Peace in Congo, Afghanistan, Sudan

Peace. Is it a distant concept?

Well, maybe. I know our lives are busy, but for the last several years a civil war has been raging in the central African country of Congo. In this civil war, most of the victims are women and children. What should your response be? Should it be indifference or should you bless everyone involved in the conflict? Jesus Christ believed that you should bless our enemies. That's the way he lived and his life and theology changed the world. If you follow Jesus, then Congo, or Sudan or Afghanistan is a great opportunity to bless everyone involved in wars in these countries. What I didn't realize until recently is how much the soldiers perpetrating violence need blessing. We don't bless them in their violence of course. We bless them in their desire to do right, their humanitarianism, their care for the weak. We bless them in their soberness.

The first time I started praying for Congo, I listened to God for ideas. And God answered right away and said to pray about drunkenness, including being drunk with power and the love of violence.

Blessing everyone involved in a conflict is powerful. How can I say that? Because in life we are dealing with ideas. In war, the idea is there are tribal differences, there are many minds at war with each other, there are limited resources, there's bad blood, bad history, enraged thinking. That's where God and Christ come in. Jesus proved the power of loving your enemies by blessing and loving even on the cross. This Love overcame death. God is divine Love, which is infinite Love. Infinite means "fills all space."

You end war by not ignoring it. You end war, not by taking sides, but by living, praying and knowing that God, infinite Love is everywhere and all powerful. You end war by blessing everyone including the soldiers. When you do that, you are practicing the First Commandment (Exodus 20:3) that there are no other gods (powers or authority) besides Love.

I bless you all as children of the one God, divine Love. I bless all those trapped by war and all those waging war as children of God.

Mary Baker Eddy, an American woman who discovered the laws of God, which she named Christian Science, said this:

"One infinite God, good, unifies men and nations; constitutes the brotherhood of man; ends wars; fulfils the Scripture, "Love thy neighbor as thyself;" annihilates pagan and Christian idolatry, — whatever is wrong in social, civil, criminal, political, and religious codes; equalizes the sexes; annuls the curse on man, and leaves nothing that can sin, suffer, be punished or destroyed."

The Christ Heals

The Christ heals! Great, what is Christ?

Christ is the Messiah. Christ Jesus was Christ.

Christ was Jesus' identity, his title. The Bible says that we have the mind of Christ. (I Cor 2:16) What it is saying is that we must think like Jesus, act like Jesus.

The Science of Christ better known as Christian Science reveals that Christ is the true idea of God, destroying evil. I have found that listening to God and reading the Bible and a book named Science and Health, there is more and more to learn about Christ. It seems to be an almost infinite topic.

God is like the Sun and Christ is like all the Sun's rays. Without the sunrays, what could you know about the Sun? Nothing!

Therefore, Christ is everything you can know about God. Everything.

Christ is the complete manifestation of Almighty God-good.

Christ is the force of good destroying and eliminating evil.

Christ is the force of good connecting you with God, impelling you moment by moment to do good, to be good, to think good.

Christ is Immanuel - God with us.

Christ is the Comforter - God's permanent healing presence.

Christ is the law of God, the law of Love.

Christ is God's action, God's activity. Christ then is ever-active, good that is ever flowing, moving, being.

Christ is the Son of God, like Jesus was. Christ is therefore the manhood that Jesus' represented. As the child of God, Christ is really your true Godlike identity.

Christ is the love of God.

God is my employer, Christ is who manages me.

Christ is the sum total of everything that is God. It is not God Himself, but it is everything that God causes to be.

Christ, being EVERYTHING that is true, HEALS!

-> Christ connects you to God, so it connects you to others. In the past few months, praying daily about Christ, I have seen many relationships at work improve substantially. Where there used to be barriers, there is frienship. Where there used to be bitterness, there is gratitude.

Infinite Good

Greetings fellow traveler. God-good is infinite good. Wow, I am in awe of the word infinite. I have pondered it a lot trying over time to gain a better appreciation of what it means. At first I thought of it as just infinite in amplitude. But, it is more than that. Infinite is unlimited in space, location and presence. And, what about quality? Can't something be perfectly good? And, the one that I am pondering this morning is infinite expression. In Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, there is a passage that says, "All is infinite Mind, and its infinite manifestation." I guess that really struck me as never before as a wonderful revelation. Because God-good is infinite, He/She must be manifested and this manifestation must be infinite.

I think this is very helpful to the human situation. It tells us that where we perceive a lack of health and love, there is actually the infinite manifestation of Love and Mind (intelligence). This manifestation, being infinite, overwhelms our feeble sense of lack and destroys it. We are truly in the presence of God-good. We are truly experiencing that good right now. We can recognize that fact and enjoy the benefits.

With gratitude for infinite goodness and the presence of that goodness,

Dan

Love Yourself

Jesus commanded us to love our neighbor as ourselves. He said to follow his commandments and follow him.

