Good Morning Garden

Read Psalm 24.
He shall receive the blessing from the Lord, and righteousness from the God of his salvation.
This is the generation of them that seek him, that seek thy face…
To many it may seem that the purification of the heart will be a long and wearisome task, but we have to remember that when we pray it is God who works and not we. If you will use the power of the Word, old habits of thinking will fall away and new ones come in; and this is because you will receive your righteousness, or right thinking, from God. You have sought. His face, and you must begin to express something of His nature, for we always grow unto that which we contemplate.

Lift up your heads, O ye gates; and be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors; and the King of glory shall come in.
Gates and doors symbolize understanding and it is only be the attainment of a higher degree of understanding that the King of glory – the vivid realization of God which we are seeking – can come to our souls. We are then told to ask ourselves who the King of glory is, and for what He stands. He is nothing less than the Lord; strong and mighty in battle, and the battle he fights, of course, is our battle.

The Lord of hosts, he is the King of Glory.

So we must open our hearts and our minds to God’s will. It is when we give them both to God that our understanding and desire mature to the point that God fully manifests Himself in out thoughts, words, deeds and life. Then God will be fighting for us and helping us with the heavy lifting that accompanies spiritual enlightenment. Then our gardens become a joy instead of a labor.

Reaching for joy,
Z gardener

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Read Psalm 24.
The Twenty-fourth Psalm is the great summing up of the Bible teaching on letting God come into your life.

The earth is the Lord’s, and the fullness thereof…
The key to the true meaning of this first stanza is found in the two pivotal words Lord and earth. In the Bible the word Lord means the I AM. The earth is a general term covering all expression or manifestation under the jurisdiction of the I AM. Now all trouble of every land really arises from the belief that the earth is subject to the dominion of some outer power or law that is able to govern it independently of the I AM. But the Law of Being is, that man is the image and likeness of God, and has full dominion over all his conditions, and this psalm emphasizes this wonderful fact by adding the world, and they that dwell therein.

Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord?
The hill of the Lord, or His holy place, means the realization of God. It is that vivid, real sense of the Presence. When one attains to this he has a marvelous power of helping and healing others. To reach this state is the real object of all our prayers.

He that hath clean hands, and a pure heart…
But who are the pure in heart? Fundamentally, purity means complete loyalty to the belief in one single, all-embracing, omnipotent God, Our Father which art in heaven. Hold unswervingly to God – this is purity.
To keep one’s mentality consciously loyal to the One Power is only half the battle. The other half is to purify and re-educate the soul, not merely from the grosser sins that everybody recognizes, but from the thousand-and-one concessions to limitation belief that fill the everyday life of humanity. This is to have “ clean hands,” and to be able to ascend that wondrous “hill of the Lord.”

Father, this day free us from the concessions to limitation that keep us from thy path, so that we may abide in your garden and experience the fullness of your presence and purity.

Ascending,
Stan

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God’s time for your demonstration in now. The time God wants you to be healed is now. The time God wants you to be in your true place is now. The Bible says that the day of salvation is now.

God is ready the moment you are. There is nothing to wait for except the changing of your own consciousness. People often make the mistake of saying, “I know my demonstration will come at the right time.” But the only time to be harmonious and satisfied is now. The time to be happy is now and the place is here. Did not Jesus say, The kingdom of heaven is at hand, and by this he meant close by.

Do not keep yourself out of the Kingdom of Heaven by inventing postponements, but change your consciousness now, for it can all happen in a moment.

…that now it is high time to awake out of sleep: for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed (Romans 13:11).

Whatever is keeping us from salvation, healing and happiness originates within us. It is not the external world that is blocking us from our gardens. The good news is that our deliverance is in our own hands. When we make the commitment, do the work and follow God’s will, our gardens will produce all the joy, peace, wholeness and happiness we can imagine. The only thing blocking our path is us.

In joy now,
Z gardener

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What you concentrate upon you bring into your life. Many people fail to concentrate successfully because they think that concentration means will power. They suppose that the harder they press the faster they get through. But that is quite wrong.

Think of the photographic process. The secret of a clear picture lies in focus. You focus your camera lens steadily for the necessary length of time. Suppose I want to photograph a vase of flowers. I place them in front of the camera and keep them there. But suppose that after a few moments I snatch away the vase and hold a book in front of the camera, and then snatch that away, and hold up a chair, and then put the flowers back for a few moments. You know what will happen to my photograph. It will be a crazy blur. Is not that what people do to their minds when they cannot keep their thoughts concentrated for any length of time? They think health for a few minutes and then they think sickness or fear. They think prosperity and then they think depression. Is it any wonder that man is so apt to demonstrate the “marred image”?

It is always good to make a practical experiment, so I advise you to take a single problem in your life—and just change your mind concerning your problem and keep it changed for a month, and you will be astonished at the results. If you really do keep your thought changed you will not have to wait a month for results.

…He that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved (Matthew 24:13).

The author is taking this good advice and recharging. Have a great day in the garden.

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In mining country one comes, across a valueless substance that is so like gold ore that inexperienced people cannot always tell the difference. This is called Fool’s Gold, and many a young prospector has wasted much time and hard work before discovering that he has been deceived by the spurious article. Old timers used to say to the tenderfoot: “When you think you have found gold you probably have not; but when you do find it, you will know it for certain.”

