching, but from a different Gospel. Jesus is told that he approached this from a slightly different way, clarifying the teaching even more. [Luke 11:39-40]. “And the Lord said to him, now you Pharisees, cleanse the outside of the cup and the dish, but inside you are full of extortion and wickedness. You fools. Did not he who made the outside make the inside also?”

Often we have a person ask, what is blocking me, what is wrong? Everything on the outside can look perfect but yet there is a deep dissatisfaction that is hidden.

God can heal our bodies. But God can also heal what is deep inside of you. Pray to God to completely wash the inside of your cup. Some pray for God to heal their depression, their emotional state. Some feel in the blues today because of old thoughts that are inside churning around, God made the inside of you also and God can heal that once and for all. It’s a HUGE thing to you, but nothing to God. Just ask for and accept an inside healing.

Jesus goes on and tells us how to do it. He said, “Give for alms those things which are within, and behold everything is clean for you.”

What does it mean to ‘give for alms?’ It means to give freely. When those old things come up, instead of pushing them down because they hurt us, give up freely and let those old thoughts be gone once and for all.

When they come up we have the opportunity to examine those thoughts. We have a choice. Our choice is cleansing or pushing down again and re-polluting.

Once upon a time there was a giant Maytag washing machine as big as this room. It cleaned clothes beautifully. But when it went into the spin cycle and started to drain out its water, it pumped it back into the machine the dirty water instead of draining it out, and dirtied the clothes again with the dirty water.

We do the same with soiled memories; we have an opportunity to eliminate these old thoughts when they come up.

Old anger thoughts often push up and out as illness in the body, sluggishness and fatigue.

Thoughts occupy space; you might not think that that tiny, dried-up old thought inside of you is going to come through all those layers of the years. But they do.

A man bought a brand-new trash can for his house. He always put the trash in bags and tied them tightly.

Yet, when he opened the lid, it would almost knock him over with the smell. He couldn’t understand why. Finally, he got brave enough to stick his head in that trash can and look around. He found a little piece of rotten banana peel about the size of a dime.

You might think, “Well, I have so many good thoughts inside of my mind. But occasionally one of those old thoughts creeps up. Surely, if I push that back down and don’t deal with it, it won’t hurt the rest of the thoughts because I’m getting more good thoughts all the time.”

One small thought inside can pollute you we must also do a mental housecleaning.

You have dominion! You have dominion over every thought inside of your head. It is not the other way around. You have dominion. Take the reins of those out-of-control thoughts. Every night before going to bed, deal with the thoughts that have not been up to the Christ standard about you that day. Simply say, “NO!”

I’m going to close today’s talk with these words from Romans 12:2:

Do not be conformed to this world BUT BE TRANSFORMED by the renewing of your mind. that you may prove what is good and acceptable and perfect of God.

There were lots of other princesses that slept on that bed. They probably didn’t have a good night’s sleep either. But they didn’t want to admit it. Therefore, they didn’t get to marry the prince. We are in this life to become better on the inside; it is our hidden curriculum, but it will also reflect for all to see.

It is time to stop tossing and turning. Start enjoying life. Life is a joy. Live each day that way.

Let us pray, right now, and begin the process.

In prayer, I talk to the deep areas inside of me, seeking a renewed life through a renewing of my mind. I speak directly to any lodged error thought. To that error in our thinking, I say “I call upon God’s help to evict you.

You are welcome no more. You can no longer hurt me.”

We have imprisoned thoughts that are thieves that rob us still. To those thoughts we say: I release and let them go. To those thoughts I decree that you have vanished into nothingness.

Dear God, I ask that old embedded thoughts will come up and out so that I have an opportunity to examine each. I am now empowered and strengthened by God during this process. Old thoughts, as they come up, are disarmed

and defenseless. They have no power to hurt us.

Old thoughts are subservient to our command. We are empowered by this process. We smile again in areas of our life where we have not smiled in ages.

The process begins now. We walk with God through the recesses of our mind.

The cleansing and renewal are at hand.

We say, Thank you, God!

In Jesus Christ’s name … Amen.

God Bless You!

PRAYER / MEDITATION_______________________

God is here. God is your help in every need.

Realize now, in prayer, that nothing is too small or too insignificant to merit God’s help. Most of us do not hesitate to seek God’s help in the big problems of our lives. But often we do not think about seeking God in the small and everyday occurrences.

We are here today to remember to put God first in our life. God is life, love, wisdom, intelligence, peace, order, substance and power within and around you. A problem, no matter how small or how large, is an area of life in which a greater expression of God is needed.

Rest in the presence of God in the silence of prayer …

God is the only true help and answer to our every need, no matter what it is, where it is, or when it occurs.

All of us have had days when we have felt that we got up on the wrong side of the bed. All of our activities have seemed to be out of rhythm. We have dropped things. We have rushed around accomplishing nothing.

We have blundered through these days saying, “It’s just one of those days.”

On such days, there is a need for order and harmony in our thinking, our feeling and in our acting. We need to stop, relax and turn our attention to God. We need to recognize that God is our help right now in this need, because God is perfect order.

Rest in the silence of prayer …

As we let Divine order fill our thinking, feeling and acting, our environment takes on a harmonious rhythm. By accepting God’s help in our seemingly small tasks, our day is transformed into an orderly, happy day.

Through the power of the spoken word, we decree: I AM ONE WITH GOD, AND WITH A DIVINE SENSE OF ORDER. I AM CALM AND POISED. GOD’S ORDER IS MANIFEST IN MY LIFE AND IN ALL THAT CONCERNS ME.

Accept this Truth about you now in the silence of prayer …

Proverbs 3:6 says, “In all your ways, acknowledge God and God will make straight your paths.”

No matter what need confronts you, recognize that it is a need for a greater expression of God. Then, accept. Accept God’s help that is already here.

As you accept God’s help in every aspect of your life, your life becomes orderly, joyous and productive.

Decree: I AM ONE GOD, AND WITH A DIVINE SENSE OF ORDER. I AM CALM AND POISED. GOD’S ORDER IS MANIFEST IN MY LIFE AND IN ALL THAT CONCERNS ME.

It is so. It is right. Rest in the silence of prayer …

Following Jesus Christ, we accept this as true for us right now, in our life, today.

Thank you, God … Amen.

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11Jul

POSITIVE WRITTEN SERMON – Building Faith

POSITIVE WRITTEN SERMON - Building Faith

Time Sensitivity: none

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.

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Matthew 20:16 “So the LAST shall be first, and the FIRST – last.”

What does that mean? Often when we first find spirituality, we’re very hungry for Truth, we study often, go to church for every service, and attend every class. We are on fire with enthusiasm. Later that may wane in some.

Some experience miracles and then begin to take it for granted. We must guard against lazy or asleep spirituality.

Have a “beginner’s mind.” That is the concept that everything is new. Every moment is new. Every day is a fresh start with no residual mistakes from yesterdays.

Matthew 18:3 says the same thing in a different way, “Truly I say to you, unless you are converted and become like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.”

You do not become children again, in small bodies. You become converted in attitude and see the wow and wonder in everyday life. You become LIKE children in your spirituality, and you enter a heaven state of consciousness.

You see, when you spend a lot of time in prayer and meditation, watching your breath or working with whatever focal point you are working on, the mind can sometimes say, “This is boring.”

So, we want to begin to focus on every moment as being rich with newness. What happens is we get information or spiritual truth on Sundays, and the mind says, “Oh, I’ve heard that before. Let’s find something else. What’s new? What’s bigger?

What’s brighter? Where’s the new information on this?”

Beginner’s mind tells us that every moment, every time you hear the same truth, it is new. That is the way it is – because we hear it at deeper and deeper levels.

The Bible says that you must be born again, that you must become like a little child. Another translation of this is that you must begin again that you must look at your spirituality with a childlike wow and wonder to discover the hidden truth.

So let us have beginner’s minds this morning. When we walk outside, let us notice the birds – as if for the first time. When we meet and greet our loving friends as if for the first time, what a gift that is.

We live in a very sped-up world right now, due to technology and all of the changes that are occurring. We are no longer separated by oceans. We are all part of a global community, because we can all communicate with each other so quickly. We care a lot more about what is happening on the other side of the world, because it is right in front of us on television.

There is a lot of energy with this. There is some chaos with it. There are all kinds of human interaction. It is very distracting.

How do we navigate through this? Some people are working out their career goals; some are raising little children, and some are just trying to make it through every day. The lives of people who are retired are just as busy, wild, full of distraction and energy, as they were when they were trying to move up that career ladder. It is a BUSY time.

Even commercials on television now changed their images everyone and 1/2 seconds to keep the attention of the preoccupied mind. We define success by how busy we are – how many projects we have going, how many clubs we belong to, how many things we are doing with our time.

It is an exciting, energetic culture, and it can be distracting. How do we maintain this connection to the Christ through all this distraction?

One way is to pray and meditate. It is the most powerful tool. But it is also counter to everything taught in society – for it encourages you to slow down and stop and notice what is important is it for the first time.

I know you have all heard this before and you are probably saying to yourself, “Yes, I should pray and meditate more, but I don’t have time. I am not really very good at meditating. Maybe there is something else I can do.” Or you may be saying, “I really want to pray and meditate, but the kitchen has to be cleaned first. Then I will get around to it.”

In the past, some schools of thought have given arbitrary amounts of time as to how long you should sit in the silence of prayer. “You should sit in the silence of prayer 20 minutes, twice a day,” or “You should sit in the silence of prayer right after you get up in the morning and right before you go to bed at night.”

We have gotten these kinds of feelings about how it is supposed to be, and that if we do not do it that way, then we are not doing it right. And if we do not do it right, we tend not to want to do it at all, so we do not meditate quite as much as we should. Then we come to church and hear about sitting in the silence of prayer, and we start to feel guilty. We think, “Maybe I should pray and meditate more.” Then, when we get off-center from some of the activity that is all around us–if we get nervous, have some sort of anxiety issue, or maybe a little stress comes up in our lives–we think, “Oh no, I haven’t been praying or meditating enough.” Then, we feel MORE guilt.

Do you know what human beings do when something is not working smoothly for them? They tend to avoid it more. They tend to put it on the back burner. They tend to fall asleep to it.

Yet, that quiet is the way we feel the Christ.

It helps us to be 1000 times more effective in our busy days.

There are MANY ways to pray and meditate. We do not have to just sit and try to be still when our bodies want to move. And we do not have to do it in full 20-minute blocks of time.

We have a belief in this culture that more is better. So, if I pray and meditate for 10 minutes, then I would be a better meditator if I did it for 20 minutes. But time is relative; it is a human concept more than a spiritual concept. The interesting thing about prayer work is that if I spend a moment saying, “God is with me RIGHT NOW, this moment,” that can as valuable as spending 20 minutes saying it. It depends on the depth that the spiritual seed is planted in our consciousness.

In God, there is no time or space; there is only Presence. So we meditate and pray for a moment, if that is ALL the time we have, or if that is all the focus time we have.

When we invoke the Presence of God, God is with us in our awareness, as we go about our daily living.

Sometimes we get a little off-center and it is difficult to remember that God’s help is at hand. We try, but we get distracted. Then we get down on ourselves for that feeling of separateness. We do not have to do that! Life is much more pleasant, and the world is much more loving than that.

If we feel far from God, we need to know that God did not move – we did. God is waiting, and the reconnection is so sweet – as if for the first time.

