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THE THIRD COMMANDMENT – Thoughts Are Things

Posted in Good Morning, tagged , on April 23, 2013| Leave a Comment »

Thoughts Are Things
THE THIRD COMMANDMENT
 
Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain; for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain (Exodus 20:7).
 
Now this law of life really means you cannot take the name of the Lord in vain. If you try to do so you will fail because when you take the name of God unto yourself and implement it, then consequences will follow. It is a pity more of us do not realize that fact because constantly we are trying to take the name of the Lord in vain.
The name of God is your conviction concerning God. Your idea of God will determine your whole life. If you believe that God is good, God is love, God has all power, God is intelligence, all the conditions of your life will steadily improve. If you believe God is intelligent but not good—I know people would not dare to say that, but people who think that God sends sickness and trouble really believe in a God who is not good—if you believe in a God who has all intelligence, but is not loving, then your idea of the nature of God must work out.
Troubles will come to you, and you will not overcome them because you are saying, “God sent this trouble for a good purpose, and I must put up with it.” You will put up with it. Your idea of God cannot be in vain. It will work out for you in accordance with your belief.
 
There is not one of us who is not limiting God in some respect in his thought and because of that we are going to suffer limitation in some way, for we cannot take the name of God in vain.
The most important words in this message are, “Thoughts are things”. This truth, when accepted and understood, will revolutionize one’s life.
The failure to accept or understand this truth will blind us to the reality in which we live. The reality is that thoughts, words and deeds are things that affect everything else we experience. As within, so without. Any thoughts and words we harbor will physically manifest themselves in our lives.
So, let us today decide that all things we think, say and do will comport with God’s will. Then, watch as our gardens fill our lives with joy, peace, love and hope.
Right thinking,
Z gardener

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THE SECOND COMMANDMENT – Pocket Gods and Graven Images

Posted in Good Morning, tagged , on April 22, 2013| Leave a Comment »

Read Exodus 20:4-6.
 
Thou shalt not take unto thee any graven image…(exodus 20:4).
 
A primitive people needed to be thus instructed because they were much given to making idols of a palpable sort. We do not do these things, but whenever we give power to anything but God, we are making that thing into a graven image. For example, we give power to ailments, particularly if it is a favorite ailment. We all know people who say, “My rheumatism,” and they say it quite lovingly. Been with them a long time! Has become a conversation piece! Others say, “My indigestion.” We are making a graven image of these things. It is only when we take power away from them that we can heal them.
 
If you forget God and worship graven images of any kind, you are going to suffer. You can demolish a stone statue; you can burn a wooden one. The way to destroy mental images is to stop thinking of them and giving them power.
 
This commandment goes on to say, “For I the Lord thy God am a jealous God.” Moses does not mean that God is jealous like a man, but that God must have first place. The trouble with many pious people is that they want God to be vice-president, keeping the presidency for themselves. So the Bible uses the word “jealous” in the sense that if you give power to anything but God, you have lost God altogether. You cannot have a percentage of God. Either God is the only power or nothing at all.
One of our greatest challenges to achieving full spirituality if turning over control to someone else in our lives. Becoming subservient to another runs against our human nature and our human culture. Yet, only when God becomes the master of our ships, do we have the ability to ensure our fate and seal our spiritual destiny.
On board,
Z gardener

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THE FIRST COMMANDMENT – Raised Consciousness

Posted in Good Morning, tagged , on April 19, 2013| Leave a Comment »

 
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 God of self is the most likely God we will put before the true God. When we overcome the primacy of self, we are then prepared to go to the mountain. This is the first step toward Eden.
Rising,
Z gardener

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The Ten Commandments

Posted in Good Morning, tagged , on April 18, 2013| Leave a Comment »

 

And God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant…and had respect unto them (Exodus 2:24-25).

 

Moses grew up as the adopted son of Pharaoh’s daughter with all the privileges and training of royalty. As the years went by and he witnessed the oppression of his people, he determined to lead them out of their bondage into a better life—their Promised Land. We are told “that their cry went up to God” (Exodus 2:24) and God Himself led them safely through their wilderness. Then at the time of their uncertainty, their moral laxness and emotional confusion, He gave Moses certain basic rules of life, which we still know as the Ten Commandments.

