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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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A newly ordained minister decided to hold a garden party for selected members of his congregation whom he wanted to get to know better. The night before the party he realized that he had forgotten to invite Mrs. Brown. Mrs. Brown was an elderly charter member who also happened to be a large financial contributor to the church.
Quickly, he picked up the phone to deliver the invitation personally to her. On the other end of the line, an angry Mrs. Brown said, “I’m sorry, Reverend, you’re too late. I’ve already prayed for it to rain on your party.”
When we’re talking about prayer, it’s interesting to see what we think that prayer can do, and the way we use prayer. We often try to use prayer to rain on somebody else’s parade.
How do we pray, and how do we meditate? What should we expect to happen? How do we quiet our minds for meditation? Exactly, how does prayer work?
How can I make it work for me?
We have to be able to use prayer and use meditation; use it in a higher way than we have every used it before.
Do you think your purpose is to be an architect, a writer, a schoolteacher, a plumber, or a computer programmer?
Do you think your purpose is to be a good mother, father, son or daughter?
These are important roles you may play, or areas of service to others. You can make a marvelous contribution to our society, or even the world at large.
They are secondary to your TRUE PURPOSE in life.
If you consider your purpose to be centered in any of these areas, the time will come when you have no sense of purpose at all. You may retire, the kids grow up, parents pass on; any number of things can happen to remove the supposed object of your purpose. And with this removal comes the removal of a reason to live a creatively happy life OR DOES IT?
Your purpose has to be based on a factor that will always be relevant, your spirituality. You have intelligence and you are clothed in a body, but you are primarily a spiritual being.
As a spiritual being, you have a purpose. And when that purpose begins to dawn on you, you will carry it into your chosen fields of expression, whatever they may be, bringing a depth of meaning that will make your life worth living, whatever you are doing at the moment.
Often the turning points in our spirituality come during times of deep human frustration.
When you say to God “If You want me to learn all this stuff, then You’re going to have to show me because I’m tired of trying to do it all myself!”
Each one of us has felt that way, sometime in our life.
We want so much to be infilled with God’s awareness.
The word ‘holy’ is derived from an Old English word meaning, ‘halig,’ which is a kin to the Old English word, ‘hal’ meaning whole. The baptism of the Holy Spirit is the immersion of the individual in God.
Have a total immersion with the presence of God.
The Mind of God can offer a higher solution to any problem that you have that you cannot solve alone with your human mind. The Mind of God is wholeness and perfection. As you dwell in that Mind of God, there is a higher energy that is coming through your physical body.
Do you feel fatigued? Do you feel run-down? Do you feel-burnt-out? The God will cleanse you. God is your Creator. God can re-create through you. It is a silent but all-powerful activity.
The way you feel after you realize you’ve been touched by God is beyond description by human words.
You feel spiritually nourished.
Your soul needs nourishment that cannot be gained in sleep. The human mind often finds itself exhausted all of its possibilities. It has gone from this side of its mind to that side and up and down and it cannot solve its problems. That is the time for the baptism of the Holy Spirit; the immersion in God. A fusion of human mind and the Mind that was in Christ Jesus, God Mind, is now in you.
When that happens to you, that spiritual activity is going to solve your human problems. That activity is going to cleanse your human body: That activity is going to go through your mind.
Because you are holding higher thoughts in your mind, you will have high expressions in your life. That is the activity of God. Is it supernatural? No. It is natural. Is it just for holy men and women? No. It is for you. This was Jesus Christ’s message to you, that you too are a child of God.
Colossians 1:26-27 “The mystery that has been kept hidden for ages and generations but is now disclosed to the saints. To them God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.”
The total immersion comes when you exchange your human self for your Christ self: when you sit in the silence of prayer, when you say, “Okay, Dear God, here I am – use me.”
Practice the Presence of God and allow that Presence to infill you. Will it take time? Yes. It may take some time because we are so busy with our little human thoughts within our human minds.
We have all some problems to solve; these can be great weights on our shoulders. We must empty out our consciousness and allow the silent spiritual activity of God to work through us.
As we allow the activity of the silence of prayer to work inside of us, we are working, with a new purpose of putting our human mind in touch with the Divine, so that our soul can listen to the language that it understands, and that language is the still, small voice of its creator.
When we are connected, we are not the battery on its own, constantly running down. We are a battery connected with its continuous charger. We are a battery that will never run out of power or experience physical fatigue. We are a battery that will never get dismayed with things happening outside of itself. We are a battery with ever-increasing power. We are connected.
We’re not limited. We are not running on low power. We are ever-expanding in our consciousness, in our energy, in our vitality and in our youthful, even playful, outlook. We are children of God. And our consciousness draws to us like a magnet.