So it is with the prospectors on the mountain range that we call life. There are many kinds of fools’ gold to be found, but when you meet the genuine article you will have no doubt in your mind. The true gold will give you a sense of peace and poise, a sense of freedom and power because you will no longer be in bondage to passing material things. It will set you free from much of the tyranny of time and space beliefs. The True gold is that sense of the Presence of God with us, to obtain which is the object of this life.

Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights… (James1: 17).

In all that we seek, peace is the true object for which we search. Peace will not be found in that new car, dress or gadget. It will not be found in status, wealth or power. And it will not be found in selfishness, pride, ego or vanity. We may find many forms of fool’s gold in such pursuits, but the true object of our search will elude us in these exercises.

Mining for peace,
Z gardener

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In a certain museum in New York there are a couple of dinosaur’s eggs on view. This exhibit appeals to the imagination. Visitors say, “Those eggs were laid millions of years ago, and here they are today untouched!” These people are apt to overlook the fact that for the dinosaur in question they represent complete failure. After all the trouble of laying those eggs nothing ever came of them.

It is surprising how many otherwise intelligent men and women waste the best days of their lives laying dinosaur’s eggs that never hatch out. Either through lack of energy, or lack of intelligent planning, or failure to make God a partner, or more often sheer muddle headedness, they lay an excellent egg and then stroll away and forget it. Do not start a plan unless you really think it is worthwhile, do not rest until you have brought it to fruition.

And Jesus said unto him, No man, having put his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God (Luke 9:62).

How many times do we have a great idea, start a worthwhile project or make a decision to do something good and then walk away without completing it? How would our lives be different if we finished all those things? Think of the man who writes a great book but refuses to finish it. How many lives would be changed by reading it, how many enlightened or entertained; and what about the author himself. What would his life be like if the book was finished and became a best seller. Or, if not a best seller, at least the book became a completed project and demonstrated the writer’s self respect and worth to himself and others.

Gardening hardy,
Z gardener

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Raised Consciousness

THE FIRST COMMANDMENT

I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.
Thou shalt have no other gods before me (Exodus 20:2,3).

Moses lived in Egypt over three thousand years ago, and he led some six hundred thousand people out of Egypt and through the wilderness. That is historical. But, Moses also stands for a faculty in yourself, and the things that Moses did typify your state of mind.

The mountain means prayer—the elevated consciousness. We are told that the general public were not allowed to go up Mount Sinai, but that does not mean that certain people were not good enough to go up. It means that if we want to go up the mountain—if we want to raise our consciousness, if we want to get closer to God—we must prepare ourselves by prayer. If we want to go up the mountain, we have to become a high priest spiritually and we must rid ourselves of our faults and weaknesses—otherwise we cannot elevate our consciousness and get our contact with God.

Moses had his revelation, and then he realized it as the experience that God and man are one. When he got that revelation, Moses brought back the laws of life, beginning with the First Commandment, as we call it..

What is the beginning of the First Commandment? I am the Lord thy God. Our trouble in our religious life nearly always is that we think, “In the beginning Me.” That is very human but is does not get us the revelation that Moses got. After affirming I am the Lord thy God… the First Commandment says thou shalt have no other gods before me.

The “me” God is the one that most often presents an false idol for us. When we are consumed with the “me”, we have no room for the “us” or for God. Unless we rise above the self, put God and others first, we will never get past this primary obstacle of self-worship.

Z gardener

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Mental relaxation is just as important as right mental activity. Wise relaxation and wise activity are the balanced poles of all true actions. Many people are constantly subjecting their minds to totally unnecessary wear and tear.

We speak colloquially of “taking the train” somewhere and actually many people who ride in trains do take the train mentally the whole journey. Many years ago I noticed that when a train arrives in the terminal after a long run, the locomotive men always seem to come off the train looking fresher than most of the passengers; although they have been working and the passengers have not. The explanation is that for the engineer and fireman it was only a routine day’s work. They did not “take the train” mentally – they let the engine take it.

The eternal God is thy refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms…(Deuteronomy 33:27).

Worry, stress, fear, anxiety, doubt and all the other useless and harmful wear and tear we subject ourselves to affect more than just us. It subjects those we love to the same mental friction. It also degrades our total environment. Mental relaxation applies to more than turning off our minds or meditating on peace. It also means affirmatively refusing to allow unnecessary negative mental activity to infect us.

Laid back,
Z gardener

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Look where you are going because you will inevitably go where you are looking. Where your attention is, there is your destiny. Attention is the key to life. Whatever you really give your attention to, you become. Whatever you really concentrate upon will come into your life. The Bible says, For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he (Proverbs 23:7). It does not say simply as a man thinketh, but as he thinketh in his heart, and this means thinking with interest or feeling.

This law is often illustrated most amusingly in practical life. The “horsy” man with his equine looks is known to us all. Kipling speaks of a Newfoundland fisherman who appeared for all the world like a great codfish himself; and Dickens speaks of a pedantic old lawyer who looked just like an animated roll of parchment. Keep your eyes open for these amusing dramatizations, and be sure to take to heart the tremendous lesson that they teach.

There are so many sayings that reflect this truth in life. “keep your eye on the ball, watch where you are going, stay focused” are just a few. In spiritual matters, and in all matters, we will inevitably follow that upon we we focus our attention. Similarly, when we focus on ourselves, we will tend to exclude others. This will lead to self-centeredness, self-pity and self-recrimination. On the other hand, when we focus on others it will lead to selflessness, gratefulness and self respect.

Eyes on the prize,
Z gardener

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