Do you have one minute to fix yourself?

Time is relative, so one minute of prayer and meditation can be as good as 20, especially if we do it twenty times during the day. Prayer and meditation is a skill. The more you do it, the more skillful you become at it. The more miracles you see in your life because of it, you will move its importance from the back burner to the forefront.

When we meditate, we are really observing the activity of God at work, in us and around us. The natural flow of our minds is constantly going. There are some belief systems that say that the goal of meditation is to stop the mind. If you think of a river flowing, and you try to stop the river by putting a big board in the middle of it, what is going to happen to the water? It is going to go up and over the board even faster and make a big splash. It will be really hard to hold it there. That is what happens if we try to stop our human minds.

Rather than trying to sit down and stop the mind, instead we might try a kind of prayer and meditation that helps us gain insight from God. This is done by observing the mind, by separating from it enough to observe it, so thoughts become like birds flying by. When you can observe your mind, you develop the ability to witness what is going on, and you realize you are so much more than your thoughts. You sense your connectedness to God.

There is also a recharging of your soul that occurs.

Thoughts are reactive. You hear an old song, and it brings back memories when you were in high school. Thoughts are all over the place. We can work with them, but the nature of the mind is just to have a bunch of thoughts going all the time. We like our dominant thoughts to be positive, uplifting, and conscious. But to stop the mind can be a challenge, especially at first. Over time, as the human mind gets used to this, it will literally sit back and relax, much as a person sun him or herself on vacation on a pristine beach.

The nice thing about observing the mind is that it then moves into a quietness, because we are not reacting to all the thoughts. We are saying, “There goes fear. There goes judgment. There goes emotion. There goes greed. There goes boredom.” We are not saying, “I am angry. I am enraged. I am greedy.” We are not taking those feelings in; we are just observing them like one would observe a movie.

We go on a one-minute vacation to the gap!

This is a wonderful tool, because it is the space between observation and thought that creativity and God’s guidance can be felt. It is where newness of life springs up. It is where new ideas come in, new ideas that have no limits or boundaries. That is the gap – through which God-given, creative energy flows. That is where solutions are, and it is also where peace is.

GAP – God-Awareness-Present!

If we can allow our human thoughts to be and not get upset about them beyond just saying, “Okay, there is that thought,” they continue on and leave. The nature of the mind is to move, so that thought just goes. If we look at that thought and say, “Oh no, that’s a horrible thought. This is terrible. I’m a horrible person because I’m thinking this thought,” the thought starts to get bigger and bigger, and we fuel it.

This strength that we learn, this ability to observe this mind flow, is such a gift. We can say, “Yes, there’s that old pattern … ” Don’t you have patterns that you see come back, again and again? It is a part of being a human being. We all have patterns of behavior, patterns of thinking, and patterns of reacting. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could look at these patterns and say, “Here is that old friend again,” instead of saying, “Oh no,” and cursing it? We do not have to feel it or give it that energy surge. Then it can just pass, because we learn how to not react to it. When we do not react, we do not have to give into it, and we develop strength over our mind. This all comes from simply sitting and observing our thoughts a minute at a time.

There is a story about a tortoise that got mugged by a snail. The tortoise went to the police and the policeman said, “What did the assailant look like?”

The tortoise said, “I don’t know … it happened so fast.” Time is relative.

We give ourselves a gift, a spiritual vacation, a moment of meditation and we make our day one minute at a time.

How would you walk across the entire United States? One step at a time. One small step added to another is accumulative.

A mother used to say that every time she would see someone whose mouth was curled down, it made her want to curl her mouth up in a smile. We use the times we might make mistakes as reminders to remember the truth of God, instead of getting down on ourselves. If we are in a human form, there are going to be a few mistakes made. We are doing the best we can. We are listening. We are trying. We care about what is going on.

You know that a minute smiling at another can change a life. Now know that a minute spent with God allowing God to smile at you can change your life.

Another way to fit prayer and meditation into your busy schedule or to try to raise your motivation to do it is to do it with a group of people. Didn’t it feel wonderful to sit in the silence of prayer here in this holy place, together? Meditation and prayer is not just an individual activity. It is a group activity. We cannot underestimate the value of support.

There is a story about a CEO and his wife driving into a gas station. The gas station attendant filled up the tank with gas, and they drove off. The CEO looked at his wife and said, “Aren’t you glad you married me? If you had married that guy, you’d be married to a gas station attendant.”

She said, “Oh no, honey. If I had married that guy, he would be the CEO and you’d be the gas station attendant.” You also cannot underestimate the value of support.

We need to reinforce prayer and meditation. This goes with other life-affirming practices, too.

We need to reinforce these things, so we are not thinking negatively about them, we are not making ourselves wrong for not doing them, but we are opening ourselves to them like excited beginners. It is easier to form positive habits when taken a little at a time until our consciousness gets used to it.

Here is one way to reinforce prayer and meditation. Start associating positive, feel-good reward with meditating.

One woman loves chocolates; she gives herself permission to have a chocolate after prayer. Chocolates are a wonderful way to reinforce prayer and meditation! You will not see that very often in a meditation book. Maybe for you it is carrot sticks; for this woman it worked with chocolate. Reinforcement is relative too. It is whatever excites you about it.

The main thing is we must give ourselves credit for doing whatever we do, whatever it is. We have to say, “Good job!” instead of saying, “It could have been better.”

That is where peace comes from. We realize that through this gap and through this awareness we are one with and empowered by the Christ; we are more than the old human thoughts. We are more than the sum of our thoughts. Our thoughts are just things of this brain.

Have a philosophy. Try to live your life in the GAP.

Try to be gracious and joyous about all things, without overreacting to one, or the other; a sort of keeping that sense of wonder about everything, evenly and joyously, a nice, even peaceful, joy that isn’t rocked by ups and down.

It is your life; you can form a new standard of what is holy in you. We must answer to our own Divine connection. When you have fifteen people coming over for dinner, and if you only have one minute to go to God, you spend that minute in the highest way possible, then it keeps working in you ALL evening.

Let’s try it right now for one minute …

Just take just a moment to close your eyes and take a moment in prayer and meditation. Breathe naturally with no force. This not anything we have to do; it is just being in the loving presence of God. Feel the thoughts of mind and set them aside. This is the moment to observe the in and out of the breath. That is all; just feel the Holy presence of God. If a thought comes you say, “Oh, there goes that thought,” and you go back to your prayer. It is so good. Just be. Thoughts come, and they go by like clouds, or schools of tiny fish. In this gap there is Christ. The Christ has no judgment, no bad. The Christ light is here in this moment.

Now, let’s open our eyes. Congratulations! You just did your minute of meditation and prayer.

Now, it is time for your Chocolate.

Have one Hershey Kiss for each congregant, you hand them the person as they leave.

Remember, meditation and prayer are your gift from God, and opening it is your gift to yourself.

You want to do it – whenever you can. It does not matter how long you do it, it matters how you do. What matters is you enter into each prayer with a beginner’s mind, receptive, ready to learn as a child, and expecting your blessing.

God Bless you!

PRAYER / MEDITATION________________________________________

Let’s expand our awareness into the light of God.

Being spiritually present, with loving beings of like faith, having made this decision to be present, to be with God in prayer.

If any thoughts come through, maybe thinking about the rest of the day or feelings in the body, we simply allow those thoughts and feelings to sit right next to us. We can think about them later – if we choose. Right now, in this Holy moment, we choose to feel the heart of the love of God.

We open ourselves consciously to a deeper connection with God.

Rest in the silence of God …

Your breathing is natural and easy. There is no force here. The door of your consciousness opens inward. We simply step back and allow it to open to God.

What a gift each moment is! What a gift this moment is, right now – this oneness we feel to God. There is no separation. Our bodies, hearts, and spirits are filled with the light of the Christ. It is warm, recharging, and refreshing.

Just being quiet, breathing, and having nothing to do is so wonderful.

Rest in silence of prayer …

We give thanks for this experience and for the pleasure of knowing the truth that we are one with God. That is being one with the greatest love there is. How refreshing! What a joy! What a gift this day is! We smile; it feels good.

Dear God, we pray that You will help us expand our awareness in our thinking and feeling. We pray that we are spiritually present in this moment of time, and we are ready and willing to have a full spiritual experience. We pray that every time we come in contact with You, we are aware of how holy and sweet that gift is. May we be fully aware of what is happening in us spiritually and how profoundly we are changing.

Rest in the silence of God …

We give thanks for this awareness and all good things to come.

Thank You, God

In Jesus Christ’s name … Amen

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.

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GOD BLESS YOU,
Christopher Ian Chenoweth

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11Jul

POSITIVE WRITTEN SERMON – Secret of Life-Long Financial Joy

POSITIVE WRITTEN SERMON - Secret of Life-Long Financial Joy

Time Sensitivity: none

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.

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“Such as I have – GIVE I THEE!”
Acts 3:6

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Jesus Christ said, “But they that sow seed on the good ground (a solid foundation to live life upon) are the people that hear the word and understand, who indeed bears fruit and produces: some hundredfold, some 60, some 30.”
Matthew 13:23

The 100-fold return is based on planting seeds in a solid expectation of the rich soil of faith.

July marks the midway point between the start of the year and New Year’s Eve.

We are more than halfway through 2022. Twice a year we ask you to consider making an offering to support our work, July, and end of each year. We are entirely supported by our readers.

Know that by the law of giving and receiving, you receive according to your measure of giving. When you give the best that is within you, you make yourself receptive and ready to have best that God has for you.

For EVERY PERSON that signs up for easy recurring monthly giving, I will automatically send an autographed copy of my book (Final Chance – only 139 copies left – we will not reorder) AND a copy of our famous Tear-off Daily Positive Inspiration Calendar BOTH sent as a gift – if you do this soon – supply is very limited. (Final Chance – only 43 calendars left – we will not reorder.)

The reason we are not reordering these popular items, with mailing costs, labor to mail, and product cost- the ministry loses a lot of money on each item. ALSO, we will not sell anything in the future, our ministry model will be to give EVERYTHING FOR FREE.

Easy reoccurring giving is available only through our safe, secure Clover donation portal – (PayPal is not going to be used in the future due to costs, and on-going problems). Please understand we can only ship gifts to the United States areas only.

Also, if you are giving now in a recurring way – we would like to send you one of these gifts, just reply to this email, requesting the same. Include your name and address.

I have been in active ministry for 40 years. One thing I know for certain you can’t out give God. People often ask what I credit my success to. I credit it all to God and to tithing to God. When I was poor, I didn’t think I had anything to give, and I hoarded. I didn’t begin to rise above my state in life until I made a commitment to tithe 10% of everything continuously. My life started to rise, and it never stopped rising. This is the secret of my success – all biblical based. God is real, and God has your back. But in your free-will, you MUST start the action.

An easy way to do this is reoccurring monthly giving. It is automatic, easy, and we won’t forget. When financial demands are harder, and we do not see in human mind how anything could work out – God always knows the way.

We have immediate plans to give back more to you. All of our seminars (that we used to sell) are now available FREE on our website, along with our FREE written prayer archives, and FREE extensive archives of every Positive Daily Inspiration, and thousands of FREE accessible videos.

Soon – we will have an archive of hundreds of sermons for ministers of all faiths, to access FREE of charge. Soon, we will offer EVERY audible one-hour specific intensive prayer (ALL that we used to sell) – FREE of any charge on www.PositiveChristianity.org.

