Prosperity Sunday #2

          This is Prosperity Sunday talk #2. I’ll be addressing the principles and process of true prosperity on the last Sunday of each month for a year.

Last month our topic was “substance.”  Substance is that everywhere-present invisible creative stuff. Substance lays wait in potential; waiting for our thinking to activate it.

Spiritual Ecomonics, page 34. “And it is an important moment in your life when you discover for yourself the great Truth that things may [appear to] happen around you, and things may [appear to] happen to you, but the only things which really count are the things that happen in you.

          The second chapter in Eric Butterworth’s book SPIRITUAL ECONOMICS is titled, “Your Fortune Begins With You” and here he shares with us the idea that everything we think about is out-pictured into our lives.  Our thinking determines how much we restrain or release the creative power within us.

          Let’s get right to it.  I need a volunteer to help me demonstrate a point.  Who would like to help?

What I’d like you to do is to climb up the ladder that’s set up outside this window and walk to the peak of the roof. Then walk to the edge of the building and step off. Would you be willing to do that?

(The answer will probably be, “No.”)

Why Not?

(“because I’d hurt myself”)

Why?

(because of gravity)

“Let me ask you this, then, “How many times would you have to step off the roof, roughly, before the odds would give you a miraculous baby-soft, landing?””

(It would never happen.)

Why not?

(Because gravity works the same way all the time)

What about luck or a miracle?

(won’t make a difference)

          That’s the point. Fundamental laws work the same way all the time otherwise they wouldn’t be laws.

Thank you. Please be seated.

There are two points I want to point out from this demonstration:

1.      Laws work the same way all the time. So if you are trying to make prosperity work for you, stop trying to make it work and get into the rhythm of it.

2.      Neither luck nor the idea of miracles has any effect on Laws.

Let’s talk a little bit about luck and miracles here: expecting that luck will help you, or work against you (“With my luck it’ll all go wrong…”), is expecting the laws of the universe to be changed for you. Seriously, are you that special?

The same is true about miracles.  In the strictest sense there is no such thing as a miracle. I realize that I may be treading on some deeply held beliefs here…

To say there are miracles is the same as to say there is luck. Both require, as Butterworth describes it, “…believing in a God that will give you something through a divine sleight-of-hand process.”

That would be spiritual naïveté.

What we think of as luck, what we think of as miracles is the dependable outworking of the law in a way we cannot see, rationalize, or understand; nothing more, nothing less.

If you want to use the words luck or miracle to describe your experience, please do; I’m not asking you to throw them out. All I am asking is that you be aware that luck and miracles are not extra-normal occurrences.

Here is what we must remember, “The idea of what we might call the rules of prosperity are extremely intriguing, but,” Butterworth says, “it really doesn’t make much sense to enable you to make changes in your life until you accept the law of consciousness.” (Butterworth)

Unity would describe it thus: “Thoughts held in mind produce after their kind.”

That’s why Butterworth titles the 2^nd chapter, “Your fortune begins with you,” because it does.

It begins with the thoughts you are holding in mind, and once you really accept that, you won’t wallow in negative or limited thinking any more than you’d choose to step off the roof of this building and expect a baby-soft landing.

In the film Evan Almighty, God tells one of the characters who had prayed with her husband for the family to have more peace, but has more chaos, “When you ask God for peace, God doesn’t give you peace, God gives us opportunities to choose peace.”

By the same token I would say that God doesn’t give us prosperity but that God gives us ideas to make prosperity in our lives.

Faith: let’s go back to that last Butterworth quote. Notice the words, “accept the law.” I believe from my own observation that saying new, affirmative words does have some effect. However, to turn the corner and fire up the prosperity “after-burners,” to really have a new experience of abundance, you have to fully invest yourself in the idea that thoughts held in mind produce after their kind.

Paul said it this way, “As you sew, so shall you reap.” And, “Conform not to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” (ROM 12:2)

Jesus counsels us that by our faith we are healed. If you hope to be healed of any experience of lack in your life, commit yourself, invest your faith in the idea that thoughts held in mind produce after their kind.  

Here is one last quote. This one from W. H. Murray, “Until one is committed there is hesitancy, the chance to drop back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative, there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too, all sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamt would have come his way.”

If I wouldn’t tempt the law of gravity and step off he roof of the church, why would you tempt the law of consciousness and engage in negative or limited thinking?

Until our next Prosperity Sunday (October 27^th) I invite you to write the statement you find at the bottom of your bulletin, “My Faith is the key to the Kingdom of Power Within Me.”

Have faith in the idea that thoughts held in mind produce after their kind, just like you have faith the Sun will appear in the east tomorrow morning, and the power of the Kingdom within you will pour down on you.