Archive for the ‘God’ Category
College was a fruitful time in my spiritual life. Some young people wander away from God during that time but I was drawn closer. Nature, whether sitting outside watching the birds, looking at the sky sometimes a solid blue other times with majestic clouds or even just riding my bike to class under the ancient oak trees, always brought me closer to God. My bike was my first major purchase with my own money as a teenager in high school. It was my main mode of transportation at college where parking spaces for cars were scarce and classes widely spaced. During my freshman year, I left my bike chained to a bike rack with many other bikes over a long weekend break. When I got back to campus on Monday I could not find my bike. I walked around the bike racks where over a hundred had been parked Thursday afternoon. Most of the other bikes were still there but not my blue thoroughbred (I liked to think of my bikes as horses, my first bicycle was a Morgan then I had a show horse before my latest acquisition). I walked around the dorms thinking some one had “borrowed” it and I would soon find it. I finally gave in and went to the campus police station and reported it missing.
They did not give me any reason to hold out hope of finding my thoroughbred. I thought why this might have happened. Was I becoming too dependent on material things? I talked to God about it. I told Him “I maybe relying on material things when I need to focus on you. This has jarred me awake on that. But I still need a bicycle to get to my classes on time. I would prefer to have my old bike because I’m use to it and I am sentimental about it, but if you want me to get a different one ok I will. If my old bike is not found by Friday I will go shopping for another one on Saturday”
Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday passed with out a word about my bike. By Friday afternoon I had resigned myself to the idea of getting a new bike. I started looking at my money situation trying to figure out how to pay for one on a poor college student’s income. Friday evening at about 8 pm a roommate pokes her head in my room to tell me I had a call. On the phone was the campus police who said, “I believe we have your bike”.
The next morning I headed to the police station and they showed me a bike I did not recognize at first because the black handlebars had been retaped with white tape. But then I saw the blue fingernail polish I had used to cover the scratches spotting the frame and I knew my thoroughbred had come home.
Yesterdays post was about a ring. Well here is another ring prayer that happened when I was in college. This time it was not my ring.
During a physic class the fire alarm went off. The class trooped outside where we milled around for about 10 minutes then a fireman said, “ All of you are too close to the building. Move across the street”. So we all meandered across the street, walking around talking until the all-clear bell rang 20 minutes after the first.
When we had returned to class Bill looked down at his hands and exclaimed “Oh no, the crest on my ring is gone”. Bill was devastated; this was a ring his grandfather had given him before he died. I could tell he was very shaken as he hurried back outside to look for the lost crest. I prayed hard that he would find it but how could he. We had been all over the place out there, on both sides of the street, in the street.
My heart was heavy for Bill. Within ten minutes, Bill came back with his face beaming and the crest in his hand.
As a 3rd Grader, a well-meaning Sunday School teacher told me that we should not pray for “things”. I have developed a different viewpoint on that. Not only does God listen, He acts.
The Christmas I was 14; I received a ring from my sister-in-law. You need to understand, this sister-in-law was a very hard person to like. She was one who could dish it out but couldn’t take it. She also took things very personally. I really liked this ring. It had 7 small rings banded together with a dangling gold heart. I wore this ring whenever I went out.
This was the year the High School Band took a band trip to a pool in east Texas. Don’t ask me why we had to go to east Texas to go swimming but we did. There were changing rooms and lockers where I stored my clothes and my ring, which I snuggled down in the toe of my tennis shoe so it would not slip off my finger while swimming. When it came time to go, I pulled out my clothes and shoes then remembered my ring. Looking into my shoes I could not find it. I retraced my steps. Looked in the looker room, the bathrooms, around the pool were we had been standing. No ring. I was upset. I left my name and phone number with the pool attendants and went home on the school bus. During the next week I prayed some one would find that ring and turn it in. What really worried me about loosing the ring was how my sister-in-law would handle it. I did not want her to think I had been careless with her gift, which in her mind would mean I did not like her gift and so did not like her.
I imagined all kinds of ways that ring would be found. Some one would be walking along and see something shining on the ground and pick it up or the janitor would be sweeping under the lockers and locate it. My imagination went wild.
My mother was surprised to receive a call a week later from the pool attendant, they had found my ring! They were in the process of draining the pool and a maintenance man saw something shiny in the pool. He jumped in and pulled it out right before it went down the drain. That was one scenario I had not anticipated.
All through my life, my prayers have been answered in ways I just could not anticipate. It is almost like God saying “Got you”. I think God does have a sense of humor.
I am here to do a job, to accomplish something and worrying just gets in the way – more than that – it actively prevents me from doing what I need to do.
God is my partner and my partner is very competent and a self-motivator, He can handle the whole business without me. I know in His hands, my business will only prosper – it can’t do otherwise.
But there is a portion up to me, and that is to act on the ideas and inspirations as they come to me. God can act but He wants us to take an active part in our lives also. We are often His hands and feet, especially in our own lives. So I EFT the worry out of the way and just do it.
Find out more about EFT at naturallyresilient.com
I place the future in the Hands of God. This releases me; a weight lifts off of me. We are here to experience not to worry about the future. To trust God to handle my future allows me to pursue things now that I would have been scared to try before.
What if I failed? My previous thought would have been “Oh No, I have wasted all this time, effort and money and now I don’t have any of it and I am further away from my goals.” But when you place the future in Gods hands, when you fail you think “Oh well, I’ll try something else” There is no pressure. God knows what I need and will provide.
