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Posts Tagged ‘Sprirtual’

The Lord’s Prayer – Lead Us Not Into Temptation

Posted in Good Morning, tagged , on March 18, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Lead us not into temptation; but deliver us from evil (Matthew 6:13).

Many earnest people feel that God could not lead anyone into temptation in any circumstances, and that Jesus could not have said what he is represented to have said, and so some other phrasing is sought more in accordance with the general tone of his teaching. All this, however, is unnecessary.

The facts are these; the more you pray, the more sensitive you become, and the more powerful are your prayers. But you also become susceptible to forms of temptation that simply do not beset those at an earlier stage. Subtle and powerful temptations await; temptations to work for self-glory, for personal distinction; temptation to personal preferences other than perfect impartiality. Beyond all other temptations the deadly sin of spiritual pride. Many who have surmounted all other testings have lapsed into self-righteousness that has fallen like a curtain of steel between them and God.

Some old writers were so vividly sensible of these dangers that they spoke of the soul as being challenged by various tests as its traversed the upward road. The traveler was halted at various turnpike bars, and tested by some ordeal to determine whether he were ready to advance any further. If he succeeded in passing the test he was allowed to continue upon his way with the blessing of the challenger.

Now, some less experienced souls, eager for rapid advancement, have rashly desired to be subjected immediately to all kinds of tests, and have even looked about, seeking for difficulties to overcome. Forgetting our Lord’s injunction Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God (Matthew 4:7), they have virtually challenged him to give them difficulties. And so Jesus has inserted this clause, in which we pray that we may not have to meet anything that is too much for us at the present level of our understanding.

One other point needs to be considered. The more we attempt to bring our lives into harmony with God, the more the forces of evil align to prevent that communion. So that each step we take toward spiritual living comes with greater resistance form the evil one.

Remember, that when we have accepted God’s call, the battle for our soul then shifts to corrupting our faith as opposed to supporting our lack of faith. It is said in the old saying “if you can’t beat them, join them”. That is exactly what happens when evil attempts to infiltrate our faith.

So we must constantly be vigilant of our growing faith being used against us by the forces of evil.

To paraphrase another saying ” the price of salvation is eternal vigilance”.

On guard,
Z gardener

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The Lord’s Prayer – Hallowed Be Thy Name

Posted in Good Morning, tagged , on February 23, 2011| Leave a Comment »

If we trace the derivation of the word hallowed we will discover a most extraordinarily significant fact. The word hallowed has the same root as holy, whole, wholesome, and heal, or healed; so we see that the nature of God is complete and perfect; altogether good. Some very remarkable consequences follow from this fact. We have agreed that an effect must be similar in its nature to its cause, and so, because the nature of God is hallowed, everything that is projected by that Cause must be hallowed or perfect too. God cannot cause or send anything but perfect good. God cannot, as people sometimes think, send sickness or trouble, or accidents, much less death, for these things are unlike His nature.

Thou art of purer eyes than to behold evil, and canst not look on iniquity. (Habakkuk 1:13).

The ramifications of this truth is nothing less than astounding! If God’s nature is perfect, then so is ours. How then, we may ask, does so much misery and strife afflict us? Simply put, it arises from our separation from God, denial of His will and refusal to accept His truth. So the intellectual cynic would respond that, “so, earthquakes and natural disasters are caused by our separation from God, huh? Let those with ears to hear take heed of this. God will turn the wisdom of men into foolishness.

The response to the “foolishly wise” would be to invite them to follow the proscriptions of the Lord’s Prayer for a week and then determine if their garden has become any greener, any more peaceful or any more joyful regardless of their outward circumstances. It is in what the world considers our foolishness of faith that we are made truly wise.

So, let us pray that the “humanly wise” brothers and sisters take the leap of faith, accept the puny limitations of human intellect and reason, and breathe in the miraculous, affirming, good and all loving breathe of Godly wisdom and love. Ahhhhh, what wondrous things we behold when the scales drop from our eyes and we behold true, Godly wisdom.

Being foolish,

Z gardener

Author’s Note: today we are blessed with the presence of two new sisters in the garden. They are both dedicated Mother’s and believers. Welcome to the garden.
Z

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Expressing What You Are

Posted in Good Morning, tagged , on February 11, 2010| Leave a Comment »

THE SIXTH COMMANDMENT

Thou shalt not kill (Exodus 20:13).

As rules of conduct, the commandments are just such “thou shalt nots” as you see written up, “No smoking” or “No thoroughfare.” But when you get behind the surface meaning, then “Thou shalt not” becomes “Thou must not.”

So this commandment, “Thou shalt not kill,” is fundamentally an expression of the cosmic law that you must not kill, and the sooner you find that out the better. We are always trying to kill. However, this commandment is here to tell us that to think we can kill anything is to lay up trouble for ourselves that will have to be met and wiped out some time or other.

