christ jesus – Page 15 – Spirituality & Healing

The first and the last

Published on May 16, 2012 by lindseybiggsLeave a comment

Sometimes problems we are faced with seem so big: unemployment, disease, and relationship issues; Or the problems in the world: violence in Syria, Iranian nuclear power agreements, political focus more on problems than on solutions.

However, we can always pray in these situations and prayer has wonderful benefits and results.

“Prayer cannot change the Science of being, but it tends to bring us into harmony with it.” (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Eddy, p. 2)

So let’s talk about that prayer…

In first chapter of Genesis, the picture is painted of spiritual perfection, harmony, peace, and love. God created us spiritually in His/Her image and likeness. There is no sickness, no sin and no death. This is the original creation – the true, spiritual view of creation.

So whatever trouble we are facing: difficulties with a spouse or friend, a bodily dysfunction or a lack of supply to pay our bills, we can find comfort in knowing that it doesn’t belong to the original. God never created it nor included it in His creation.

In the book of Revelation, God says that He is Alpha and Omega – the first and the last – 4 different times. Here are two examples:

“I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty.” Rev 1:8

“I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give unto him that is athirst of the fountain of the water of life freely.” Rev 21:6

So not only did God create perfection, harmony, spiritual reality; He didn’t create whatever problem it is you are going through today. And since God is the first and the last – whatever circumstance we seem to be in has no lasting power or influence.

If it’s not in the beginning and not in the end, what is there to sustain it? Nothing. You can be totally and completely free right now.

True love

Published on April 19, 2012 by lindseybiggsLeave a comment

Last night, as I was going to bed, I was praying to know how to “love my neighbor” better.

The answer that came to me is to love my neighbor (and myself) spiritually.

“In patient obedience to a patient God, let us labor to dissolve with the universal solvent of Love the adamant of error, — self-will, self-justification, and self-love, — which wars against spirituality and is the law of sin and death.” (Eddy, Science and Health, p. 242)

Self-will (or human wilfulness), self-justification (or feeling the need to justify what you are doing perhaps because it isn’t right) and self-love are actually the opposite of Love, divine, true Love.

A well-known, and probably the best written statement on Love comes from I Corinthians 13:

“If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. For now we see in a mirror, dimly,but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.” (New Revised Standard Version)

I think of this wonderful statement of love as a comparison between self-love (thinking we are the best and indulging our material personality) versus spiritual love, the Love which is God itself.

We have all felt moved, touched or inspired by Love, I’m sure. Perhaps it was in helping a friend, saying just the right thing that meant so much to someone, or in a healing we had. As we erase the “adamant of error” from our consciousness we become lighter, clearer and a better transparency for divine Love, the love that heals, saves and uplifts.

Unity is our natural state of being

Published on April 13, 2012 by lindseybiggsLeave a comment

This morning I was praying and awakening to a spiritual sense of unity.
Unity is the natural state to all of us. We are united by the very Source of our being.
So any sense, or temptation, of discord and division is an illusion.
These temptations or divisiveness can only scratch the surface. It can never touch the depth of being or change the spiritual reality of who we all are. I find great comfort in this and it helps me see clearly through these illusions.

Christ Jesus said, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.”¹

I thought this Beatitude meant to avoid conflict; we’ve all known or been one of those people who avoid conflict, or are more passive. But actually this Beatitude now means to me that even in the face of conflict we are seeing the real depth of being, the true spiritual reality or substance that comes from our Source, is not conflicted and is totally at peace. This change in consciousness is powerful. It reminds me of the story in the Bible where Jesus is attacked by an angry mob. Their intention is to push him over a cliff. The Bible says:

“All the people in the synagogue were furious when they heard this. They got up, drove him out of the town, and took him to the brow of the hill on which the town was built, in order to throw him off the cliff. But he walked right through the crowd and went on his way.”²

Isn’t this true peace? Seeing anything that presents a lie of discord, anger, hatred is not true, is not from Deity and therefore has no power? Jesus didn’t react, and he didn’t allow this incident to corrupt his view of God’s spiritual image and likeness. He recognized it for what it was: the “carnal mind”.

“The mind governed by the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so.”³

So today I am praying about the deep unity of being; the unity of all of us. And recognizing that there is no power which can divide or separate us from one another.

_________________________

¹NIV The Bible, Matthew 5:9
² NIV The Bible, Luke 4:28-30
³ NIV The Bible, Romans 8:7