Our quest is always – how can we serve you more. As I have said, our on-going ministry model is now to give everything for free.

Our biggest work is our FREE prayer service. We pray over every prayer request for two months, and our prayer team is comprised of people in almost every state, and many countries around the world. Connected instantly, electronically and caring about you, and those you love. One thing we do best is pray.

Mother Teresa said, “If you can’t feed 100 people, then just feed one.” It has been our goal from the beginning to spiritually feed one person at a time. It begins with one person, and then it builds one person at a time. One by one we commit to God.

We are each part of something bigger than ourselves.

I pray that you have a spiritual glimpse of your worth to God, and the true worth of your gifts through this ministry to God and humanity. Whether you have given one time or made the decision to give reoccurring – you have answered the call of God.

Hubbard said, “The love we give away is the only love we keep.”

Winston Churchill said, “We make a living by what we get but we make a life by what we give.”

Our souls are defined by what we give.

EVERY GIFT can make quite a difference. All gifts go to support of the ministry – not to a building or grounds repair. I don’t know anywhere, anyplace, where your offering can make such a difference in individual lives all over the world.

We are very lean in our operation, with as little waste as possible. We have no building, and therefore, no building maintenance. Your donation goes directly to the spiritual work.

We are independent, not linked with any church organization. We do not have any barriers for anyone. We have no denominational walls – we simply freely give to all. We have no church headquarters organization that sets our agenda, or that requires a portion of your donation go to them.

We actually encourage you to worship at the church of YOUR choice.

Every donation receives a personal, signed thank you letter from Rev. Chenoweth, to use for tax credit.

Outside of the United States, we acknowledge donations quickly by email because we have learned that postal letters can be delayed for great periods of time, sometimes never reaching the person we are thanking.

Positive Christianity will always be here for you, to inspire you, to pray with you, to stand with you in hard times, and good times.

I have often said that our wonderful supporters are not rich people, to my knowledge we do not have one Bill Gates among us. But we have many, many, that are rich spiritually.

We are made up of positive, happy people.

God bless you as you consider your gift back to God. Spiritually it is so important not just to watch from afar, but to be an active participant, in the arena, to reap in the enjoyment, and rewards directly from God beyond that that you can imagine with your human mind.

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By mail: Positive Christianity Box 7993 Woodlands, TX 77387
Thank you!

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POSITIVE DAILY PRAYER:

Dear God, teach me how to give more.
Help me to get excited about it and learn to love giving first.
Teach me how to love more.
My prayer is USE ME for Your purpose and good ways.
I want to be part of making a difference starting right now.

In Jesus Christ’s name … Amen

POSITIVE DAILY AFFIRMATION: I am but one person, but I choose to make a major difference in the lives of many.

POSITIVE DAILY QUOTE: “Mature spirituality knows that real life is found in giving more than you receive. It discovers the difference one person can make, and the absolute joy of making that difference.” Chenoweth

NEED PRAYER? Reply – Positive Christianity will pray with you, daily, for an entire 2 months.
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GOD BLESS YOU!

You WILL make a major difference in the lives of others, and that fact will make you feel good about yourself as never before.

Christopher Ian Chenoweth

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06Jul

POSITIVE WRITTEN SERMON – Expressing God’s Love is Living the High Life

POSITIVE WRITTEN SERMON - Expressing God's Love is Living the High Life

Time Sensitivity: none

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.

_____________________________________

There was a little boy who was riding across town on a city bus. He was huddled very close to a well-dressed lady and was swinging his legs back and forth, out in the aisle like kids do.

Accidentally, he rubbed his shoes up against the woman sitting across from him. She got perturbed and asked the other well-dressed woman, “Pardon me, but would you please tell your little boy to keep his feet to himself?”

The well-dressed woman looked at the boy as if she hadn’t really been aware that he was there, then shoving him aside, said, “He’s not my boy. I’ve never seen him before.”

Embarrassed, the little boy moved to another seat where he sat down as if trying to hide. It was obvious the boy was trying to fight back tears. He looked at the lady whose dress he had soiled, and he said, “I’m so sorry; I didn’t mean to.”

When the woman saw what the scolding had done to the boy, she felt badly about how she had responded. She said, “Oh honey, that’s all right. Are you going somewhere alone?”

The boy lowered his head and answered, “I always travel alone. My mommy and daddy are gone, so I live with my Aunt Maggie. But when she gets tired of me, she sends me to Aunt Elizabeth.”

The woman then asked, “Are you on your way to visit Aunt Elizabeth now?”

The boy answered, “Yes, but Aunt Elizabeth is hardly ever home. I hope she’s home, today, because it is so cold outside.”

The woman looked at the boy again and then said, “You sure are awfully young to be riding the bus alone.”

The boy piped up, “Oh, it’s OK. I never get lost – but sometimes I get awful lonely. So, when I see someone who I would like to be my family, I huddle up close to them and I pretend they are my family. That is what I was doing when I got your dress dirty. I forgot about my feet.”

Hearing this, the woman moved over to where the boy was sitting and put her arm around him. Then she hugged him in real close. She understood that what he really wanted, what he really needed, was to feel that somebody loved him.

A baby is born with a need to be loved – and never outgrows that need.

You are all here this morning and you all have needs. I have needs. We need to be loved and we need, as a human being, as a Christian, to give away our love, also. To become the best that we can possibly be, we need to give love away, to allow it to express in and through us.

Expressing more of God’s love to each other we can help end loneliness.

In 1 John 4:7-8, it reads: “Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love.”

When we know we do not have to generate the love within ourselves and create it, but just become a conduit for the love of God through us, then we have it all. Then we have God; we have the kingdom of God; and we understand what God is about.

Love is what the sea is to a fish. It is something we swim in, all of our lives. It is something we can decide, this day, to give away and to have expressed in our lives.

I have an acronym for love:

L Letting
O Our
V Values
E Express

Letting our values express.

When this becomes the code in your life, it will add zip in your life – the zip code.

***Optional: prepare handout to be given to congregants as they leave. Do not give this ahead of time or people will read it and be bored as you present it again. Giving a tool at the door as they leave will be something that some will treasure and keep. It can even be made into a bookmark because it’s narrow. Cut-and-paste copy and play with it.

There is a wonderful story about a lighthouse off the coast of Massachusetts. It is Minot’s lighthouse. Many lonely sailors have searched for this light because it is unlike any other light in the world. The signal spells out “I love you” in nautical code.

Several years ago, the Coast Guard decided to put in modern equipment.

They felt they needed to take out the signal that spells out “I love you.” They told the public they were going to put in the regular signal that just flashes. The entire state rose up in dismay. Sailors from around the world who had been touched in the middle of the night by the lighthouse’s message protested. Finally, the Coast Guard backed down and the old equipment is still there. All night long, in fog or good weather, in nautical code, it flashes out “I love you.” Sailors from around the world have longed to go there to see that light and its message.

Author Eric Butterworth, writes: “Love is not something you do; love is being. Love is not trying; love is being. Love is not finding the right person; it is becoming the right person.”

I heard a wonderful story that at first sounded funny but has a much deeper meaning. It is about a man who had been married for over 30 years.

He returned home one evening and found his wife packing. “What in the world are you doing?” he asked.

“I can’t handle it anymore!” she replied. “We’ve done nothing but fight, argue, complain, and bicker at each other. I’ve decided to leave.”

The man stood in shock and bewilderment as his wife walked out of the house – out of his life. Suddenly, he dashed to the bedroom and pulled a suitcase down from the closet shelf. Running outside, he yelled to his wife, “I can’t handle it anymore, either. Wait for me, and I’ll go with you.”

Isn’t that what couples should do? Isn’t that what friends should do? Isn’t that what enemies should do? When one starts to walk out, let’s grab our suitcase and go with them.

Decide to live life in a new way and labor, daily, for love, to work for love in our lives. The labors of love are special because every day is payday. It will be in our lives. There is nothing that can stop the power of love in your life. That is what we are talking about today. I pray that each of us becomes ten times more loving because we are making a commitment with these ideas about God.

A young man once talked with people of many races and creeds. Each told him of the oldest thing in the world. He was determined to find it. He walked many miles and was often rewarded by beautiful vistas before him, but always when he heard of a very ancient thing and went to see it, someone told him of another much older thing. After many years, he returned home an old man, still not having found that for which he was in search.

One day, as he sat in his garden, a little girl passed, holding an old doll tenderly in her arms. He watched her smooth its rough tangled hair and speak to it as a mother would to her baby. “At last,” he said, “here is the oldest thing in the world. It is love.”

Remember the TV show “The Twilight Zone.” There was an episode about a future time when a man had been convicted of the crime of coldness. He had been insensitive and unsociable to the people around him.

For this he was sentenced to one year of invisibility. He was to be ostracized and ignored by his fellow citizens. A mark was placed on his forehead indicating that no one was to talk or interact with him.

At first, he thought the punishment was laughable. He went everywhere, laughing and thinking it didn’t bother him at all. He decided he preferred that people not talk to him. However, in time, he became increasingly desperate for companionship, affection, and conversation.

One evening, he saw a young woman who had also been condemned to invisibility. When he tried to talk to her, she fled in fright. For months, the man had a terrible time, living his life, day to day, in the solitude of isolation until his sentence finally came to an end.

The experience transformed him. He was warmer, more considerate, and caring.

But soon his new, more loving self was tested in an unexpected way. One day, he ran into the woman who he had begged to talk with him months earlier. She was still serving her sentence, and now she was the desperate one. She sobbed and pleaded with him to look at her and say something.

When he pushed by her and kept walking, she crumbled to the ground, weeping. Over and over again, she said, “You’re so cold! You’re so cold!”

Feelings of compassion welled up within the man. He turned, knelt down, and began to comfort her.

Seeing this, the other people in the street began moving away from them.

Warning devices began to sound.

A loudspeaker blared, “Unacceptable behavior. Unacceptable behavior.”

The man’s love had gone beyond the limits deemed appropriate by society.

Previously condemned for being cold, he was now condemned for being loving.

How often do you hear people say, “I love God, but it’s people I have a problem with.”

Author James Dillet Freeman, once wrote: “Some say they love God, but not men. But how can we love harmony and not music? How can we love light and not the morning? How can we love nature and not the spring?

How can we love God and not the likeness of God, which is humans?”

Love is an abstract idea until it is expressed in you and by you. We may talk about love, define love, but still not be loving. We have to break down the barriers. That is why we are here today – to break down the barrier, once and for all. To love the persons, situations, and circumstances that irritate you, challenge you, and baffle you.

To that person who seems to rub you the wrong way – right now, silently, begin to transform them with me, and begin to send them love as a secret experiment.

Be like Clint Eastwood. Sit there and think, “OK, make my day. Give me the truth of God and I am going to prove it in my life. I am going to see if this stuff really works. This is the time. This is the place.” Begin to send that person your love, right now. Don’t tell them you are doing it. Let it really be an experiment. Begin to send them love and give it until this time, next year, and just see what happens in your relationship. You have a new best friend, out there; you just don’t know it. If it is your spouse, all the better; say, “I love you. I bless you. I behold God’s love in you.”

The one who seems cold and indifferent needs love, not condemnation. To the person who seems to stand in the way of your good, who seems a threat to your security and success – let love cast out your fear. Put love into action and be loving. Erase the differences you see with your physical eyes; erase them with love. Turn any resentment into love. Agree with your adversary with love.