Remember a job is not your source, God is your source.
Abundance Thinking
Posted by: Ann
October 26th, 2009 >> God, Manifesting, Physical/Material, Sacrifice, Spirituality
I have been struggling for a number of years with the idea of abundance. This has been a hard lesson to learn and I still have not learned it. Most of my life I have been in conflict with abundance and spirituality. I thought to be spiritual you had to give away all you had and live under a bridge. In striving for spirituality, I could not come to terms with loosing everything.
The thought that God is abundance and all things are His to shower on us as He wills somehow did not include me. In my religious upbringing, it was enforced to me that I was nothing, a worm, worthless and God was everything. If I was a worm to be eaten and sacrificed to a bird then I was just here to be used and God did not really care about my physical life and comfort. But this just did not make sense. Deep down I believed in God’s abundance and His concern for us but my mind would not let me accept that.
I guess I got this idea of sacrifice from Matthew 19:17-24. This is where the rich young man asked what he must do to have eternal life and Jesus replied to keep the commandments but the young man said he had done that and what else should he do. Jesus told him to sell all he had and give the money to the poor and follow him.
This conflict came to a head about 3 years ago when I had a Body Talk session and this issue came up to be dealt with. It was very interesting. I went into the session feeling that God wanted me to give everything away and live under a bridge and came out thinking and feeling I did not have to do that to be spiritual. Referring back to the Matthew passage, Jesus told the young man that if he wanted to be perfect he should sell all he had and give the money to the poor and follow him. That was if he wanted to be “perfect”. I am not perfect and don’t pretend to be. I am not at that point where I can get rid of everything and live only in God’s abundance.
God doesn’t want you to be a burden on others or society. The well known spiritual people that have given up everything to live with those they wanted to help, did so because that was how they could best help others. Some can best serve others by having resources and abundance to share.
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.” — Martin Luther King, Jr.
I have always thought it was strange that you can open a door into a dark room and the light comes flooding in instead of the darkness come flooding out. It is almost like the dark runs and hides behind objects creating shadows. Love is the same way as 1 John 4:18 states “… perfect love expels all fear.” And who has the most perfect love? God.
To Practice This Thought: When times feel dark and fearful, rest in the knowledge that God is there and He does love you.
“A glimpse is not a vision. But to a man on a mountain road by night, a glimpse of the next three feet of road may matter more than a vision of the horizon.” — C.S. Lewis
Sometimes we get scared when we cannot see what is to happen 6 months down the road, or even 1 month or next week. Sometimes we have to inch along one day at a time. We forget that God is still there and He has laid the road. Just because we cannot see the path doesn’t mean it does not exist.
To Practice this Thought: Bring God your concerns but also thank Him for showing you the next 2 feet in front of you. Rest in the knowledge that God knows the path and He will never lead you into places you should not go.
When I was 5, I was introduced to the idea of faith and the power of prayer. My mother, a devote Christian, saw it as a parenting duty to teach her children the ideas and tenets of her faith. I loved to be with my mother and that day I was in her room playing and talking while she folded the laundry. I was asking her about God and prayer I don’t know if it was because I really was interested or if I just wanted her to respond to me in a way that affirmed that I was important to her. I ended up with more than her affirmation, I received God’s.
In answer to my question my mother responded “I have a story for you. In the Bible Jesus says that if you have just a little bit of faith, you can move a mountain.” I did not know then that she was referring to Matthew 17:20. But she continue “There was a woman who read that in the Bible and then prayed for a mountain that she could see to be move. Well nothing happened. She looked up from her prayer and saw the mountain still sitting there and she said ‘I knew that would not work.’”. I left my mother’s room then and headed to the family room, mulling over what I had just heard. If you had just a little faith and believed that it would happen, it would. All sorts of possibilities opened up to me. I looked out the big sliding glass doors into our suburbia backyard. Mountains were still on my mind. “How fun it would be to have a mountain in the backyard.” I thought. But being the sensitive child that I was I carried my idea out and realized “No, that wouldn’t be good. Our neighbors house might be hurt.” So I modified my request. “What about a hill instead? No, that might hurt our two large Oak trees in the backyard. OK what about a small hill, one that would not hurt anything but be big enough for us kids to run up and down and play on.” That was it! I prayed for my small hill then ran off to play not thinking much about it.
Ten years passed and while looking out the back door at the age of 15 I realized that prayer had been answered. Many years before, when I was six my father had bought a load of sand and had it delivered in the backyard. Time passed and he never got around to spreading the sand. Grass grew on it and us kids had played, running up and down it’s sides. God does listen, even to a 5 year olds wishfull prayer.
… “I assure you, even if you had faith as small as a mustard seed you could say to this mountain,’Move from here to there,’ and it would move. Nothing would be impossible.” Matthew 17:20
One day while meditating I asked my wise counsel “What does God want from us”. Does God want us to behave a certain way or to do certain things, if so, where is free choice?
The answer I received was that all God wants is a relationship with us that’s it. No expectations, no specific actions. But this relationship is hard for some to achieve.
God is truth and if you are living in illusion, not truth, you are far away from God and can not (or it is very hard to) have a relationship with God. So the people living in hate, cruelty, anger (which are not the truth of God) have a hard time getting to know God. You must be in God’s world – Truth – to actually get to know Him. The biggest truth to maintain is being truthful to yourself.