Good Morning Garden

There is no use in merely saying that everything will be all right. Thinking rightly, of course, means putting God into all your affairs and expecting him to change them. For example, if you are living in a shack it is not any good pretending that it is a palace. Cheap optimism is never spiritual. Realize that you are living in a shack, but claim the Presence of God to guide you to something better.

Teach me the way, O Lord, and lead me in a plain path … (Psalm 27:11).

Thinking rightly is the gateway to positive change. That does not mean we can change things by thinking they are are changed. It does mean changing the way we think to reflect God’s will. When we alter the way we think in order to become loving, giving, patient, tolerant, faithful and the other traits required by our faith, then we can expect our circumstances to change for the better. Just saying we believe is not enough. We must change our thinking and our behavior so God can then lead us to our true garden.

Being taught,
Z gardener

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Try this experiment today. Select one particular thing in your life that is not going well and you wish to make right. Next consider the matter in the light of your knowledge of God and of prayer. Realize that this thing cannot remain inharmonious or negative once you know the Truth about it. Realize that you are now knowing the Truth and claim that the divine Power in you is now healing the condition completely and permanently.

Then give thanks. Remember that praise and thanksgiving are the most powerful prayers of all.

The next day, repeat your thanksgiving, until the answer comes.

In between prayers you must keep your thought right concerning the problem. This is vital. All-day-long guiding of your thought cannot fail to bring your demonstration.

My meditation of him shall be sweet: I will be glad in the Lord (Psalm 104:34).

When we effectively contemplate any problem in light of our faith in and understanding of God, it will yield. The hard part of this is accepting the blessing hidden in our pain, frustration, fear or faults. Yet God’s unbreakable promise is that our faith and trust in God will bring us to our best good.

In sweet and glad meditation,
Z gardener

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When your knees are knocking together, and you do not know which way to turn – think of God and His goodness.

When prosperity seems out of the question – give thanks for God’s abundance.

When you want peace of mind – dwell upon the Presence of God.

When your health is under par – speak the healing Word.

When you need inspiration – browse through the Bible.

When the situation seems to need a miracle – remember that nothing is too difficult for God, and the He is performing miracles every day.

I will not fail thee, nor forsake thee (Joshua 1:5).

When we center our thoughts, wills, consciousness, spirits and feelings on God, all else falls into place. Whether expressing gratitude, looking for help, facing the insurmountable or just getting through a big job, we find our surety and protection in communion with God. Whatever our needs or fears, God can and will provide for our best good. Sometimes we may have to endure that which we dislike, but God will always provide that which we need if we just ensure that our lives revolve around our relationship with God. In communion with God, our lives become the garden we lost so long ago, but is now made available to us again through our Lord, Jesus.

Leaning on the Lord,
Stan

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The Bible tells us that God can heal us, that He can deliver us from our destructions, that He lifts up the weak, that He leads and guides us. But just how much can God do? Well, God can do almost anything. That may sound strange to those who have been taught that with God all things are possible. But there are some things that God cannot do, and it is fortunate for us that this is true.

God is a God of love and rules by principle, and because this is so, He cannot change His nature. He cannot break divine law. He cannot bring disease, or suffering, or lack.

He is always the loving Father, ready to hear and answer prayer.

How much can God do? He can bring heaven here and now – not by breaking the law, which is impossible to God – but by fulfilling it.

Open thou mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of thy law (Psalm 119:18).

As this writer and his son hiked the Appalachian wilderness last week, our eyes were opened to see how much God can do. In the most literal sense God delivered us from our destructions, lifted us up when we were we weak, led and guided us when we lost our way, And in the process, God brought us heaven here and now. God opened our eyes, hearts, souls and minds to to behold many wondrous things in the garden created for us. And upon homecoming, reacquainted us with the beautiful garden to which we returned enlightened, encouraged and emboldened.

God can,
Stan

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In the gold rush days, prospectors went out in the mountains in search of the yellow metal. Often the task was long and arduous with little to show for days of struggle and privation. But when a find was made, the prospector would stake his claim so that others would know that that particular discovery belonged to him. Of course, some claims turned out to be shallow veins of ore and worth little, while other claims eventually made their owners fabulously wealthy.

In metaphysics, we often speak of claiming our good, and it is one of the surest ways of bringing the good we desire into our lives. If we want health, then we have to claim every day that divine Life brings well-being to every part of our body. If we want prosperity, then we claim every day that God is the giver of every good gift, ready to supply our every need.

Whatever it is we wish to bring into our life, we stake our claim to it.

Of course, we often claim negative things for ourselves without fully realizing it. Every time we say, “My cold,” “My headache,” “My indigestion,” we are claiming those things for ourselves. What one claims for himself he will eventually bring into his life.

Affirm your divine kinship. All that the Father hath is ours – if we will stake our claim to it.

…It is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom (Luke 12:32).

It is neither boastful nor proud to claim God’s love and the kingdom we are promised. It does require that we believe in God’s promise and that we act as if we believe it. Even when the day is dark and when our strength and spirits are down, if we put our faith to work in practice each day, then we can expect and claim all God’s goodness in our lives.

Staking the claim on joy,
Z gardener

Author’s note: This week the author and his son will be staking our claim to joy in God’s garden as we hike the Appalachian Trail. You will be in our prayers each day until we resume the Good Morning Garden next Monday. Please keep us in your prayers until then.