I want to share with you Romans 13:8-10. “Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law … love is the fulfilling of the law.” If God is love, and if I allow God to flow through me to love you, that is my religion and my body is the temple where it takes place. We do this with the present and we do it with the past.

There was a program on television about a woman who had been very bitter in her life. Her father and mother had abused her all during her youth and teenage years. It was a terrible story. Ordinarily, when you see someone who has been the victim of that kind of mistreatment and hate, they are severely affected. You could say they have a reason to be. This woman had a successful marriage. She had a wonderful husband and they had been happily married for 11 years. She was a successful lady with a professional career. Great things were happening to her. A reporter asked her, looking right into her eyes, “Why?” She thought she had not only survived but triumphed. This is something I will never forget. Listen to these words. She said, “I had more love than they had hate.” She said it just that way – direct, firm, with her chin tilted up.

Hate is the sand in the machinery of your life, but love is the oil. Love will fix you right up. If you are the tin man and are rusty because some of the things that have happened to you have not been very pleasant, give love a try. Just see what will happen to you.

1 John 3:11-15, “For this is the message you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another. We must not be like Cain who was from the evil tendencies and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him?

Because his own deeds were evil and his brother’s righteous. Do not be astonished, brothers and sisters, that the world hates you. We know that we have passed from death to life because we love one another. Whoever does not love abides in death. All who hate a brother or sister are murderers, and you know that murderers do not have eternal life abiding in them.”

I am not talking about life after you die from the physical and neither is this Bible passage. It is talking about eternal life in your tomorrow, your Tuesday, your Wednesday. When you get up in the morning, in a good mood, you are not in a bad mood by 10:30. You have life in you and you have it abundantly. The secret is to love. Love everyone around you. The opposite is death. Death in your day is when your shoulders are downcast and you feel life is tough and a miserable existence.

You can measure a person’s worth by the size of their heart.

Five-year-olds in a Sunday school class were told to bring in something that they loved. The next Sunday, they brought in the usual hats, sweaters, and books. But one boy entered with an especially big grin. Behind him, wearing a red dress was his four-year-old sister. The best exhibit of all is something you love and are so proud of – something special.

I want those of you who have businesses to pay special attention to this next story. You have seen businesses, especially restaurants, where one goes in and it fails. Another one comes in and it fails. Another one comes in and it fails. You think it is the location. There was one woman who decided to open a business in a location where the two owners before had gone bankrupt and failed miserably. Her friends said, “You can’t possibly start a business there.”

She said, “I’m going to use a secret they didn’t use.” She decided to open up this business to test the Bible. She opened up a restaurant and a candy shop in a place where the two owners before had failed and gone out of business. She was a brilliant success. When asked how she had succeeded in the same business where others had failed, she said: “I just loved and blessed all my customers. I loved them as Jesus has taught us to do. I love the complaining man as well as the satisfied customers. When customers leave my place, I not only invite them to come back, I silently send them a blessing of love and pray for their prosperity and happiness.

“When no customers are in the store, I bless the people with love as they pass by on the street.”

Love is a power. This is great in a business, but the real place to start this is at home. Bless that place. Bless the place, even when nobody is there so when they come in, they will feel the love of God. Surround yourself with God’s love. Remember what the Bible says. You do not have to do it. You simply consent to it happening through you, and it will. Love is THE GREATEST POWER, it will never let you down.

There is nothing you or I have ever done, ever said, or ever thought that can destroy the love God has for us. God sees more in us that we see in ourselves.

Rev. Robert Schuller told a wonderful story about an artist who was painting a picture, one day. There was a beggar who sat across the street from the artist’s studio. From his window, the artist sketched the face of that defeated, outcast soul. But the artist made one important change. Into the dull eyes, he put a flashing glint of an inspired dreamer. He sketched the skin on the man’s face to give him a look of iron will and fierce determination. When the painting was finished, he called the poor man in to see it.

The beggar did not recognize himself. “Who is it?” he asked the artist. Then suspecting that there was something of himself in this portrait, the beggar hesitantly questioned, “Is it me? Can it be?”

“That’s how I see you,” replied the artist.

Straightening his shoulders, the beggar responded, “If that’s the man you see, then that’s the man I’ll be.”

We are going to begin to see people in our lives not the way our eyes tell us to see them. We are going to see them as God would see them. They will respond.

Many of you are sitting here today and you question, “What is my purpose in life?” According to the Bible, it is to love, to learn love, to master it, to give it away. It is easy in a place like this, isn’t it? The next time you are in a place where it is not so easy, do it anyway.

As our closing prayer, today, I am going to close with Author Emmet Fox’s words and make them a prayer.

Let us pray.

“There is no difficulty in my life that enough love will not conquer; no disease that enough love will not heal; no door that enough love will not open; no gulf that enough love will not bridge; no wall that enough love will not throw down; no wrong that enough love will not set right; it makes no difference how deeply seated may be the trouble; how helpless the outlook; how muddled the tangle; how great the mistake; a sufficient realization of love will dissolve it all – if only you will love enough, you will be the happiest, most powerful being in the world.”

God, today, this moment, I agree to let my light shine, my love shine, and to become love. Thank You, God.

In Jesus Christ’s name we pray. Amen.

God bless you!

PRAYER / MEDITATION____________________

God and I are One. This is a truth for you. Looking at others in your life, you sense certain qualities you admire much. Yet, the inward voice reminds you that to sense those qualities in others is to possess the potential within yourself. You honor the qualities of God’s Spirit, wherever they may be sensed, and you attend to the potential within yourself.

Rest in the silence of prayer …

In your deepening sense of unity with the one Presence of God, you are willing to own those qualities that are yours. They live deep within your being like gold, deep in the earth to be brought into the open, refined and given expression. You are enriched by the creation of your being.

Rest in the silence of prayer …

Where there has been a sense of alienation, there is a potential for love. You attend to that sense of being connected to God in life. You honor that sense and step forward in spirituality into your world.

Where you have closed yourself to receive, there is a potential to be open to God’s gifts drawn to you. You attend to your capacity to receive and to respond with wisdom and loving appreciation.

Rest in the silence of prayer …

Where there has been a sense of being deprived and having unmet needs, there is a potential from God to experience the fullness of being wonderfully human.

Do you know that you live in the midst of God’s infinite love? It is not possible for you to stray outside the boundaries of love – for God’s love is boundless.

You surrender your heart to infinite love so the love of God may be complete in you. God is the love that you feel now.

Rest in the silence of prayer …

You let go of fear and confusion. They are illusions and hinder love. Faith and knowledge are supported by God’s infinite love.

You do not allow the pain of the past to mar the beauty in the present. You do not isolate yourself from the joy of living this day in total love.

All creation is an expression of love. You now let love motivate you to create and express love intentionally with words and actions.

Rest in the silence of prayer …

Love is a dream when it is a feeling, but love is real when it is lived. You give life this day to the dream of love. You express God’s love now.

In the loving nature of Jesus Christ, we pray. Amen.

For 23 years – 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? Reply – 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,
Christopher Ian Chenoweth

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27Jun

POSITIVE WRITTEN SERMON – Freedom of Democracy

POSITIVE WRITTEN SERMON - Freedom of Democracy

Time Sensitivity: The Sunday Prior To July 4th, (America)

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.

_____________________________________

As a human being, you have a body, a mind, and a soul. This great country has the same, many bodies, great intelligence, and inventiveness, and a combined soul destined to continual greatness.

I would like you to look upon our flag. A lot is represented in this great American symbol. We have thirteen stripes, representing the beginning of our country on July 4th with the 13 original colonies. Then there are fifty stars. That says something more. It shows the American spirit.

There have been great obstacles for us to overcome as a people. Right after July 4th, this country was in chaos. The soul of our country contains the heritage and history of our people. The soul is what has gone on before, what is going on today, and what will go on in the future. The mind of this great country is within you today. You have been given the key to this great land for it is the land of opportunity.

After July 4th, 1776, chaos broke out in this country. In 1787, our country was in such chaos that the thirteen colonies thought they were going to go down. Many around the world believed that this was the end of the great experiment called the United States of America. A constitutional convention was formed. When these thirteen colonies came together, they were so disjointed that there was only one thing that could save them – God’s Spirit.

Benjamin Franklin knew this. He was 81. He rose and spoke to the convention. He said, “I am convinced that scripture is right when it says in Psalms 127:1: ‘Accept the Lord. Build the house. They labor in vain that build it.’ Gentlemen, I have lived a long time. I am convinced that God governs in the affairs of men. If the sparrow can’t fall to the ground without God’s notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without God’s aid? I move, gentlemen, that prayer imploring the assistance of heaven be held every morning before we proceed with business.”

Prayer is what this whole country was based on. It began with a dream – a dream to come to a country and be able to worship as you want to worship, to pray as you want to pray. It began with a dream to become whatever you wanted to become. After July 4, 1776, what happened to that dream? What is happening with it today?

I heard a commentator say recently that our economic challenges are the greatest that we’ve ever faced.

We have been in greater difficulties, and we have pulled out of those difficulties because of our greatness as a people and as a nation, and we will again.

Every time we look at the flag, we see the dream manifested. We see what has happened between the time that there were thirteen dis-united states until the manifestation of our fifty United States.

By September of 1786, the United States were – the plural applies – as unstrung as a junkyard guitar. The economy barely moved. Inflation was high triple digit. Jails bulged with debtors, criminals in those pre-credit card days. States waged vicious trade wars against each other. The total federal income in 1785 was less than a third of just the interest on the national debt. Printing presses flowed rivers of worthless paper money. It was so out of control that James Madison owed his barber $1,020 for one haircut.

The British, having lost the Revolution, determined to win the peace by strangling American commerce. The redcoats refused to leave frontier forts. Spain closed the Mississippi to American flatboats. Lacking a navy, America was humbled into paying the ruler of Morocco $10,000 to keep his hands off Yankee vessels.

Congress, sitting in New York, was hopeless and hapless. From October 1785 through the following April, a quorum showed up for only three days. Not three years before, Congress fled Philadelphia rather than be killed by the bayonets of mutinous, unpaid soldiers from the Revolution.

The law of the land was a deservedly forgotten political Edsel called the Articles of Confederation by which the thirteen states were as free as preschoolers in a sandbox to do as they pleased. No one was in charge. Had there been, most likely it would have been George Washington, but he was retired to Mount Vernon, dangerously low on money and filled with dismay.

In August 1786 he wrote: “I do not conceive we can exist long as a nation without having lodged somewhere a power which will pervade the whole Union.” The Americans ad-libbed victory in the Revolution, a war fought on a shoestring and often without shoe leather. What they were against was clear. What they were for was not. The Articles reflected this indecision.

John Dickinson of Pennsylvania drafted the Articles in 1776, right after the Continental Congress declared independence. Having thrown off one despotism, the thirteen colonies were not about to hurl themselves back into the fire by creating another. So, there was no national executive under the Articles. Congress could ask for funds from the states but could not compel payment. Memories of stamp taxes were not easily forgotten. Nor were Crown judges. So, the Confederation had no national court system.

As the war wound down, states became more deaf to appeals from Congress for cash. Congress asked for $8 million in 1782 to run the government at war’s end and $2 million in 1783 when peace came. The states responded with $1.5 million in each year. So Congress asked for an amendment to the Articles to permit it to levy a 5% tax for 25 years to pay off the war debt. An amendment required the approval of all thirteen states. Four said no.