Lower human consciousness, such as worry, and fear draws to itself like a magnet the same.
Higher spiritual consciousness draws to itself like a magnet all the good things of life.
Meditation, the silent free-flowing activity of God through us, is always accessible to those that consent to its activity.
How do you begin?
Make time.
Make time before other activities, so that you do not run out of time for this spiritual priority.
Make an appointment with God.
One man sat down, and for weeks and months, nothing happened, because he was unable to quiet his human mind sufficiently. Human concerns occupied his mind.
Then, a strange thing happened.
As he kept on keeping the appointment with God, at a set time every day, he found that he could quiet his mind more and more every day. And that activity, that Presence that was there from the very beginning, started to flow through him.
Wondrous spiritual feelings and empowerment followed.
The man said that at the very beginning if he had trouble concentrating, he would close his eyes and get up and move around the room, decreeing positive prayer affirmations about the peace of God. When he felt peaceful, he would then sit down and try again.
Sometimes the most difficult activity is to quiet our own human minds. Our human minds are like having noisy neighbors living inside of our heads. Thousands of voices are constantly talking. We have to learn to quiet those voices. When we do, we find more spiritual power than we could even conceive of earlier.
It is an activity that is available to each of us. As Jesus said, “You are heir to all that is of the Divine kingdom.”
In the beginning pick the same time every day to pray and meditate. Make an appointment with God and keep that appointment. God will be there, God will keep the appointment. It’s not that God is ONLY available at certain particular times. God is available ANY time. But it helps to train us, in a regular practice that we can easily remember to inner the secret place of the Most High.
Walt Whitman said, “I lie abstracted, and I hear beautiful tales of things and reasons of things. They are so beautiful; I nudge myself to listen. I can’t say to any person what I hear. I can’t say it to myself. But it is very, very wonderful, indeed.”
What will happen as a result of entering the secret place? The most profound result is that you will begin to understand your true purpose in life. You will have answers to questions that have plagued you and others for a lifetime.
You will know the Truth of God is not 1,000,000 miles away but can be found as close as – within you. You hear the still small voice, and you will know how to find answers and solutions even when it’s not apparent to your human mind alone. You will rise up and be a great leader in your chosen field, because that which is coming through you is always the Great Leader. You will feel empowered and equipped from the secret place of the Most High.
You will know that there is something happening in you that can never be taken away from you, no matter what happens in the world. You will know that there is an activity in the inner realms of your awareness that will allow you to continuously grow in your spiritual unfoldment.
The purpose of prayer is to integrate the attributes of God into your human awareness, which in turn will manifest as a corresponding condition. We look at prayer as a conscious-raising tool, not as a method of begging favors from God, but rather convincing ourselves of the good that is already prepared for us from God.
We don’t even look at prayer as just a problem-solving device. God is not a for-maintenance-only God. God is not ‘Mr. Goodwrench’ coming into your life with a tool to tighten something up. God is perfection itself bringing perfection into you and every aspect of your life.
As we allow that flow of perfection to come, it doesn’t do maintenance to our troubled situation. It brings a whole new, higher spiritual situation into our lives.
Prayer is an activity of blending our own mind, in every situation facing us, to the higher spiritual standard of God unfolding in you as a result of your spiritual development.
Prayer is a conscious effort to harmonize our own human mind with God.
It is putting on the Christ, instead of dressing ourselves in the consciousness of worry, and dread, and fear.
If God’s world is perfect, and yours is not, and if your world is a projection of your own consciousness, then the raising of your consciousness will naturally lift you above the level of your problems.
When we ask God to straighten out situations, our focus is usually on getting God to change the condition, not us. In our eyes, we are never the problem. The problem is out there somewhere. We won’t change as long as we do not have to change.
But problem areas in our experience have a direct correlation to the level on which our human consciousness is operating. When the cause in our own consciousness is removed, the outer condition responds instantly to the higher spiritual power.
Our problems are solved, not outside in, but inside out.
From the center of each of us, to the circumference and beyond, is the path of permanent solution of our challenges. To understand that the only place that we can deal effectively with life, and our challenges, is within the realm of our own thinking and feeling is one of the great secrets of spiritual life. When this understanding begins to dawn, the world becomes our footstool rather than our taskmaster.
We have hinted of some of the power that is available to you in prayer and in meditation. And, we have also said that it is available to you NOW.
I invite you to begin to practice the Presence of God immediately.
Do not wait. This afternoon quietly sit by yourself and say, “Dear God, I’m ready to be a better human. Dear God, I consent to You. My dear God, I consent to change within myself. Help me to rise up to meet my God-given potential.”