Many people waste their lives in thinking how they are being hurt, or damaged, or injured by other people; how good they could be, what marvelous things they could do, if it were not for others. So long as we believe that, we cannot progress. As soon as we know that we are the ones responsible for what happens to us, and that if we follow God’s will nobody can control us, then you are free to overtake any mistakes, and to be and do the thing you want.

One of the most important lessons to learn from this commandment is that we can not solve or problems or challenges by “killing” something outside ourselves or by eliminating that external symptom which seems to be the cause of our problem. It is when we look inside ourselves for the true cause of our distress or limitation and look to God for the solution that our challenges are overcome.

It is then, that we take control of our destiny and then we are empowered to address and cure the actual cause of the problem instead of trying to eliminate the symptoms. It is then, that we open the door to the garden and enter God’s presence, there to experience the joy of a life filled with the comfort of hope, the certainty of faith and the reality of peace that surpasses all understanding.

Expressing life,
Z gardener

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Polarity

Posted in Good Morning, tagged , on February 10, 2010| 1 Comment »

THE FIFTH COMMANDMENT

Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee (Exodus 20:12).

We should respect our parents just because they are our parents, but that teaching is just the very outer layer of this commandment. Underneath it is instruction in divine metaphysics because your real father and mother is God. When this commandment says, “Honour thy father and thy mother,” it brings in the two poles, the male and the female, and, of course, polarity is the motive power of the universe. In the bible, mother means the feeling nature, and the father is the knowledge nature. Most people have one side or the other more developed. When our prayers fail and we do not demonstrate, we fail because we are not honoring our father and our mother.

This commandment illuminates the dual nature of humans both physically and spiritually. We are physically created from the combination of our Mother and Father’s bodies. So we are all physically part male and part female. In our behaviors and perspectives the dual elements of our physically created bodies reflect that we are both knowledge and feeling, reason and intuition. Because we are the products of our parents, we should always honor them by doing that which is right for them and for ourselves in relation to all of us.

Due to our physical existence, our spiritual selves are also dual in nature. Because God gave us free will, we must chose each day whether will will follow our limited and self-centered human nature or our infinite and other-centered spiritual selves. When we chose to obey God and follow God’s will we honor him, just as we honor our earthly parents when we listen to them and respect their wishes.

Honoring all our parents,
Z gardener

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Children of the Most High

Posted in Good Morning, tagged , on January 6, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Read Matthew 7:7-11.

This is the wonderful passage in which Jesus enunciated the primary truth of the Fatherhood of God. He says here, definitely and clearly, that the real relationship of God and man is that of parent and child. It is extremely difficult to realize the far-reaching importance that this declaration holds for the life of the soul.

It is axiomatic, of course, that the offspring must be of the same nature and species as the parent; and so if God and man are indeed Father and child, man must be essentially divine too, and susceptible of infinite development up the rising pathway of divinity. That is to say, as man’s true nature unfolds, he will expand in spiritual consciousness until he has transcended all bounds of human imagination. It is in reference to our glorious destiny, that Jesus himself says elsewhere, quoting the older scriptures:

Jesus answered them, Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are gods? If he called them gods, unto whom the word of God came, and the scripture cannot be broken…(John 10:34-35).

As children of God, we have unlimited possibilities that we can not begin to imagine or even believe. Yet, the Bible says it, and Jesus himself reaffirms it. So, it is up to us to live into that reality. It is a wonderful and awesome truth to grasp and accept. That truth also places a great responsibility on us to nurture and manifest this reality in the world around us.

That is where our gardens come into the picture. As divine beings, we are given an Eden in which to demonstrate and cultivate our piece of heaven here below. Let us apply our divinity to the space and time around us, so that we may reveal and share our divinity and our gardens with those around us.

Being God’s child,
Z gardener

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Open Your Mind

Posted in Good Morning, tagged , on May 6, 2008| 1 Comment »

That which seems impossible today could become common place in the future. Even when all our senses tells us something is impossible, those senses could be wrong. When we limit our thoughts and what we are willing to mentally entertain, we have cut ourselves off from the infinite.

Pura Vita,
Z Gardener

Have you an open mind? Is the window of your soul open for fresh air and the sunshine of Truth to come in, or is it closed and shuttered by mental laziness or the emotional congestion that we call prejudice?

 
None of us knows how many fine things we have missed through being self-satisfied and cocksure. No one can be considered really intelligent who does not have a readiness to examine new ideas with an open mind.
 
The history of scientific discovery shows that almost every new step was opposed by the very people who should have welcomed it.
 
Harvey was denounced for claiming that the blood circulated through the body; Galileo was persecuted for saying that the earth went round the sun; Pasteur was branded a quack for advancing the germ theory of disease; Jenner was threatened with the police for pioneering vaccination. The finality of the atom, which was a scientific dogma in the child hood of most of us, has been completely discarded.
 
Probably the only incorrigible fool is the man who says that anything is impossible, or that there is any limit to the conquests that divine Intelligence working in mankind can achieve.
 
The Lord is able to give thee much more than this (2 Chronicles 25:9).

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