Under the Articles, any major legislation required approval of nine states. So, states opposed to anything could combine and exercise a veto by staying home until the legislation blew over. This sat well anyhow because delegates had trouble paying their landladies as Congress wandered all but penniless from Philadelphia to Princeton to Annapolis to Trenton to New York.

The Articles didn’t even provide for the common defense once peace broke out. So, most states had their own navy or army or both. Without judges to appeal to, this meant the quickest solution to most interstate squabbles was to tax the neighboring state with higher import and export taxes. The winners were the states that had major ports and established merchant marines such as Massachusetts, Rhode Island and New York. The losers were the New Jerseys, Connecticut and Carolinas who had little or none of the above. They were taxed through the nose by those maritime states and resented it, deeply.

New Jersey paid 40,000 pounds a year in hard money to send and receive goods through New York and Philadelphia. In retaliation, it charged New York 30 pounds a month rental on the lighthouse at Sandy Hook. Maryland closed the Potomac to Virginians, and Virginia retaliated by charging Maryland tolls at the entrance to Chesapeake Bay. Massachusetts and Rhode Island wanted to retaliate against British shipping after the war, but Connecticut hoped to garner the trade from the mother country and wouldn’t go along.

Americans were Americans in name, not fact. A New Yorker said he wouldn’t send his son to school in Connecticut lest he pick up “the low craft and cunning so incident to the people of that country.” Note the world “country.”

The British delighted at the infighting among what London called the “disunited States.” Geography in the form of innumerable rivers and coastal bays divided the states. A letter to England from Boston could reach there faster than one mailed to Charleston. “Good roads,” said one American, “are like angels’ visits: few and far between.”

The British well recognized the potential of a vast nation that already contained 3.5 million people. English strategy was to divide and conquer, to foster divisions and perhaps see the confederation split into three manageable (to London) nations divided by economics and interest into South, Middle and North. Britain contemplated sending ambassadors to each state instead of one to the country as a while.

Well, money was out of hand. The dream was out of hand. Most people were on the very rim of bankruptcy. Marylanders, for instance, owed British creditors the staggering sum of 1.6 million pounds; this when the total federal income was $400,000.

By 1786, seven states were printing paper money backed mostly by wishful thinking and rarely accepted by the states next door. New York speculators crammed saddlebags with printed money and headed for the hinterlands hoping to fool the uninformed people before they learned the money was worthless. Rhode Island, a paper money state, passed a law that creditors had to accept payment at face value regardless of the worth of the money. Rhode Island’s creditors departed Rhode Island, which was okay with the debtors but meant there was no one left to get credit from.

Here we have a nation after July 4, 1776–disbanded, going down. America was looked at by other countries as buzzards fly over a dead animal who is no longer working. When you look at our flag, you see that. You see the thirteen original countries that were not united. How did it become united? How did we get to the blue part of the flag where we see the fifty stars?

Today when people throw up their arms and say, “This will never work. Our country will never succeed now,” realize that God’s Spirit is in the mind of every person in this great land. God’s grace shines on this land. As hopeless as things have seemed in the past, when God’s working, the miracles come.

The miracles came through a piece of paper that united thirteen stripes on our flag. It got them to work together as one nation under God. That piece of paper is called the Constitution. It embodies the American spirit.

Let me share with you a few words from author Emmett Fox about that piece of paper. He said:

“The United States is not merely one more nation added to the list of nationalities. It stands for certain special ideas and special principles which have never been definitely expressed in concrete form in the world before. These ideas may be summed up in the conception of personal freedom and unlimited opportunity.”

What may be called the American Spirit is an intangible though very real thing in itself, but as far as it can be put into words, it has been expressed in the two great official documents of the American Republic, namely, the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.

These two documents are among the most remarkable ever written, and their effect upon the history of the world has probably never been surpassed. They are both quite short, not more than a few thousand words in length, but every thoughtful person anywhere, and certainly every American, should make themselves acquainted with them.

The Constitution contains no direct preaching at all. It makes no direct statements about the nature of humans or their destiny, or of a human’s relations with other people, or with God. It is, seemingly, just a dry legal document. Never does it say in so many words that a human should be free, that human beings should live together in brother and sisterhood, or that a human is the child of God. All these things are expressed or implied in the Declaration of Independence; and the Declaration is, I suppose, one of the most vivid and colorful documents that has ever been written. It thrills with hope and faith and enthusiasm. The Constitution, on the other hand, is formal, technical, precise, and not, at first sight, of any interest to the layman. Indeed, the Constitution and the Declaration might be described, in a sense, as the anatomy and physiology of government–the one concerned with the hard dry bones of the supporting skeleton, and the other the warm living organs and tissues of life.

To understand the American Constitution, one must realize that it aims at bringing about a definitely selected condition of things. It aims at a special way of life–a way of life that up to the present has only been found in completeness in the United States. It aims at personal freedom for the individual. It aims at the idea of substantial equality, and above all, at equality of opportunity. No civilization had ever before aimed at that.

The great Roman Empire had certain magnificent aims, but equality of opportunity was not one of them; they were always based on a foundation of slavery. The Middle Ages definitely rejected the idea of personal freedom and equality of opportunity and aimed rather at discipline and uniformity.

We tend to take these things – this freedom of opportunity – too much for granted. The people of the generation which produced it, the people of the Revolution, had to think it out. They had to work for it. They had to make sacrifices for it. They had to fight for it, and in many cases, they had to lay down their lives for it. It did not come easily. The inspiration was there, but, as with every inspiration, it had to be brought out into practical expression, and that is always difficult. It’s always easy to copy another thing with slight alterations, but very difficult to do something really new and better. In this case, the inspiration came to the leader, to the Fathers of the Constitution, as we call them, but they could have done nothing alone if the people had not responded, and worked, and fought, to make it secure.

The power of this nation says that you have equality of opportunity. You have an opportunity as an American to dream. You have an opportunity as an American to go to God the way you choose to go to God. You have, as an American, the right to go into any state and know that it is part of your land because you are a part of the United States.

There are people who got together when all dismay was breaking loose. Between those thirteen stripes and the blue that represents the fifty states, there was prayer.

There was a piece of paper that was written by prayer-directed people who consented to the Mind of God. When they consented to that Mind that is within each one of us, the chaos became a haven. The chaos became a glory–the glory of Old Glory.

If your life is in dismay, if your parts don’t feel connected in any way, if your body is in dismay, if you feel like there are thirteen separate areas of your body and they are all shouting, perhaps you need to do what Benjamin Franklin did – pray.

As you pray, know that in your body and mind and soul, like the body and mind and soul of this great country, there is power beyond human seeing. There is a power beyond human dismay. That power is God.

It wasn’t our forefathers and foremothers who created this nation. It was the power of God working through our ancestors. If our ancestors had been left alone to work with their own wits, we would just have the thirteen stripes and it would only be a memory. We would not be here today in this land called America. Because of the Mind of God, we have what we celebrate on the weekend of July 4th.

God Bless You!

PRAYER / MEDITATION__________________________

Prayer is the language of Spirit. It does not know time or space.

As you pray, you pray for more than just yourself. You pray for those who are looking to us for prayer. We become active in the ways of prayer that go out from where we are and cover people with an umbrella of God’s help.

The spirit of God expresses itself through you. In this prayer time, you are able to relax. You are able to release any thought or feeling that interferes with your awareness of the spirit of God.

As you do, remember what it says within the Holy Bible: “A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you.” The spirit of God fills your hearts and minds, making you a vessel–a wonderful, unique vessel fulfilling a sacred purpose. As a vessel, you open yourself to the inpouring and outpouring of the spirit of God.

You are open to wisdom, to life, and to abundance in this silent time of prayer …

There is a peace that is with you. It is the peace of God. It is a pure, unconditional peace that cleanses away fear and unforgiveness.

We are serene … still … as you hear the world

“Peace … peace … peace … Peace, be still.”

Rest in the silence of prayer, in the peace of God …

The Spirit of God establishes peace within you and in all areas of your life.

You think now about wisdom and guidance. You allow wisdom to fill your mind. God is wisdom. In daily choices or in major life decisions, Divine ideas come forth from the Spirit of God. These ideas, the quiet hand of God playing the instruments of our minds and hearts, guide us in the path of right thinking. We accept these wonderful ideas and give them full expression in our thoughts, words, and actions. No matter what the need, God’s almighty wisdom has the answer for us. We attune ourselves to the wisdom of God and are guided in perfect ways. You pray now for wisdom and understanding for yourself and for others.

In the silence of prayer …

The Spirit of God fills you with wisdom and understanding. You make right choices.

Having affirmed guidance for ourselves and others, we now gently shift our attention to healing. We know that life abides within our body temples, for God is life.

In the Holy Bible it states: “Do you now know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?”

This mighty healing power fills every atom, every cell, every organ and tissue, and directs every function and activity. It knows exactly what to do and how to do it. This mighty healing power is at work right now. You are strengthened, nourished, and sustained by the Spirit of God. You are restored to wholeness and health according to the Divine plan.

Know this now, in the silence of prayer …

This Truth of God permeates every cell of your body. It is the absolute Truth of you. The Spirit of God is mighty within you and fortifies your body temple.

Now we gently move our thoughts to ideas of prosperity. Abundance fills our lives. God is supply. The spirit of God within us is the source of abundance. As we pray, we give thanks for every expression of God’s loving, providing spirit–for friends and family, for flowers and birds, for sunshine and rain, for the busyness of each day and the quiet of each night.

We pray now for a greater awareness of the bountiful goodness of God for ourselves and for others as we take this Truth into our hearts: The Spirit of God urges me to succeed. All that I need is provided.

In prayer, we are open to the Mind of God. We are open to the fulfillment of every need–peace, joy, health, prosperity, guidance, freedom. We accept all that is ours through the precious spirit of God within us. With hearts overflowing, we say, “Thank You, God!” From this place and this time of stillness, we have a new power to go forth, knowing that we are bountifully cared for because the spirit of God abides within us.

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 we pray … Amen.

For 23 years – 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.

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GOD BLESS YOU,
Christopher Ian Chenoweth

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21Jun

POSITIVE WRITTEN SERMON – God Is With You As Your Life Detours

POSITIVE WRITTEN SERMON - God Is With You As Your Life Detours

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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.

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“It is the Lord your God who goes with you.”
Deuteronomy 31:6

There is always a hidden curriculum in daily life.

There are highway signs on some of the roads in Alaska – unusual signs that you do not see in other places.

When it’s warmer in Alaska, it often rains and when you’re driving down the dirt roads, the wheels make ruts. Then, it gets colder. There’s a sign along the highway that says: CHOOSE YOUR RUT VERY CAREFULLY BECAUSE YOU’LL BE IN IT FOR THE NEXT 50 MILES. Life is a lot like this – how we choose our rut, and how long we decide to be in that rut and not go anywhere else.

There are so many people you know who get one particular idea in their minds and they refuse to change their minds.

Even if something better comes along somewhere, sometime, they can’t make a change because they’ve already made a FIRM decision.

There are so many side trips that will come to you on your road of life. I venture to say that if I were to talk to each one of you this morning, you would say that some of the greatest things that ever happened to you, (if not all the great things that have ever happened to you), have been side trips, or things you didn’t expect to happen.