And thus, it will begin a spiritual transformation in you, affecting every area of your life with God’s good.
God Bless You!
Prayer / Meditation__________________________
God is our help in every need.
We know that God is here.
We know from the core of our being that God is with us. Through God, and only through God, we can overcome any obstacle to peace of mind. We can overcome any limitation. We can live in freedom and in self-mastery.
Through the activity of God, we can feel a comfort and a tranquility that passes human understanding. “You will know the Truth,” Jesus promised, “And the Truth will make you free.”
Now it is time to let go of our lists of human weaknesses and limitations. God frees us now to live a fuller, happier, more useful, and more satisfying life.
Now it is time to let go of your human sense of trouble and difficulties. Let go of everything not to the level of Christ consciousness. Center your full attention, your whole being, on God’s spiritual help with you and all around you.
Give God your full attention in this moment. See the result. Get your personal self out of the way so that the Divine may emerge.
In the silence of prayer …
In your own awareness, you feel a harmonizing calm, a complete confidence and the victorious blessedness that always emanates from the close Presence and the quiet, steady purposeful activity of God.
Harmony and wholeness, vitality, power, and plenty; God becomes that to you AND MORE. God is with you, right now. And you give the Almighty Presence your full human attention going straight to God every day, by abiding in God every moment and by consciously letting God perform God works.
When you consciously let God live in you, and through you, and all around you, you will be aided, strengthened, and guided in ways that you have not yet dreamed of in human mind. You become thoroughly aware of the Presence of the Supreme, (the ever-active Presence), and you feel it spiritually at all times.
In the silence of prayer …
You know that every battle in life, and every victory, is not yours, not the troops’, but it is the Lord’s. We pray for Divine help and order in every difficultly.
We know that we are an instrument to express more and more of God life and harmony and unlimited goodness and power, which is Divine. We consciously place ourselves right in the midst of God and right in the path of God’s action of love.
In this moment of silence, we feel God. We know that God is here in our lives now.
(Silence)
There is nothing mysterious about this Presence of God that we are feeling. This is as natural as anything can get. God is here. God’s Presence is here. It is a normal, every minute of our lives if we are willing to become aware of God’s Presence.
There is power in God. We immerse ourselves in that power steadfastly and we acknowledge God’s power continuously in our thinking. We credit all our gains to God. We keep our minds upon God’s Omnipresence as we go about our daily tasks and as we undertake new ventures. We submit to God’s wisdom.
God goes with us everywhere. There is not place where God is not. God is our guide. God sustains us in all of our thoughts, actions, and emotions.
At times, when we are gripped with uncertainty or fear, we keep our minds on the constant Presence, and then we courageously proceed with whatever is at hand for us to do. God is here.
The power of God is in our awareness. It is in every cell of our body and in every area of our outer life. We keep our minds and hearts on the power of God. Gradually, positively, this power will take possession of our whole human consciousness.
Our whole consciousness will become God-conscious; consciousness that is filled with God’s vitality, God’s peace, God’s overcoming, and God’s calm. The Divine Presence and power will become alive in us. Divine action will solve, harmonize, and eradicate all problems in our lives and all ills in our physical bodies.
Our human sense of trouble will disappear. It is disappearing right now in this prayer time. And then, under the law of Divine actions, the troubles themselves will disappear. It is God who will do the work, not us. We merely consent as we are consenting now to be immersed in the Presence.
God is working inside of you now … in the silence of prayer …
(Silence)
You have brought your problems, concerns, and cares to this place. Consent to God and God will take care of them. Consent to God now. Let go, and let God.
(Silence)
Consent to God’s power and God’s work happening inside of your life, through you, into every aspect of living and into the life of our earth. Consent to the perfection of God and that perfection will be made manifest in your world.
God is with you. God is around you. God is everywhere present. Give the Almighty Presence a chance by going straight to God this moment and every moment.
We pray constantly, realizing that as we let go and let You, God, that there will be a high path that we will be walking on, a high path not weighted down by our human cares and concerns. We realize that you will bring ultimate good to every situation.
Blessed by our thoughts, we consciously go forward to do Your works with our actions in our world.
Rest once again in the silence of prayer …
God is with you. God is our help in every need. Through God, we overcome any limitation. We live in freedom, and we live in self-mastery.
I pray that the Divine Presence and power has come alive inside of you. I pray that that Presence and that power of God increases in your awareness as this day goes forward.
Nothing outside of you can disturb you; or upset the calm peace of your soul.
You are dwelling in the calm peace of God.
In Jesus Christ’s name, we say, thank you, God.
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