 

The Ten Commandments at their face value are true and valid, but that is only the beginning. If people are going to escape from the continuous strife and struggle of life, they must have something more. So within these commandments he concealed the deeper laws for those who were ready for them. And within those again, he concealed the deepest and highest spiritual teaching for those who were ready for that.

 

In other words, Moses designed these laws of life so that the higher we go spiritually, or the deeper we go intellectually, the more we can get out of them.

As we walk through these next discussions of the Ten Commandments, may each of us receive the blessings for which we are prepared; that we may walk in the Eden that was prepared for us.

Programmed to receive,

Z gardener

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Maintaining the New Equivalent

Posted in Good Morning, tagged , on April 15, 2013| Leave a Comment »

 
There is an instructive legend of the Middle Ages. It seems that a certain citizen was arrested by one of the barons and shut up in a dungeon by a ferocious looking jailer who carried a great key. The door of his cell shut with a bang. He lay in the dark dungeon for twenty years. Each day the big door would be opened with a great creaking; water and bread would be thrust in and the door closed again.
 
After twenty years the prisoner decided that he wanted to die but he did not want to commit suicide, so the next day when the jailer came he would attack him, and the jailer would then kill him. In preparation he thought he should examine the door, so he turned the handle, and to his amazement the door opened. He found that there was no lock. He groped along the corridor and felt his way upstairs. At the top of the stairs two soldiers where chatting, and they made no attempt to stop him. He crossed the great yard. There was an armed guard on the drawbridge but paid no attention to him, and he walked out a free man. He went home unmolested. He had been a captive, not of stone and iron, but of false belief. He had only thought he was locked in.
Bring my soul out of prison, that I may praise thy name: the righteous shall compass me about; for thou shalt deal bountifully with me (Psalm 142:7).
Who holds the key to that which imprisons us? We do. Yes, we are the only thing that keeps us from our freedom, joy and peace.
When we substitute; God’s will for ours, positive thought for negative ones and selfless actions for selfish ones, we free ourselves from the prisons of doubt, fear, shame and limitation.
So today, let us unlock the door to the prison that separates us from God and the Eden created for us. Then we will walk in the light, free to love, share, give and live in joy.
Checking the door,
Z gardener

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Clarity and Interest

Posted in Good Morning, tagged , on April 12, 2013| Leave a Comment »

The key to life is to build in the mental equivalents of what you want, and to expunge the equivalents of what you do not want. You build in the mental equivalents by thinking with clearness or definiteness, and interest. Remember clarity and interest; those are the two poles. If you want to be healthy, happy, prosperous, doing a constructive work, having a continuous understanding of God, you think, feel, and get interested in these ends. What we call “feeling” in connection with thought is really interest. Ninety-nine times in a hundred the reason why Christians do not demonstrate is that they lack feeling in their desires or prayers.
 
How are you going to expunge the wrong mental equivalents? Suppose you have a mental equivalent of resentment, or of unemployment, or of criticism, or of not understanding God. The only way to expunge a wrong mental equivalent is to supply the opposite. The right thought automatically expunges the wrong thought. If you say: “I am not going to think resentment any more,” what are you thinking about except resentment? The key to the management of your thinking, and therefore, the key to the management of your destiny, is to substitute an affirmative thought for a negative thought.
 
The Lord will perfect that which concerneth me….(Psalm 138:8).
This substitution of good thoughts for bad thoughts is the most efficient means of expunging wrong mental states. It requires interest and clarity, which requires discipline and consistency. Non of this is easy, but its easier than any other option.
Being clear,
Z gardener

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The Mental Equivalent

Posted in Good Morning, tagged , on April 11, 2013| Leave a Comment »

 
There is one thing that means more to us than all the other things in the world, and that is our search for God and the understanding of His nature. Our aim is to learn the practice of the presence of God. We practice the presence of God by seeing Him everywhere, in all things and in all people.
 