Peace,
Z

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Behind every problem or difficulty lies the Truth of Being. This means that in spite of the appearance, you must believe that divine Mind is already healing the situation. Jesus said that when you pray, believe that you have received. Often we are so close to a problem that, spiritually speaking, we accept the cloudy day as a permanent state of climate, forgetting that the sunshine of divine Love and Power has never ceased to shine, although obscured for the moment.

In prayer we remind ourselves again that, no matter how bleak or overcast the picture may be, we believe that in divine Mind there is nothing but good and therefore only good can express itself in these circumstances. The important thing is to raise your consciousness above the level where the difficulty seems to be, and put God there instead.

Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father (Matthew 13:43).

We know that the sun still shines even when it is raining on us. We can be just as sure that God’s love shines on our lives even when we are in the midst of the storm. Even when our hearts are broken, birds still sing, children still laugh and our family and friends still love us.

Singing, laughing and loving,
Z gardener

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Success consists in the overcoming of difficulties. All men and women who have made a success of any kind have done so by overcoming difficulties. There was a time when laying a telegraph line from New York to Boston presented many difficulties. Then there was a time when doing that was easy, but laying the Atlantic cable presented difficulties. Later on, marine cable laying became a routine business, but radio across the ocean presented problems that for a time were insuperable.

If you have a personal disability that seems to keep you from success, do not accept it as such, but capitalize on it and use it as the instrument for your success. H. G. Wells had to give up a dull underpaid job because of ill health, so he stayed at home and wrote successful books and became a world-known author instead. Edison was stone deaf and decided that this would enable him to concentrate better on his inventions. Theodore Roosevelt was a sickly child, very shortsighted and nervous. However, he worked hard to develop his body and became, as we know, a strong husky open-air man and big game hunter.

The owner of a fashionable dress business in London was the wife of a struggling clerk, who was stricken with tuberculosis. She had never been in business, and had no training, and found herself having to support a husband and two children. She started with nothing but good taste in clothes and a belief in prayer.

… To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the tree of life (Revelation 2:7).

It is human nature to avoid difficulty and to view any disability as a flaw or a barrier to our dreams. Yet, it is our spiritual nature that gives us true understanding of hardship’s value and of the benefits gained by overcoming that which we lack. It is our spiritual self that grows to new proportions when we overcome. It is our spiritual self that seeks the road less traveled instead of viewing life through the prism of disability. And, it is the spirit in us that pushes us to achieve great things by overcoming our challenges.

Embracing all blessings,
Z gardener

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We all believe that the love of God is invincible. We all believe that His intelligence, His knowledge, and His power are infinite. We all believe that God cares for us to a degree beyond imagining, and that each one of us is equally precious in His sight. Yet, in many cases healing and harmony do not follow from this knowledge. Why is this?

In more cases it is because we have forgotten that these qualities have to be embodied in ourselves before they can appear in our lives. To know of them as existing in God is not sufficient. We must be seeking to express them in our personal lives before they can do anything for us.

The only way to know God is to seek to express Him in our lives.

It is a good thing to give thanks unto the Lord … to show forth thy loving kindness in the morning, and thy faithfulness every night (Psalm 92:1-2).

It has been the author’s experience that many of our prayers are for things that would be bad for us if they were granted. In those cases a loving God would say no to our request. In other cases, that pain from which we are seeking relief is actually being sent to us for our best good and to make us change a dangerous or hurtful path we have taken. Again, the answer to our prayer for relief would be no.

Keeping the faith,
Z gardener

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One is on the Spiritual Basis or he is not, for there is no half-way house in this.

You are on the Spiritual Basis:

If you definitely give all power to God, in the most literal, practical, and matter-of-fact sense of the phrase.

If you really believe that prayer can do anything.

If you really believe that your happiness and well-being are vitally important in the eyes of God.

If you realize whatever ideas and beliefs you accept must be expressed in your surroundings, and in all your relationships and activities.

If you try to see the Presence of God everywhere.

If, in short, you understand that you are in a mental universe, that things are thoughts, and that one’s life history is fundamentally the expression of his belief about God.

Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you (James 4:8)

If we live on the spiritual basis, we walk with God on life’s path directed by the creator of the universe. We walk in prayer with certainty, clarity, strength, communion, safety, wellness, hope and confidence. Brothers and sisters, except that we live on the spiritual basis, we wander lost, confused, sick, hurt, alone in danger and in trouble. So, let us recommit today that we will live, think, act and feel as spiritual creatures in communion with a loving God who cares about us. There now, isn’t that better.

In spirit,
Z gardener

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Prayer is always the solution. No matter what kind of difficulty may be facing you, no matter how complicated your problem may seem – prayer can solve it. Of course you will also take whatever practical steps seem to be indicated, and if you do not know what steps to take, prayer will show you. Prayer is constantly bringing about the seemingly impossible, and there is no conceivable problem that has not at some time been solved by prayer.

When we remember that God really is omnipotent, untrammeled by what we call time or space or matter, or the vagaries of human nature, it is easy to see that there can be no limit to the power of prayer. You can pray about a problem and solve it at any stage, but of course, the earlier you tackle it the easier will your work be.

… The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much (James 5:16).

The bigger the problem we face, the greater the power of prayer to resolve it. Many of us are facing challenges that seem insurmountable, impossible to cope with, much less resolve. Yet the truth is that God can and will give us what we need to turn these challenges into blessings. How, we may ask, can such pain, anguish, fear and trepidation be turned into a blessing? The answer is through fervent prayer. When we turn to the all powerful God for our answers, for our direction and for our deliverance, we accept our inability and limitations.

Swapping fear for fruit through prayer,
Z gardener

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