You were on your way somewhere else, and something happened. When it happened, it was a shock to you because you had a certain place you wanted to go, and you were sure of it. Then someone came up to you and made you an offer, or someone came up and gave you something (perhaps an idea) and you found a whole new higher life.

You found out that it wasn’t the original trip you were on that was important, but it was something else.

You found serendipity in your life.

I would like to share a story with you from the Bible. This is the story of Saul (from I Samuel, chapters 9 and 10).

As I read, try to think of yourself and your own situation, and how you dealt with it, and perhaps how you’ll deal with it in the future.

“There was a man of Benjamin whose name was Kish son of Abiel … a Benjaminite, a man of wealth. He had a son whose name was Saul, a handsome young man. There was not a man among the people of Israel more handsome than he; he stood head and shoulders above everyone else.

“Now the donkeys of Kish, Saul’s donkeys had strayed, so Kish said to his son Saul, ‘Take one of the boys with you; go and look for the donkeys.'”

You’ve been asked to do mundane tasks like that before, and so have I. Think about yourself and all those ordinary monotonous things of life. You have one particular journey and how boring that journey is.

“He passed through the hill country of Ephraim … [and he passed through many other lands, including the land of Benjamin; that was a long way] but they did not find them [the donkeys]. When they came to the land of Zuph, Saul said to the boy who was with him, ‘Let us turn back, or my father will stop worrying about the donkeys and worry about us.'”

This is an interesting point. In our journey, (and we’re all on a journey in this life), we all have the option to turn back, to give up, to decide we really don’t like the trip and not go this particular direction. Listen to what the boy said: “But he said to him, ‘There is a man of God in this town; he is a man held in honor. Whatever he says always comes true. Let us go there now; perhaps he will tell us about the journey on which we have set out.’

“Then Saul replied to the boy, ‘But if we go, what can we bring the man? For the bread in our sacks is gone, and there is no present to bring to the man of God. What do we have?’

“The boy answered Saul again, ‘Here, I have with me a quarter of shekel of silver; I will give it to the man of God, to tell us our way.’

“Saul said to the boy, ‘Good; come, let us go.’ So they went to the town where the man of God was.”

They were willing to pay the price. There is always a price to life on our journey, and it’s not really monetary.

Are we willing to pay the price in consciousness? Are we willing, if we want our life to be better, to pay the price to do whatever needs to be done?

“As they went up the hill to the town, they met some girls coming out to draw water, and said to them, ‘Is the seer here?'”

“They answered, ‘Yes, there he is just ahead of you. Hurry: he has come just now to the town because the people have a sacrifice today at the shrine. As soon as you enter the town, you will find him, before he goes up to the shrine to eat. For the people will not eat until he comes, since he must bless the sacrifice; afterward those eat who are invited Now go up, for you will meet him immediately.’

“So, they went up to the town. As they were entering the town, they saw Samuel coming out toward them on his way to the shrine.

“Now the day before Saul came, the Lord had revealed to Samuel: ‘Tomorrow about this time I will send you a man from the land of Benjamin, and you shall anoint him to be ruler over my people Israel. He shall save my people from the hand of the Philistines; for I have seen the suffering of my people, because their outcry has come to me.’

“When Samuel saw Saul, the Lord told him, ‘Here is the man of whom I spoke to you. He it is who shall rule over my people.’

“Then Saul approached Samuel inside the gate, and said, ‘Tell me, please, where is the house of the seer?’

“Samuel answered Saul, ‘I am the seer; go up before me to the shrine … ‘”

There are many places in the Bible where you will read about going up. This means going up in your spiritual awareness.

” … For today you shall eat with me, and in the morning, I will let you go and will tell you all that is on your mind. As for your donkeys that were lost three days ago, give no further thought to them, for they have been found. And on whom is all Israel’s desire fixed, if not on you and on all your ancestral house?”

Let’s imagine if Saul said, “Oh, I can’t go to the temple and eat with you. See, I’m looking for donkeys. I have my mind fixed on that. I’m in a preprogrammed mode. Even though you appear to be giving me good right now, I just can’t accept it because I have my original goal and I cannot accept this good coming to me.

“I’m like a horse with blinders on, and I cannot look to the side even though I might see good or might see God’s will of good for me. I have my own human will, and I’m going to continue on because I have picked my rut.

I’m going to walk in it even though it is muddy, boring, and mundane and I don’t like it. What you’re offering me seems exciting, but after all, it is change. I’d better not do this right now. I’d better stick to my agenda.”

We may have said similar things many times in our lives.

“Saul answered, ‘I am only a Benjaminite, from the least of the tribes of Israel, and my family is the humblest of all the families of the tribe of Benjamin. Why then have you spoken to me in this way?’

“Then Samuel took Saul and his servant boy and brought them into the hall and gave them a place at the head of those who had been invited, of whom there were about thirty. And Samuel said to the cook, ‘Bring the portion I gave you, the one I asked you to put aside.’ The cook took up the thigh and what went with it and set them before Saul. Samuel said, ‘See, what was kept is set before you. Eat; for it is set before you at the appointed

time, so that you might eat with the guests.’

“So, Saul ate with Samuel that day. When they came down from the shrine into the town, a bed was spread for Saul on the roof, and he lay down to sleep. Then at the break of dawn Samuel called to Saul upon the roof ‘Get up, so that I may send you on your way.’

“Saul got up, and both he and Samuel went out into the street.”

Remember, Saul became the first king of Israel. Spiritually, Saul means the action of the will in attaining what it desires. Samuel was the last prophet and judge before Israel had a king. Samuel means a high level of consciousness in constant contact with God.

What is this mean spiritually inside to you? It is where you are taking the action step. True action for a Divine life is not necessarily empowering yourself to get the donkeys. So often we think we’re alone and we have to do everything; we have the weight of the world on our backs, and we trudge along even though life is a lot less than a heaven on earth. We feel we have to think only about getting the donkey’s back.

If I will listen to my guidance from God, if I will be open, I might have a wonderful message come to me that says, “Don’t worry about the donkeys. There is something else here that is much higher than just your lower human nature, animal nature. There is a mission that I have for you. It’s been around you all along. If you only open your eyes to the serendipity of it, you will find it and it will be a joy for you. But you have to be open to the side trips that will come in your journey.

“As they were going down to the outskirts of the town, Samuel said to Saul, ‘Tell the boy to go on before us, and when he has passed on, stop here yourself for a while, that I may make known to you the word of God.’

“Samuel took a vial of oil and poured it on his head, and kissed him; and said, ‘The Lord has anointed you ruler over his people Israel. You shall reign over the people of the Lord and you will save them from the hand of their enemies all around.’

Then he told him of the wonderful things that would occur on their way during their journey home. Remember, when you’re going with God, not only is the journey there fun, but the journey home is fun also. There are always new experiences for you.

Samuel told Saul that two men would be by Rachel’s tomb in the territory of Benjamin who will tell you that the donkeys are okay, and you don’t have to worry about them.

You still have that human mind in you, and you still cannot have a totally peaceful time because you are consumed with worry about the donkeys. Don’t worry about it; God has provided.

Samuel continued: “Then, by the oak of Tabor, you will see three men carrying three loaves of bread. They are going to give you two loaves of bread.” Remember, they were out of bread before. Now they have bread that will sustain them much longer than they need for the short journey they have to travel.

Samuel also told him: “You will also meet a band of prophets coming down from the shrine with a harp, a tambourine, a flute, and a lyre playing in front of them. They will be in a prophetic frenzy. Then the spirit of the Lord will possess you, and you will be in a prophetic frenzy along with them, and you will be turned into a different person.”

This is a wonderful story about the journey within the journey. We’re all on a journey. If we’re really listening to God, if we’re really believing that God can come in the moment, we’re going to have a prophetic frenzy come into our lives. It’s euphoria. We are going to give it the light touch. We’re going to know that we can hop out of the rut we have been in for so long, and we are going to feel good. In that moment, we will be turned into a different person. You are turned into a different person when you accept God’s light burdens instead of your human heavy ones.

Let’s talk about the action of the will. We rarely experience life if we are in bed with the covers pulled over our heads, or if we are sitting around just watching other people live their lives on television. We must act. We have to move, not just in a straight line, but from side-to-side, and sometimes backward, and sometimes we have to look up and down to see all the wonders God has for us.

In our lives, inside of our human minds, let’s decide today to move in the direction God urges us to go. Instead of buying into the ideas that are all-consuming in our lives (like the donkeys), let’s rest our ideas and see what else is on the journey, and see what good God has. Whenever we have our decisions made, our minds made up, our direction plotted, let us also keep our eyes open to something else.

There’s a wonderful book by author Marcus Bach called “The World of Serendipity”. It tells the story about legendary princes – the Princes of Serendip – who encountered experiences that seemed “chancy” and strange. In them they found amazing wonders of the world where the unexpected was more rewarding than the things they had hoped to find. The book says that the same thing is happening to us.

You may not have heard the word “serendipity” before. Here is a wonderful explanation of it from former Supreme Court Justice Benjamin N. Cardoso: Like many of the finest things in life, like happiness and tranquility and fame, the gain that is most precious is not the thing sought but one that comes of itself in search for something else.

Going to look for donkeys may be mundane, but it’s not necessarily bad, because it starts you on the journey you’re supposed to be on.

Let’s say that something bad happens to you and you have to face that journey. I want to share a true story with you about a young man from Michigan.

He was nineteen years old. He worked in a place that required hard, manual labor. From early morning until late at night he worked picking up heavy scrap pieces of iron.

One day this nineteen-year-old boy was working. To his dismay, a piece of heavy iron fell on his kneecap. He was in great pain. His company immediately told him he needed to have his knee x-rayed because the kneecap may be broken. He went to the doctor and had the x-ray taken. At the bottom of the x-ray the doctor wrote: “Kneecap okay; not broken.” The boy went back to work in a few days.

Listen to the rest of this story; listen to God’s power and what happened in this true story.

Another doctor at this same hospital was on his break one day. He got a cup of coffee and sat down at his desk and looked around for something to read. He couldn’t find a magazine, so he decided to test himself by reading x-rays. So, he looked at the pile of x-rays on his desk that were ready to be filed away. As he moved the pile, one of the x-rays fell out of the pile. He looked at it and he immediately saw that this x-ray definitely showed cancer of the bone. He looked at the bottom of the x-ray and saw what was written: “Kneecap okay; not broken.” He found this nineteen-year-old boy’s name and phone number and called him. He said, “I have bad news for you. You have cancer of the bone. Unless we operate immediately, you will lose your leg. This is serious. Unless we take immediate action, you could lose your life.”

So, the boy went in and had the operation which saved his life. He had a rich, full life.

Isn’t it funny, as if by chance, that these things occur to us? He would never have found that cancer if that piece of iron hadn’t fell on his kneecap. And then, by chance, the doctor happens to read an x-ray that is ready to be filed and discovers the problem.

We think that the things that come to us are not related at all. When something happens to us that is change (or chance) we think it interrupts us in our life journey. But perhaps there is something bringing us the highest message for our life that we could possibly have if we will listen.

There is a word discussed in this book that I love. It is an ancient word from the old Persian fairy tale called “apocatastasis.”

Do you know what that means? It means that if something occurs in your life today that looks like absolute disaster, good is going to come out of it. Look back on your own life. I’ve looked back on mine. Many of the things that have happened to me that I considered disastrous in the moment turned out to be the greatest things that have ever happened in my life – apocatastasis.

