Good Morning Garden

Read Exodus 19:6-20:20.

Moses was a man of extraordinary understanding of God and of man. He was also one of the great historical leaders of the human race. He was born in Egypt, which was in those days the most highly civilized country in the world. But at the time, the authorities gave orders to kill the male children of the Israelites, and Moses’ mother tried to save his life by placing him in a little basket and hiding it at the river’s edge where Pharaoh’s daughter could not help but see it when she came to the river to bathe. The sister of Moses was told to hide among the tall reeds to guard the baby. The king’s daughter saw this little basket, opened it, and when the child cried, her heart was touched. She looked around, and out came the sister, and you know the rest of the story, how the sister was sent to fetch a woman to take care of the child, and brought Moses’ own mother. Now there is a remarkable text here. Pharaoh’s daughter says to the woman:

Take this child away, and nurse it for me, and I will give thee thy wages
(Exodus 2:9).

In the Bible sense you are the King’s Daughters as soon as you reach out for the Truth. The infant Moses is that higher teaching that draws out your heart. Now, how do we nourish our infant Moses? By prayer and meditation. Otherwise the child will starve. However, if we take the child and nurse it, we shall get our wages,and our wages shall be freedom, peace of mind, harmony, understanding, and the fellowship of God Himself.

When our hearts yearn for peace, hope and love: God is calling to us just as the babe crying in the basket called to Pharoah’s daughter. She responded to that cry and her actions changed the world for the better.

Hearing God,
Z gardener

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There is an instructive legend of the Middle Ages. It seemes 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).

How many prisons have we locked ourselves in by thinking the equivalent of imprisonment. “I can”t, they won’t, it is impossible, that’s just the way it is”: are all forms of mental prisons. Of course we have all said these things. The good news is we have the key to these locks and are our own jailers.

Soaring,
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).

So, when our focus and concentration slips into negative things or things we do not want in our lives (stress, fear, anxiety, etc) we must consciously bring our focus back to the positive things for which we strive. It is no more complicated than that. We attract what we think about. This takes mental discipline and concentration. It also requires a vision of where we want to be in our lives and how we want to live it. When we do these things, we can live in the Eden created for us.

Focused on Eden,
Z gardener

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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).

The most sure way to develop the mental equivalent of that which we want in our lives is to follow God’s advice. When we surrender our will to God and obey God’s commandments, we are on the path to the mental states required to attract that which we seek. Then we are “meditating in thy precepts and respecting unto thy ways”. Following our own desires and will takes us in the opposite direction mentally and physically.

Seeking equivalence,
Z gardener

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When you set out to solve a problem by means of prayer you should take all the ordinary normal steps in addition. Do not simply pray and then sit down and wait for something dramatic to happen. For instance, if you are praying for a position, you should pray for it as well as you know how each day, and then go out and visit agencies or prospective employers, write applications, or insert advertisements in suitable periodicals.

If you want a healing, treat about it in whatever way you usually find to be best and, in addition, take whatever material steps seem to be appropriate.

If your business is not prospering, have a checkup to discover if you are managing it efficiently. If you find weak points, as you almost certainly will, you must correct them forthwith.

We certainly cannot expect to go on breaking the laws of the plane on which we live, and expect prayer to compensate for this foolishness.

Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might… (Ecclesiastes 9:10).

Albert Einstein said the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over while expecting different results. This is also true in the spiritual plane. When we pray for God to deliver us from some circumstance, we must be willing to change our actions that created the circumstance. If someone else or something else is responsible for our situation (which is usually not the case), then we must be prepared to do that which is necessary to contribute to and/or support the change for which we pray.

Doing the work,
Z gardener

Author’s Note: Today we are blessed to have three new visitors in the Good Morning Garden. Each are successful businessmen, loving husbands and fathers who live their faith by example and bring light to all they touch. Welcome to the Garden brothers.

Z

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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.

Just think; how wonderful it is to KNOW that our spiritual beliefs are as real as the Sun, moon and stars; to know that God is present with us and in us; and to know that all God’s promises are the truth and the only real authority and power.

Knowing,
Z gardener

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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.

