Prosperity Sundy 9 of 12

Today is Prosperity Sunday #9. On the last Sunday of each month we are reviewing chapters from the book Spiritual Economics: The Principles and Process of True Prosperity.

The title of today’s chapter is “The Money Enigma”

The Webster’s Dictionary tells us that an enigma is something that is hard to understand or explain. In the past this may have been true. I say, “No longer.”

The University of Michigan conducted a study about how money affected people’s lives. Three findings below stood out above all the rest:

1. What do people worry about most? Money

2. What makes people most happy? Money

3. What makes people the unhappiest? Money

Our thinking, feeling, and actions around money have a direct effect on our prosperity. Money represents different things to different people and is clouded with “not enough” thinking. Money is nothing more than a piece of paper that allows us to trade it for the things in life that we think we want or need. As a monetary exchange, it is indispensable, but when we allow it to become our obsession, it drains us mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. As long as you have impressed on your money the thought of insufficiency, it will continue to misrepresent you in your time of need. But if you contently infuse your money with the idea of abundance, it will begin to work for you in positive ways.

Money is a symbol of the currency or flow of universal substance. How we think, feel and interact around money can become the object of life’s search for meaning.

I invite you to resolve for yourself that money will always be a symbol of abundance, not limitation, not the goal of your life. Doing this will firmly establish balance in your spiritual well-being and will allow you to experience life more abundantly.

          Here I have a jar of clear, clean water. For the purposes of this demonstration, this water represents the pure invisible substance all around us.

          I also have here some green food coloring which represents our thoughts.

If I want to “activate” this water to produce some green for me, what do I have to do?

Yes! I have to put green into the water.

I’m sure you see the metaphor here. In order for the water to produce some green for me I have to g i v e  s o m e t h i n g  t o  i t.  If I give green to the invisible, the invisible returns green to me.

If I sit solemnly and beseech the water to give me green, will it?

If I yell and cry and wail, “If you really loved me you’d give me green,” will that that water produce green for me?

If I mope around and cry about my lack of green; if I say, “I think I’ve been forgotten,” or “I’m not deserving,” will that will guilt, or entice, the water to give me green?

The demonstration here is an important reminder that what we have to put something in to get something out. “As you sew, so shall you reap!” The invisible thinking we put into invisible substance shows up for us to see.

If you were asked, “how much money do you make each week?” your reply may well be, “I only make “X” amount a week.” But why only? It is a self-inventory term that is commonly used, but it invariably represents limitation. Question: How much money do you have on you right now? Answer: “Only $8.14.” Again, why the only? As long as this “onlyness” consciousness is in any way identified with your money, you are depreciating it.

“Thoughts held in mind produce after their kind… As you sew, so shall you reap.”

I invite you to reach into your pocket or purse and pull out a bill. Any denomination will do. If you aren’t carrying any bills, don’t go negative in your mind… just follow along in your mind’s eye.

There is a black side and a green side to our bills. Let’s look at the green side. What do you see in the center of this bill?

“In God We Trust.”

Here is this statement of All-ness. Now, perhaps, we can think of money in a more expansive way. Where before we might have been thinking, “This is only a dollar.”(i.e. diminishing thinking) Now, maybe we can see it this way, “This is worth a full dollar!” (i.e. fullness thinking)

If you really believe in as you sew, so shall you reap, which thinking do you want to sew into the invisible creative substance all around you, diminishing thinking or fullness thinking?

Fill in the blank for me, 1 Timothy 6:10, “For the love of money is…?”

Most people will say just what most of you here today said, “For the love of money is the root of evil” but the actual passage is just a little different and I think it’s important to know, “For the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil.”

          If we can remember, as Butterwoth writes on page 148, “the right attitude towards money is the root of all kinds of prosperity.”!

          The key to any condition of lack is spiritual principle. Poverty is not corrected by dollars, but by the non-material creative substance that is all around us.

          Charles Fillmore, co-founder of Unity with his wife Myrtle, has this to say,  “Watch your thoughts when you are handling your money, because your money is attached, through your mind, to the source of all substance and all money. When you think of your money, which is visible, as something directly attached to an invisible source – that is giving or withholding according to your thought – you have the key to all riches and all lack.”

You are only as rich as you think you are and the only poverty is of the mind. So you can begin to do something about your financial position in life (or any other position in life) by reshaping your attitudes about what you think about.

Wealth is in ideas and ideas can be controlled through the discipline of mind.

You are not a victim of life, you are a co-creator with God.

Imagine if God were hiring (let’s say the ad read, “Hiring in all areas”) and you applied for a job… and here’s God showing you around Her factory when She comes to a set of double doors leading into a room. Above the doors is a sign that reads “Creation Department.” In you go and God says to you, “Y’know what, I really need some help. I’m could use a co-creator. Would you be willing to co-create with me?”

If you think of that in those terms, it’s kinda cool. Can you see yourself saying to your friends, “Yeah I was up at God’s place the other day and She was showing me around, and when we got to the Creation Department, God says to me, “I really need someone to co-ceate with me. Would you be willing to do that?”

Well, that’s already the case. You’re a co-creator with God, and the good thing (#1) is, you’re never out of a job… and (#2) you can create any life you want for yourself by disciplining your mind to move away from “only-ness thinking” to “Fullness thinking.”

Lastly, count on me to always support you in this; in fact if anyone ever mentions your name to me I will be happy to tell them, “You’re full of it.”