God’s Continuous Upliftment

This service was delivered on August 11, 2013

Does anyone know who invented radar?  It was, with the help of others, a Scotsman, Sir Robert Watson-Watt. In 1952, Watson-Watt was awarded $140,000, the highest award ever made for a wartime invention. Later in life while driving in Canada, he was arrested for speeding, caught in a radar trap.

He wrote a piece of poetry about it titled “Rough Justice.” Here is a portion of it:

 

Pity Sir Robert Watson-Watt
          Strange target of his radar plot.
          And thus with others I could mention,
          A victim of his own invention.

 

Now there’s a great idea to contemplate for ourselves; are we a victim of our own invention? A victim of our life, or the beneficiary of good in our life?

When you got up, this morning, you were an inventor. You invented who you would be in this new day. No outer circumstance, nothing outside of you, determined what it was going to be. It was you, inside of yourself. You opened your eyes, put your feet on the floor, and you started inventing.

And then you started to think about this week, and the master inventor inside of you thought about how this week was going to be. Was it going to be hellish or was it going to be heaven? Every moment inside of ourselves, we invent.

The point here is: we make our own lives.

The question is: will you be a victim of our own invention, or will you bask in the glory of it?

We are not just a Sunday morning religion. It is my joyous job to be here, every Sunday, and to share my insights based upon my thinking, the choices I’ve made and the outcome of those choices much of which is based upon the teachings that Jesus offers on how to live life on Sunday, and Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday.

You have the rest of the day and a whole new week ahead of you – in fact, a whole new life to be designed as you choose. Time is a gift when we use it properly.  

What are you going to invent in your life with this power you possess? Is your life going to continue in a downward spiral, if that’s the way it’s going? Or is this morning, right now, going to be the turning point where you climb up and out and stay up with God's lifting help, forever and ever?

Let me tell you a story about a man that was in a downward spiral. He was a baking powder salesman, many years ago. No matter how hard he tried, the sales of baking powder were going down and down and down. Well, he had the same daily challenges that we have. He had a couple of kids, a wife, and bills that needed to be paid. But how could they be paid if baking powder wasn’t selling?

He prayed for ideas. He said, “What will make this baking powder sell?” So he got the idea that what he needed to do was to give a premium with the
baking powder. You buy baking powder and you get chewing gum. Well, everyone loved the chewing gum. They loved the chewing gum and nobody wanted the baking powder.

The man got more and more depressed. He wondered, “What am I to do?” He hit bottom. He got on his knees and prayed to God for new ideas. (When you hit bottom do you pray… ask for guidance… or keep on fighting and scrapping in order to try and make your way out?) This message came to him: “The new ideas are staring you right in the face.” He got the idea to drop the baking powder and start selling the gum. His name was William Wrigley.

Notice that Mr. Wrigley asked again… and again he was given help. God never gives up on us!

Everybody has been in a downtime sometime in their life. The problem is, as a child of God, deciding to stay in that downtime instead of getting yourself up and out, once and for all. God never experiences a downtime, and when you are with God, you are always in store for greater things.

Many years ago, a man was in a severe down period in his life. He was a success at a career that he didn’t like, that he had thought before… was everything that he ever wanted in his life, and then he found out that it wasn’t. He wondered, “What in the world am I going to do with my life?” And that is often something that is very distressing to a man or a woman when they get in that situation. He was burned out.  He was depressed.

He began to realize that when he turned to God, he would begin to feel good for a while, and then he would slip back into worrying. He would slip back into distress almost without realizing it. It is almost as if a spring was on his back. He would walk towards God, and then without realizing it, the minute he let his awareness down, he would spring back into his worries about a seeming mountain of problems in front of him.

He thought to himself: “How crazy. It is almost as if the negativity had a magnetic pull on me.” He wondered, “Why do I keep doing this?” He would pray, and he said, “When I was praying I felt great, but then I would slip back. Then, after worrying and having great anxiety for a while in my mind, I would wake up again and say, “What in the world am I doing?”

Maybe you are like this, right now, in your life. This man started to realize that he was king over his own mind; his mind could not rule over him unless he let it run wild. He could make the choices of what he would experience, of what he was going to invent in his day.

He decided that if I am going to have a magnetic pull sucking me back to something, why not reverse it and have the magnetic pull me back to God
awareness. Instead of doing it consciously, he prayed would be able to automatically go into prayer and automatically feel good again, without even realizing what he had done.

The magnetic pull to negativity can be reversed inside of you. If you are in a downward spiral right now, I want to read you something that greatly helped this man when he read it. It is from a book entitled, “What Are You?” by Imelda Shanklin.

“You will have the right kind of confidence in yourself when you have developed a consciousness of your identity with God and God’s identity with you. Encompass yourself with the certainty of God.” (my emphasis)

Something happened to this man. He said, “I cannot even do it justice, now, trying to explain it to you.” He read, “Encompass yourself with the certainty of God,” He thought, “What a beautiful statement.”

Imagine if you, this minute, would encompass yourself with the certainty of God, knowing that your problems are not your problems alone, that you are encompassed in the certainty of God; encompassed, not separated.

You are encompassed in God - completely sealed in God’s protection and God’s good and God’s love. Maintain that awareness and your life will change.

I cannot help but think that a wise and loving Creator must extend continuous permanent good to It’s offspring.” I believe that God does this; and this same power lies in you to possess and mold your thoughts so that it (the goodness, the love, the peace, the prosperity) can come through.

So, today, as you sit here, and in the constant stream of moments to come, inventing this week that is going to be ahead of you, decide right now, that this is going to be the best week that you have ever experienced in your life. This week. It does not matter what is outside of you or had been going on inside of you, because you have the power to remember and stay aware of being encompassed by God. This is the time, right now. And you are going to invent the best week for yourself.

Next week we’ll talk about what keeps us in negativity and how to allow “positive invention” to flow.