What a great joy it is to know that we do not have to depend on our being perfect to ensure our spiritual welfare. As our lives shift, evolve and change, there is one eternal and dependable source of truth, power and light. When we base our priorities, plans and actions on the sure rock, we can always be sure the outcome will be for our best good. Regardless of our weaknesses, fears and flaws, we can be sure that our spiritual shelter will be solid when it is built on God’s will and words. Those who depend on themselves, others or wordily priorities for spiritual safety will find themselves rebuilding their spiritual homes after every storm.

Rock steady,
Z gardener
Author’s Note: This writer will be out town until Monday and will continue the Good Morning Garden then. Have a blessed and safe weekend. Z.

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Read Matthew 7:21-23.

We are all willing to do God’s will sometimes and in some things, but until there is a complete dedication of one’s whole self, there cannot be a complete demonstration. “There is no home for the soul in which there dwells the shadow of an untruth,” said George Meredith.

Never is it more true than in the life of the soul that the price of liberty is eternal vigilance. We must not allow any consideration whatever, any institution, any organization, any book, or any man or woman, to come between us and our direct seeking for God. Centers, churches, schools, all fill a useful purpose in providing the physical framework for the distribution of right knowledge, but the actual work must be done by the individual.

Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven (Matthew 7:21).

“Easier said than done'”, is the phrase that comes to mind from today’s message. Many proclaim with words that they are the children of God, yet their actions and thoughts do not reflect their words. Words and appearances do not make us a child of God. God did that when he created us. We live into that creation when we accept and follow God’s willI. When God calls, and we respond with faith, love and obedience, then we are living as God’s children.

Shine on,
Z gardener

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Read Matthew 7:15-20.

If man really were left without a simple practical test of religious truth, he would assuredly be in a sad plight; but happily this is not the case. Jesus, the most profound, and at the same time the most simple and practical teacher the world has ever known, has provided for this need, and has given us a universally applicable test for truth.

It is as simple and direct as the acid test for gold. It is the simple question—Does our religious truth work in our lives? This test is so staggeringly simple that most clever people have passed it over. Truth heals the body, purifies the soul, reforms the sinner, solve difficulties, pacifies strife. There is no such thing as undemonstrated understanding.

If you wish to know how you really stand spiritually, look about you at your environment, beginning with the body. There can be nothing in the soul that is not demonstrated sooner or later in the outer, and there can be nothing in the outer that does not find some correspondence in the inner.

By their fruits ye shall know them (Matthew 7:20).

What fruit is our religious truth bearing in our lives. Is it healing our bodies, purifying our souls, reforming our sinful actions, solving our difficulties and/or pacifying our strife? If so, then we can have full faith that we are in fact demonstrating religious truth. If not, then we must determine why not. Either we are following our own desires or something other than religious truth; or we are not truly thinking, feeling, living and practicing what we believe.

Toward the light,
Z gardener

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Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat: because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it (Matthew 7:13-14).

There is only one way under the sun by which man can attain salvation, in the true sense of the word, and that is by bringing about a radical and permanent change for the better in his own consciousness.

For countless generations humanity has been trying in every other conceivable way to compass its own good. This change in consciousness is the strait gate that Jesus speaks of here, and, and he says, the number of those who find it is comparatively small.

Now why should man be so reluctant, apparently, to try to change his consciousness? The answer is that the changing of one’s consciousness is really very hard work, calling for constant unceasing vigilance and a breaking of mental habits. Entering the strait gait is, however, worth much more than whatever trouble or effort it may call for.

If you make a qualitative, change in consciousness, which is what happens in prayer, then not only is the effect of that change felt in every department of your life, but it is with you through all eternity, for you never can lose it. Thieves cannot break in and steal.

As soon as you obtain this spiritual consciousness you will find that all things indeed work together for good to those who love God.

There a e few other reasons we don’t chose the narrow gate. It requires that we overcome the self(s) that separate us from from God and each other. The narrow gate entails rising above selfishness, and requires tolerance, patience and usually involves self-sacrafice of many ilks. Deferred gratification and taking the hits in the short term are ready companions on the pilgrim’s way to the narrow gate.

Narrowing Up,
Z gardener

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