Thank God that it occurred. I would have stayed in my rut and would have never turned to into a different direction had that not occurred.

After today, I pray we will try to see beyond the immediate experience and know that every event is connected with something higher. I pray we will view events in a way that will create a personal destiny for ourselves that is as wonderful as anything we have ever read about.

Does life have any tricks up its sleeve? Yes, it does – in your favor. Emerson once said, “The dice of God is always loaded in your favor.” There are wonderful things that will occur if we are willing to see and catch the magic. If we are willing to extract these secrets from our lives, our lives will become higher and better than anything we have ever experienced.

I have one last point. There have been many times in my life when I have stayed in my rut and, with everything inside of me, I have plodded, and pushed, and pulled forward to get my goal. Do you know what? After extreme struggle I got it, it became the worst nightmare of my life. I immediately had another goal – to get rid of what I got.

Yet, if I am truly open in the examination of me, I am also aware of the many opportunities I had to get out of my rut. If I would have, I would have had the most blissful, most incredible experience of my life, but I was blind to it. I made the choice not to go in the Higher way.

So, instead of becoming the king of Israel, Saul could have said, “No, I don’t have time right now, but thanks anyway. I don’t have time to go to your feast. I don’t have time to be anointed. I don’t have time because I am on a journey for my father, and I love my father. I’m going to find his donkeys.”

When you’re looking for your “donkeys” of your life, and someone offers you something really fantastic, step back for a minute from your human mind and say, “Wait a minute; is something wonderful occurring in my life? Maybe I want to think about this. Maybe I want to choose to go in this Higher way.”

When you do, when you follow God, life becomes incredible.

Remember, my friends, we tend to resist learning about what we don’t already know. We need to expect the unexpected and become an explorer in our own lives.

There are three qualifications you need for your journey:

1. Great Expectations. You know you are probably going to meet most of your goals. Some of you will probably find another goal hidden within your original goal that is much better.

2. Great Sublimation. This is the ability to change, to modify, to transform–to turn lemons into lemonade.

3. Great Observations. Be aware. See the majesty and wonder of God coming into your life in the moment.

If you do, (and you will), life will be great.

May God bless you!

Prayer / Meditation________________________

The power of God is here. What a joy we have to experience God’s love in this time together.

We are poised today as we enter prayer.

We are patient and positive.

We use this time to remind ourselves of God’s power.

All things are working together for good [Romans 8:28]. We know that in everything God works for good for those who love God. Sometimes it takes great poise to recall this, especially when things seem so out of order, or when confusion seems to reign.

If everyone around you is upset and unhappy, you refuse to become negative.

You affirm silently with me: I am poised because I know that God is leading me to my highest good. I know that God is here bringing about that which is for the highest good of all.

Poise is balance – a combination of peace and power. We are poised. We feel the power of God with us, at work in us and through us.

Pray and accept God’s good in the silence of prayer …

Allow me to speak for you …

I am patient.

I am patient because I know that God is leading me to my highest good. I am patient because I know that God is leading others to their highest good also. I am patient because I know that God is at work and God cannot fail.

I am positive.

I know that God is leading me to my highest good. I align myself with the constructive side of things now during my prayer.

Rest in the silence of prayer …

Let us think about poise and healing. True healing is balance in the body, balance in the mind, and balance in the emotions.

I affirm silently: I am poised. I know that God’s healing work is being done in me. Perfect balance is something I’m feeling right now.

Rest in the silence of prayer …

Perfect balance and patience keep me peaceful in my mind and heart and help to free me from any worry or tension I might have carried into this day. I am positive. I know that God’s healing work is being done in me right now.

We are poised. We come from a position of strength in God. Therefore, we are not fearful. We are patient. We never doubt because we know in partnership with God our good is on its way. We remain positive. We place our faith in the one true source of all – God. We know that God provides for our every need.

We have this outlook now. It is in our mind; it is in our body; it is in our thought. Good gravitates toward us. In the face of limitation, we are positive that supply is available. In the face of delays, we are patient and trusting. In the face of change, we are poised and serene. We know that all things coming into our lives are working together for good.

Poised, patient, positive. Our lives are blessed. We meet each day more convinced than ever that God is with us and with those for whom we pray to guide, heal, and prosper.

Through the power of the spoken word, I decree for you: God is bringing only good into your life and circumstances. You are poised, patient, and positive.

Rest for a moment in the silence of prayer …

God is bringing good into my life and the circumstances of my life. I welcome God.

I am poised. I am patient. I am positive.

This is the truth now about me …

In Jesus Christ’s name I so affirm.

Amen.

Since 1999 – The worldwide PRAYER PLACE inside the Internet, serving well over 2 million every day. Welcoming all faiths, excluding no one.

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GOD BLESS YOU,
Christopher Ian Chenoweth

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13Jun

POSITIVE WRITTEN SERMON – Father’s Day

POSITIVE WRITTEN SERMON - Father's Day

(GOOD FATHER”S DAY MUSIC BELOW)

Time Sensitivity: Sunday before or on Father’s Day

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.

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Then I said to you, “Do not be terrified; do not be afraid of them. The LORD your God, who is going before you, will fight for you, as he did for you in Egypt, before your very eyes, and in the desert. There you saw how the LORD your God carried you, as a father carries his son, all the way you went until you reached this place.” Deuteronomy 1:29-31

When God’s love comes through a man it is a beautiful spiritual thing to witness.

As Gandhi stepped aboard a train one day, one of his shoes slipped off and landed on the track. He was unable to retrieve it as the train was moving. To the amazement of his companions, Gandhi calmly took off his other shoe and threw it back along the track to land close to the first. Asked by a fellow passenger why he did so, Gandhi smiled. “The poor man who finds the shoe lying on the track,” he replied, “will now have a pair he can use.”

Do you remember when you were little and you would go into the living room or wherever dad took off his shoes, and put your small feet in his big shoes and tried to walk around in his shoes? You looked down and saw those huge shoes and thought, “These are the biggest shoes in the world. How would I ever fill these shoes?” Over time, you grew into those shoes. In fact, you might even have grown past these shoes.

Being a father is one of the greatest things in the world.

William Wordsworth once said this: “The best portion of a good man’s life – his little, nameless, unremembered act of kindness and of love.”

I would like to share a story with you that Dan Clark shares about his father. I’m sure his father thought, at the time, that his son would never remember this, but years later, long after his father passed away, Dan Clark wrote this story about something that he felt personified his dad.

“Once when I was a teenager, my father and I were standing in line to buy tickets for the circus. Finally, there was only one family between us and the ticket counter. This family made a big impression on me. There were eight children, all probably under the age of 12. You could tell they didn’t have a lot of money. Their clothes were not expensive, but they were clean. The children were well-behaved, all of them standing in line, two-by-two behind their parents, holding hands. They were excitedly jabbering about the clowns, elephants, and other acts they would see that night. One could sense they had never been to the circus before. It promised to be a highlight of their young lives. The father and mother were at the head of the pack standing proud as could be. The mother was holding her husband’s hand, looking up at him as if to say, ‘You’re my knight in shining armor.’ He was smiling and basking in pride.

“The ticket collector asked the father how many tickets he wanted. He proudly responded, ‘Please let me buy eight children’s tickets and two adult tickets so I can take my family to the circus.’ The ticket lady quoted the price. The man’s wife let go of his hand; her head dropped; the man’s lip began to quiver. The father leaned a little closer and asked, ‘How much did you say?’ The ticket lady again quoted the price.

“How was he supposed to turn and tell his eight kids that he didn’t have enough money to take them to the circus? Seeing what was going on, my dad put his hand into his pocket, pulled out a $20 bill and dropped it on the ground. (We were not wealthy in any sense of the word!) My father reached down, picked up the bill, tapped the man on the shoulder and said, ‘Excuse me, sir, this fell out of your pocket.’

“The man knew what was going on. He wasn’t begging for a handout but certainly appreciated the help in a desperate, heartbreaking, embarrassing situation. He looked straight into my dad’s eyes, took my dad’s hand in both of his, squeezed tightly onto the $20 bill, and with his lip quivering and a tear streaming down his cheek, he replied, ‘Thank you, thank you, sir. This really means a lot to me and my family.’

“My father and I went back to our car and drove home. We didn’t go to the circus that night, but we didn’t go without.”

His father could have gone to the circus that night. It would have been an ordinary night. But he showed his son an extraordinary example of masculine love. It’s the little things that children remember.

Fathers have a great responsibility to show their unique love to children. They do this in many ways. Children need to be supported in many ways not only financially, but also by giving love, hugs, and kisses. A great father also invests time by hugging, kissing and spending whatever time it takes with their children. There is no job more important than our kids.

We all have so much to give. And we don’t want to contain it in an enclosed circle. We are here to serve. There are a lot of little boys and girls in the world who need love. They need the special, unique masculine love that only men can give.

To do this, first you have to be willing. This isn’t limited with age. You can be grandpa or you can be dad. It doesn’t matter at all what your age is because the ageless love of the Christ comes through.

I want to share a story with you about a little boy named Chase. This story was shared by Mark Victor Hanson and Jack Canfield. They tell a story about how a father figure can make a major difference in a life.

There are so many families who are separated. Many of these families do not have father figures. There are children everywhere that need positive masculine influence; there is a need for armies of fathers who are willing to take the place of someone who is not there. This is one such story.

“There was a definite quiver in Chase’s lower lip as he followed his mother down the long, descending sidewalk to the parking lot at the orthodontist’s office. This was going to be the worst summer of any that the 11-year-old boy had known. The doctor had been kind and gentle with him, but the time had come for him to face the reality that he would be fitted with braces to correct a misalignment of his teeth. The correction would hurt, he couldn’t eat hard or chewy foods, and he thought he would be made fun of by his friends.

“No words passed between the mother and son as they drove back to the small country home. It was only a few acres, but it was a sanctuary for one dog, two cats, a rabbit and a multitude of squirrels and birds.

“The decision to have Chase’s teeth corrected had been a difficult one for his mother, Cindy. Having been divorced for five years, she was the sole provider for her young son. Little by little, she had saved up the $1,500 required to have the teeth corrected.

“Then one sunny afternoon, the person she cared for the most, Chase, fell in love. Chase and his mother had gone to visit the Rakers, who were old family friends, at their farm about 50 miles away. Mr. Raker took them out to the barn and there she was. She held her head high as the trio approached. Her light mane and tail rippled on a gentle breeze. Her name was Lady, and she was everything a beautiful mare should be. She was saddled, and Chase had his first taste of horsemanship. There was an instant attraction, which seemed to be mutual.

“‘She is for sale, if you want to buy her,’ Mr. Raker had told Cindy. “For $1,500 you get the mare, all the papers on her and the horse trailer to haul her.” For Cindy, it was a big decision. The $1,500 she had saved would fix Chase’s teeth or buy Lady for Chase, but it wouldn’t do both. Finally, she determined that getting the braces was the best long-term decision for Chase. It was a tearful decision for both mother and son. But Cindy promised to take Chase to the Raker farm to see Lady and ride her as often as they could.

