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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.
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