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Unity Church of Castro Valley

Sunday Message for January 28, 2007

Consistent Formula/Consistent Results

If Unity principles work – why aren’t we experiencing everything we want in life?  Why aren’t we prosperous?  Why aren’t we healthy?  Why aren’t we happy?  Why aren’t we peaceful?

In the Apocrypha it says in (Ecclesiasticus 5:9-10) "Do not winnow in every wind, or follow every path. Stand firm for what you know, and let your speech be consistent."  If you want consistent results you must have a consistent formula for getting it.  You must practice Unity principles regularly and consistently.

I know many people with unhappy lives that flit from one modality to another.  They are grasping at straws for someone or something to fix their lives.  They will go to Unity to study, then go to a psychic to get a reading, then have their palm read, etc, etc.  Now none of these modalities by themselves are bad – that is, if you were to stick consistently with them.

GOD & MAN

So, where do we start?  If we are to have a consistent formula so that we can get consistent results – first we have to know the components of that formula.  One of the major components is God.  We start by knowing what God is, because we are not even consistent with that.  It says in (John 4:24) "God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth."  And yet, knowing this, we tend to drift back to childhood ideas of God as a big person living in the sky. When we do something bad, we tend to think of him as a stern judge waiting to punish us.  Or when things don’t go to our liking, we tend to blame God for making us miserable because we are unworthy.

So know, consistently, that God is Spirit. It is a creative energy that is the cause of all visible things. God is the invisible life and intelligence beneath all physical things.  We make the mistake of thinking of God as a person having life, intelligence, love, and power.  But, in truth, God IS life, perfect love, and infinite power.

The second component in the formula is man – you and me. And if there is anything consistent about man, it is that he consistently forgets who he really is.  Man is the highest manifestation of divine energy.  We are the fullest and most complete expression of God. God lives within every created thing as the life and cause of it. We are God, manifest into the physical world.

Jesus was who he was because he understood this. He said in (John 10:30) "The Father and I are one."  This is the absolute Truth of you, and you need to remember it.  If we knew and believed these truths about God and about ourselves we could manifest perfectly as Jesus did.  You have the power to draw on the God within for all you will ever be capable of desiring.  All you have to do is to consistently dwell in the Truth.

THINKING

So what trips us up? Our thinking. This is the third component in the formula.  We allow our thoughts to stray away from Truth.  The Truth is that there is only one Mind in the entire universe, and that is the mind of God.  We think into it, and we receive wisdom and inspiration out of it.

So the question arises, “If all the mind there is, is God, then how can I think wrong thoughts?”  Well, God in his infinite wisdom, did not want to create us a puppets.  So he made us as individuals with free will.

We are made up of Spirit, soul, and body.  Spirit is that part of us that has never changed and never will change.  But our “mortal mind” is the part of our intellect where we do conscious thinking and have free will to think what we choose.  That part of us is in a constant process of changing.  Our “mortal mind” gathers its information from the outside world through our five senses.  We think wrong because we end up believing in the outer appearances instead of going within to spiritually discern the truth.  So we must consistently go to God for the Truth of any situation, rather than be distracted by our five senses.

FAITH

The fourth component of the formula is Faith.  It says in (Hebrews 11:1) "Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen."  Consistent faith moves the substance of the things we desire, and brings these things that were not seen, into the world of evidence.  Whatever we want is in the invisible substance that surrounds us.  Faith is the power than can bring it out into actuality to us.

The thing that trips us up with faith, is that we try to understand it through our “mortal mind.”  You can’t take an intellectual inventory to determine if you have faith.  Faith must be spiritually discerned.  Over time, though, if you are consistent in your faith, your intellect will catch up and come to believe.  The more you know Truth and have faith that what you desire will manifest in your life, the more your intellect will see the connection.  It notices patterns in the world, with it’s five senses.  So it sees the pattern: Have faith – get goodies; have faith – get goodies; have faith – get goodies.  Then the intellect, which relies on outer appearances, will believe that it is a good thing to have faith.

SPIRITUAL UNDERSTANDING

In the King James Version of the Bible it says in (Proverbs 4:7) "Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom: and with all thy getting get understanding."  This is the saying that we are used to hearing – but it is explained clearer in the New Standard Version of the Bible. It says (Proverbs 4:7) "The beginning of wisdom is this: Get wisdom, and whatever else you get, get insight."  It’s telling us that wisdom is not of the intellect or something that we get out of books.  This type of knowledge is not what guarantees life, health, peace and joy.  The insight that it is talking about is a revelation of God within our heart.  Jesus was trying to impress this type of revelation on the apostles.  He often questioned them to see if they were really getting what he was teaching.  Most of the time they only had an intellectual understanding of what he said.  He wanted them to rely on their intuition and on a deeper spiritual understanding.

Once, Peter did understand what he was asking for and gave an answer from his intuition. Jesus said to him, (Matthew 16:17) "Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven."  This spiritual understanding is what we need if we expect to manifest our desires in the world.  The problem with affirmations is that they are not magic.  We can say to ourselves over and over again that we are well, prosperous, and happy.  But this is just a mental exercise, until we have a consistent, deep spiritual understanding.  At the depths of our being we have to be conscious of our oneness with God.  At the depths of our being we have to know that health, prosperity, and joy is within us and ready to spring forth at our call.  Until we consistently know this – we can’t say that we have spiritual understanding.  And until we have an intuitive awareness of this, we won’t manifest our desires in the world.

All the teachings of Jesus were to lead us to this point of awareness.  He wanted us to know our oneness with God as he did.  Because of the awareness of the time, though, he had to start at the external level and teach them to love their enemies and to do good to others.  In fact at one point he said, (John 16:12) "I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now."  And later on he told them that the Holy Spirit would be within them and would teach them all things.  It would reveal the “deep things of God” to them.  In other words, he was telling them how they could find the kingdom of heaven within themselves. Or how they could find the kingdom of love, power and life within themselves.

So if you wish to be happy, healthy, and prosperous then follow a consistent formula to get consistent results.  Know that God is Spirit and that you must worship him in spirit and truth.  Know that you are a divine manifestation of God on earth and that everything you might wish to have is already inside of you waiting to get out.  Remember to take everything within to God instead of relying on outer appearances.  Seek that deeper spiritual understanding and (Isaiah 58:10) "Then your light shall rise in the darkness and your gloom be like the noonday." And (Isaiah 58:8) "Then your light shall break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up quickly."

SCRIPTURE: Ecclesiasticus 5:9-10;John 4:24; John 10:30; Hebrews 11:1; Proverbs 4:7; Matthew 16:17;
           Isaiah 58:10; Isaiah 58:8; John 16:12

REFERENCES: Lessons in Truth H. Emilie Cady

Last updated January 28, 2007