“Chase reluctantly began his long course of treatment. With little courage and a low tolerance for pain, Chase submitted himself for the impressions, fittings and never-ending tightening of the expanders. He gagged, cried, and pleaded, but the orthodontic correction went ahead. The only shining moments of Chase’s life that summer came when his mother took him to ride Lady. There, he was free. Horse and rider would go galloping into the big pasture and into a world that knew no pain or suffering. There was only the steady rhythm of the horse’s hooves on the sod and the wind in his face. Riding Lady, Chase could be John Wayne, ‘Tall in the saddle,’ or one of the knights of old, off to rescue the fair maiden in distress, or anything his imagination let him be. At the end of his long rides, Chase and Mr. Raker would rub down Lady, clean her stall and feed her, and Chase would always give his new friend lumps of sugar. Cindy and Mrs. Raker spent their afternoons together making cookies and lemonade and watching Chase ride his new best friend.

“The good-byes between Chase and the mare lasted as long as Cindy would permit. Chase would hold the horse’s head in his hand, and then rub her strong shoulders and comb his fingers through her mane. The gentle animal seemed to understand the affection given to her and would stand patiently, now and then nipping at his shirt sleeve. Each time they left the Raker farm, Chase feared that this might be his last look at the mare. Lady was, after all, for sale, and the market was good for that quality of riding stock.

“The summer wore on with repeated tightening of the expander in Chase’s mouth. All of the discomfort would be worth it because this would make room for his yet undescended teeth to come in, he was told. Still, there was the agony of food particles trapped by the appliance, and that ever-constant pain of his facial bones stretching. All of the $1,500 would soon be used up on his dental work, and nothing would remain with which to purchase the mare he loved so much. Chase asked his mom countless questions, hoping for an answer that would eventually satisfy him. Could they borrow the money to buy the mare? Would grandpa help them buy her? Could he get a job and save his money to buy the horse? His mother fielded the questions as best she could. When all else failed, she would quietly slip away to shed her own tears, that she could not provide for all the wants of her only child.

“A crisp September morning brought the opening of school, which also brought the big yellow school bus to the end of the lane at Chase’s home. The schoolchildren took turns recounting the things they did during summer vacation. When his turn came, Chase talked about other subjects, but he never mentioned the golden-colored mare named Lady. The last chapter in that story had not yet been written, and he was afraid of how it would end. The battle with the stretching appliance in his mouth had been won, and the less obtrusive retainer had taken its place.

“With eager anticipation, Chase looked forward to the third Saturday, when his mother had promised to take him to the Rakers’ to ride Lady. Chase was up early on the appointed day. He fed his rabbits, dogs and cats, and even found time to rake leaves in the back yard. Before Chase and his mother left the house, he filled his jacket pocket with sugar cubes for the golden-maned mare that he knew would be waiting for him. To Chase, it seemed an eternity before his mother turned the car off the main road and down the lane to the Raker farm. Anxiously, Chase strained his eyes for a glimpse of the mare that he loved so much. As they drew closer to the farmhouse and barns, he looked, but Lady was nowhere to be seen. Chase’s pulse pounded as he looked expectantly for the horse trailer. It was not there. Both the trailer and horse were gone. His worst nightmare had become a reality. Someone had surely bought the horse, and he would never see her again.

“Chase began to feel an emptiness in the pit of his stomach that he had never known before. They got out of the car and ran up to the front door of the house. No one answered the doorbell. Only the big collie, Daisy, was there with tail wagging to greet them. While his mother sadly looked on, Chase ran to the barn where the mare had been kept. Her stall was empty, and the saddle and blanket were also gone. With tears streaming down his cheeks, Chase returned to the car and got in. ‘I didn’t even get to say good-bye, Mom,’ he whimpered.

“On the drive back home, both Cindy and Chase sat quietly with their own thoughts. The wound of losing his friend would be slow to heal, and Chase only hoped that the mare would find a good home with someone to love and take care of her. She would be in his prayers, and he would never forget their carefree times together. Chase’s head was bowed and his eyes closed as Cindy pulled into the driveway of the home. He did not see the red, shiny horse trailer by their barn, or Mr. Raker standing beside his blue pick-up truck. When Chase finally looked up, their car had stopped and Mr. Raker was opening Chase’s door. ‘How much money have you saved up, Chase?’ he asked.

“This could not be real. Chase rubbed his eyes in disbelief. ‘Seventeen dollars,’ he answered in a halting voice.

“‘That’s just what I wanted for this mare and trailer,’ said a smiling Mr. Raker. The transaction that followed would have rivaled any on record for speed and brevity. In only moments, the new, proud owner was climbing in the saddle, astride his beloved mare. Horse and rider were soon out of sight around the barn, headed for the open pasture beyond.

“Mr. Raker never explained his actions, other than to say, ‘This is the best I have felt in years.'”

Let us pray:

Dear God, there are many fathers here. Empower us* (*or them) with the actions of the perfection of Christ. Empower us with patience and love. Help us to give love to our own children – to go way beyond human love, and to consent to Your love coming through us so our actions will help now and will be remembered tomorrow. Help us to do many small acts of kindness so we can prepare for the big acts of kindness when the opportunity arises. We pray that we can be a blessing to every child who crosses our path, and we can be an example of fatherhood.

In Jesus Christ’s name, we now accept this blessing of the Christ in and through our minds, our bodies, and our souls … Amen.

PRAYER / MEDITATION__________________________________________

Let us Pray:

The word of God is a word that speaks positively to you. It is a word that allows you to be regenerated, made new, in mind and in body.

Galatians 3:27 says, “I put on the Christ.” With me, now, put on these thoughts of Christ mind: I accept the fact that I am a child of God. I am the living offspring of the living love of God. I am love. I am wisdom.

Your human mind is connected, fused, with Divine mind. You think with crystal clarity. You think with the foundation of Divine ideas.

Rest in the silence of prayer …

I am in Divine order in mind, body, and all the situations in my life. I decree, in Jesus Christ’s name, that there is Divine order in my life. There is an order of thoughts in my mind. There is a Divine order of functioning in my body. There is a natural order, a progression of good, in my life, under the direction of God.

Knowing my connection to God, I decree: I am one with the life of God. There is new life in my body temple; new dreams and motivations; new things to get up for in the morning and to keep on going. Blessed by God, I am in full life, and full life is in me.

I decree that I am one with the health of God. There is perfect health in every organ of my body temple; God health, regenerated, new, ever-cleansing, ever-fresh lives within me.

I am one with the grace of God. The grace of God seems to meet me wherever I go. The love of God is infilling my life and affairs. I am in grace. I attract grace to every circumstance in my life. The grace of God is with me.

I am one with the harmony of God. I have peace of mind and well-being.

Accept these thoughts now.

Rest in the silence of prayer …

I am one with the peace of God. I am one with faith of God. I am one with the spiritual consciousness of God’s inexhaustible riches. I am one with the light of God. I am one with the love of God. The love of God is not something for which I have to struggle. It comes to me and through me automatically. I am empowered because I am empowered by the purified love of God.

I decree that any person who comes in contact with me comes in contact with God’s love. All nervousness, anger, or hostility are cast out. They are not needed. The love of God has no room for these, and I have no room for these in my spiritual consciousness. I consent NOW to the pure love of God.

In my body, I am strength. I feel the renewed power of God as I decree: I am strength. I am freedom. I am power. I accept God’s blessings. I put on the Christ in every thought and cell of my being. I am success. The Christ is not a failure. The Christ always succeeds in all situations, and I succeed in full partnership with God.

Rest in the silence of prayer …

I am purity. I am pure from the top of my head to the bottom of my feet, and I am pure in mind. The Christ cleanses me through and through. Wholeness is my nature.

I am the word. I speak to myself and it shall be done unto me. I make these spiritual statements faithfully, and I meditate on each word until the inner meaning unfolds in my consciousness. I am unified with the word of God, and I know that I become part of the very substance of that word.

I am joy. This room is filled with the joy of God from the innermost being of each of us. We broadcast this out to touch those around us. This room becomes the living joy of the living God.

I am satisfaction. There is nothing in me that is not satisfied. In this moment of time, connected with God, connected with all I have ever wanted or all I will ever want, I feel satisfaction.

Rest in the silence of prayer …

Dear God, I have come to this moment in my life prepared to live fully. I am prepared to stop wanting and coming to the point of being. I allow this to happen through me. I consent to these things to be the best I can be by allowing You to be in and through me.

Thank You, God. And I thank myself for allowing the ego to step aside and allowing the fullness of life to come through.

In Jesus Christ’s name we pray … Amen.

Additional Bible Quotes:
A father of the fatherless … . (Psalm 68:5)
The father of a righteous child has great joy; he who has a wise child delights in them.(Proverbs 23:24)
Train a child in the way he should go, and when they are old they will not turn from it. (Proverbs 22:6)

GOOD FATHER”S DAY MUSIC CHOICES:

I start with my personal favorite, it is very powerful in a church setting, have your soloist, or men’s group to learn and sing – “Color Him Father” (1969) The Winstons. The D.C.-based group sold over a million copies of this song and it was certified gold. The son recounts the consistent way the father provides for the family and shows love and respect to his mother. As the song continues, it’s revealed that the man is actually his stepfather who selflessly married a widow with seven children. As a result the stepson colors him “love.”

“I’m A Daddy” (2004) Derrick Hall & Co. The singer extols the joys of family life. Fatherhood is celebrated. Hall sings about his wedding ring and says he’s “legit”.

“There is a King in You” (2009) Donald Lawrence and Company. The song is very fitting and serves to remind fathers who they are. It also demonstrates that fathers should sow positive words into their sons and daughters. Words that call out greatness and build self-esteem.

“Never Would Have Made It” (2008) Marvin Sapp. This song was written by Sapp when he lost his father. Although his earthly father was gone, Sapp was able to identify that God carried him through his pain and he never would have made it without the Master’s touch and he is stronger in spite of his sorrow.

Still My Father (2008) Bryan Wilson. The song describes the hurt and pain endured by the absence of a father. As the son matures and becomes a dad, he understands God was always there for him. He is able to release the hurt he felt. Coming full circle with God’s love, he is able to say, “Even though he wasn’t there, I still care.”

Great is thy Faithfulness (2004) Sandi Patty. This 1923 song has been recorded by several artists and is sung in churches across the nation. It is a song of adoration to the Heavenly Father. Very appropriate for those without an earthly father or with a strained relationship. The song says, “Thou changest not, Thy compassions they fail not.”

Patches (1970) Clarence Carter. While the story is set in rural Alabama, it could be any city or town where a family struggles to survive on a meager income. After his father dies, a young boy is left with the huge responsibility of being “man of the house.” Although it’s difficult, he recalls his father’s words, “Patches, I’m depending on you son, to pull the family through.”

Daddy, Don’t Cry (1989) Elvis Presley. The song recounts the struggles of a single father. The circumstances are unclear. Perhaps she died or she abandoned them. His sadness and uncertainty is conveyed in the lyrics. However, his spirits are lifted by his children who encourage him to carry on.

Dance with my Father (2003) Luther Vandross. Many girls view their father as their ultimate hero. This song is played at many weddings during the Father and Bride dance. Vandross sums up the feeling of nostalgia in this beautiful song as the child longs for the chance to be lifted up in the arms of a loving father once again.

Father and Friend (2007) Alain Clark. The video for this song by Clark, a Dutch musician and producer, is uplifting and celebratory. The son celebrates his father for being a role model and teacher. The father replies that his son has made him a better man. The song reaches its peak as father and son engage in a songfest of mutual love, respect admiration.

For 23 years – 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

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God bless you dear friend and happy Father’s Day,
Chris Chenoweth
Positive Christianity Ministries
Box 7993, Woodlands, TX 77387

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