The God To Whom We Pray
Earth's crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God;
But only he who sees takes off his shoes,
The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries.
--Elizabeth Browning
OMNIPRESENCE, omniscience, omnipotence are verities of Being and are facts of existence. The Mind of God, creative Mind, is perpetually moving upon supermind ideas and through them bringing man and the universe into existence.
Creative Mind is everywhere present; yet while it is within the mind of man it lies beyond the consciousness of sense.
Omnipresence is that spiritual realm which can be penetrated only through the most highly accelerated mind action, as in prayer. Thus in unfolding this inner kingdom we are dealing with a reality beyond the ordinary comprehension of man.
To the superbly tuned mind and brain of Jesus Divine Mind was a soil eager with vibrant life and light and substance, which He used to produce the finest of materials for both character and body building.
How is the spiritual character built?
Spiritual character building is from within outward.
Spiritual character lives in man; it is what God has engraved on man's soul, ready for development through man's spiritual efforts. It is a reserve force of organized victory over carnality. 1
Man builds spiritual character by consciously functioning in God-Mind, where, laying hold of spiritual ideas, through Christ he realizes the Truth they contain; and as he thus weaves them into his soul consciousness they become a part of his very nature.
Our most effective prayers are those in which we rise above all consciousness of time and space. In this state of mind we automatically contact the Spirit of God. Indeed when we elevate our consciousness to that of Jesus Christ, the God presence becomes as meaningful to us as it was to Him. It is in this state of at-one-ment that we truly become aware of His sublimity and power.
Explain "I go to prepare a place for you."2
"I go to prepare a place for you" (John 14:3). By getting acquainted with the one Mind as integral substance, we move with it and it moves with us, and thus are established within us new spiritual states of consciousness, a "place" where we are aware of the God presence as reality.
Jesus said: "My Father is the husbandman." "I am the true vine." "Ye are the branches." "As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; so neither can ye, except ye abide in me."
How are we born anew through Christ?
"Every branch in me that beareth not fruit, he taketh away: and every branch that beareth fruit, he cleanseth it, that it may bear more fruit."
In this scripture Jesus is revealing to us that
through Him we are born anew, born of God, and that through Him we may be consciously attached to God -- as the branch is attached to the tree -- so that we may not wither and be cast away.
Through Christ we are consciously attached to the parent stem. It behooves us to retain this attachment so that we may go forward in spiritual unfoldment and be crowned with eternal life.
Many good people think that God is a person located in a place in the skies called heaven. They pray to Him for what they want and are satisfied. This is the prayer of the primitive, personal man, and it meets his needs; but this is not direct communion of the Father and the Son, the communion with reference to which Jesus said, "I and the Father are one." We must have this more intimate acquaintanceship or communion with creative Mind if we are in all ways to do His will.
How does man awaken the divine nature within him and bring about his union with God?
God presence establishes us in ideas of honesty, strength, intelligence, spiritual manhood, perfect womanhood, all needed factors in the unfoldment of the redeemed man, all builders of the indestructible body temple.
Thus we must understand the nature of the God to whom we pray and awaken in ourselves that divine nature through which we effect our union with God.
God is power: man is powerful. God is wisdom: man is wise. God is substance: man is form and shape. God is love: man is loving. God is life: man is the living. God is mind: man is the thinker. God is truth: man is truthful.
Many people pray to God in the same manner as they talk to some distant friend over the telephone. We talk too much about God, too much as though He were a third person in the God-man relationship instead of the first. It is unthinkable that the Creator should cause to exist a creation so inferior to Himself as to remove it beyond the pale of fellowship with Him. In his saner moments man knows that this is not logical or true. It is man's exalted ideas of God and his disparaging ideas of himself that have built the mental wall that separates them.
In our prayers we must meet God face to face and realize that we are getting that inner assurance which is the real answer to our petitions.
A minister, after twenty years of faith preaching, once was persuaded by a friend to try the Truth way of prayer, the way of scientific silence. Afterwards he confessed that when he touched God and found Him alive he was startled.
To Jesus the God presence was an abiding flame, a flame of life, of life everlasting that He felt in every cell and fiber of His being, making Him more and more alive, cleansing and purifying until He became every whit perfect. During our higher realizations of Truth we are often conscious of this abiding flame working in us and through us.
To Jesus God-Mind was a treasure field within Him in which could be found the fulfillment of every need He could possibly have. The Spirit of God in Him was constantly working, yes, steadily
and persistently working, to transmute every natural impulse of mind and soul into a spiritual realization of life. To Him the Spirit of God was working to satisfy His inner craving with living substance and intelligence, thus rounding out soul and body consciousness into the perfect expression of Divine Mind itself. What a glorious satisfaction God must feel in His perfect Son Jesus who acknowledged His inner consciousness as one with, and as consciously expressing, God's will and wisdom. God Spirit, God-Mind, is not in any way confined or limited; it is everywhere present. The "ether" of science corresponds to "the kingdom of the heavens" taught by Jesus. Light and other forms of radiant energy, the objective expression of the invisible spiritual forces, compose an omnipresent world more marvelous than the old-time heaven. All the forces of modern scientific discovery are but parts of "the kingdom of the heavens" described in the many parables of Jesus. Science recognizes the physical phases of the kingdom, ignores the mental, and utterly fails to comprehend the spiritual.
The announcement of Jesus to the obtuse Nicodemus, "Ye must be born anew," gives us a clue to the shortsightedness of physicists. They have not developed the faculties of mind necessary to the discernment of the spiritual intelligence that moves the physical universe, consequently they see its material aspects only. A new school of science must be developed in which the mind of the Spirit will be given first place.
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