Some years ago I coined the phrase “mental equivalent.” For anything that you want in your life—a healthy body, a satisfactory vocation, friends, opportunities, and above all the understanding of God—you must furnish a mental equivalent. Supply yourself with a mental equivalent, and the thing must come to you. This expression “mental equivalent” is borrowed from physics and chemistry. We speak of the mechanical equivalent of one kind of energy in another kind of energy. They have to find out how much coal will be needed to produce so much electricity, and so on. In like manner there is a mental equivalent of every object or occurrence on the physical plane.
 
The secret of successful living is to build up the mental equivalent that you want; and to get rid of, to expunge, the mental equivalent that you do not want.
 
I will meditate in thy precepts, and have respect unto thy ways (Psalm 119:15).
What mental equivalents are we providing ourselves? Are we furnishing those which take us closer to God or further away.
The mental states that bring us closer to God are love, peace, joy and all the positive mental states. Those that take us away from God are fear, anger, bitterness and the other negative mental states that block us from God.
As we are able to furnish the positive mental equivalents to ourselves, God will furnish the same to us. Then we can recognize and live in our Edens.
Practicing the presence,
Z gardener

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Worship Means Victory

Posted in Good Morning, tagged , on April 9, 2013| Leave a Comment »

 

 

Give unto the Lord the glory due unto his name; worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness (Psalm 29:2).

 

God is bigger than any problem.

God in you is greater than any difficulty that you have to meet.

God cares for you more than it is possible for any human being to realize.

God can help you in proportion to the degree in which you worship Him. You worship God by really putting your trust in Him instead of in outer conditions, or in fear, or in depression, or in seeming dangers, and so forth.

You worship God by recognizing His presence everywhere, in all people and conditions that you meet; and by praying regularly.

You pray well when you pray with joy.

 Glory ye in his holy name: let the heart of them rejoice that seek the Lord (Psalm 105:3).

 

We often miss the solution to our problems by focusing on the  problem. When we focus instead on God, and God’s power to solve all problems, then the solution presents itself.

 

Let us think less about solving our problems and more about God’s power and presence within the problem. Then we will act according to God’s will and will turn any problem into a blessing.

Victorious through God,

Z gardener

 

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Final Authority

Posted in Good Morning, tagged , on April 4, 2013| Leave a Comment »

 
And it came to pass, when Jesus had ended these sayings, the people were astonished at his doctrine:
For He taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes
(Matthew 7:28-29).
 
It is always so. The message of Jesus Christ is utterly revolutionary, for it turns our gaze from the outside to the inside, and from man and his works to God.
 
He taught as one having authority. The greatest glory of the Spiritual Basis is that you begin to know. When you have obtained the smallest demonstration by means of prayer, you have experienced something that never leaves you. You have the witness of Truth within yourself, and this is the only authority worth having.
 
Faith becomes knowledge when, by following God’s will, we personally experience God acting in our lives. This demonstration gives proof of God’s promise and presence in our lives. Thereby, knowledge begets the bliss of certainty that God is real, true and ever present with us. This is life in the Eden God meant us to inhabit. And, the path to our garden is to be found looking in, not looking out.
Once we are filled with the knowledge of God within, then the world without shapes itself to that inward demonstration.
Being with authority,
Z gardener

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A Rock Foundation

Posted in Good Morning, tagged , on April 3, 2013| Leave a Comment »

Read Matthew 7:24-27.
 
Therefore whosoever heareth these saying of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock (Matthew 7:24).
One of the oldest symbols for the human soul is that of a building, sometimes a dwelling house, and sometimes a temple. The first thing that has to be done by the builder of a house is to select a sound foundation. On the shifting sands of the desert it is impossible to build anything at all, and so when the desert dweller intends to put up a permanent structure he looks about for a rock.
Now the Rock is one of the Bible terms for the Christ, and the implication is very obvious. Christ is the one and only foundation upon which we can build the temple of the regenerated soul with safety. As long as we are depending upon something less than that Rock—upon will power, upon so-called material security, upon the good will of others, or upon our own personal resources—we are building upon sand, and great will be our fall.
As the great songwriter said “And so castles made of sand. slip into the sea, eventually”.
May each of us find the true rock upon which to build our spiritual lives so that nothing can shake it. That rock for this writer is God’s truth as manifested in Jesus Christ and his victory over sin and death. “As for me and my family, we will follow the Lord!”
Upon the rock of ages,
Z gardener
 

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