God loves us. We must therefore love ourselves. We must love ourselves? Does that sound odd? I am not talking about self-love, which does so much evil. I am talking about loving your true self, the child of God. I am talking about embracing your true self, your Christly self.

When you love that Christly self, you are opening your heart to mercy and redemption. If you don't, you are refusing good. It's a form of self-hatred. Let's remove the label of "I don't love myself" and be free!

Have a mighty day!

Certainty of Good

Today was precious. The pressure fell away as I realized that I am not the do-er and you are not the do-er. There is only on do-er, that is the I AM.

Infinite good is the I AM. And as He/She is I AM -- you are. What ever I AM is, you possess! That means that since God is Love, you are the individual expression of infinite Love. You are not seeking love, hoping for love. You are not seeking healing, hoping for healing. You have them, you are them. They flow to you and from you. God is not out there, but HERE. Therefore you cannot be separated from God.

Expect healing and have a wonderful day!

A New Perspective on Healing

As a child of God, healing is your original state, your current state, your permanent state. You are healed. The human ego must give up its plaintive fairy tale. So you are not returning to wellness, are you? The son/daughter of God is whole. You are whole of the belief of plague, the belief that you have been wounded, that there are unavoidable evils, incurable diseases. You are whole. The son/daughter of God is healed, and the human MUST come into line with that grand fact of Spirit.

You cannot be held back by fears, or opinions. Not even your own!!! The Christ present is present.

By Gunnar Wennerberg
They go in Thy strength, and they speak in Thy name,
With power of Thy promise forth faring,
AND DURING THE BATTLE VICTORY CLAIM, —
Their trust in Thy truth is their daring,
Salvation to all men declaring.

Stressed?

Are you feeling stressed? That feeling seems to be going around. Is it because we have too much to do? Or, is it because we are just stressed?

I do not have the answers to these questions. However, I know that Jesus calmed the storm by saying, "Peace, Be Still!" I pray that simple prayer regularly for myself, our world, and for people that call me seeking healing.

When I pray, "Peace, be still!" what I am saying is this:

God, what are you seeing? OH! You are seeing peace? wonderful, soothing peace? Wow, I see it now. I see that this is not just mere comfort. I am yielding to the divine view, the divine reality. This world is not tied in knots. It is not at war. It is in accord with You. It is heaven. [Jesus said, the kingdom of heaven is at hand. He meant that it is not far off. It can and should be experienced now.] Thank you, Father-Mother God. Now, I am at peace, too.

God bless you everyone.

You are Beautiful

It is wonderful to be alive. Today I am grateful for you. Perhaps I haven't met you, but I know that you are wonderful and beautiful.

How can I know you if I've never met you and we haven't talked before? Allow me to explain. I appreciate you, because you are the reflection of God-good. Here's an example of what I mean.

A few weeks ago, a coworker was complaining that our programmer was being obstinate. I told my coworker that the programmer was a nice person, he's adopted two boys out of the foster children program. She said, "Well, I don't know [the programmer] like you do." I told her that I could appreciate people without getting to know them. She bristled at that thought, so I gave her the following example.

Divine Spirit moved me to talk to a woman at work that I had not talked to before and ask her what job she would like. [The Spirit does ask you to move outside your comfort zone sometimes.] I also heard from Spirit that she's going to say she doesn't know, but she wants to be a teacher. This woman replied, "I just want a good job, I guess." I asked her what she would really like to do, what's her calling? She said that in high school she wanted to be an art teacher. We talked briefly about what is holding her back - fear. (I told her that when she's ready, I could help her get rid of the fear.)

How could I appreciate this woman before I knew her? Simple. I know what God is like. I know that God expresses in you His beautiful lasting qualities. I understand that you have those qualities by reflection.

I love you and appreciate you, even if we have never met.

World Out of Control?

It is in my heart to pray for our world this morning. God governs. God being all good, governs everything harmoniously. Anything out of control is a denial to God. So, one or the other is not true. Material sense does not comprehend how anything in front of it is not true. Well, material sense often believes it's own illusions. Man is the likeness of God (Gen. 1.). God is not the likeness of man/material sense.

God-good governs. Period. Therefore nothing is out of control. To God, His spiritual sense, and his spiritual ideas all is harmonious. On this basis Christ Jesus healed. He had a different vision.

Today, I am declaring that God is in control. He is in control of me, my future, the Earth's future, Iraq's future (and present!), Iran, North Korea. If I don't do that, I'm saying that evil gets to choose when good is in charge and when it's not. It's a boaster. Jesus called it "a liar and the father of it."

Grace Heals

What do we have to do to be healed? Do we have to pray? Do we have to be good? Do we have to realize the Truth? I heard someone say, "Jesus said, 'You shall know the Truth, and the Truth shall make you free.' He didn't say your 'knowing of the truth' shall make you free."

What this tells me is it's God's grace that heals. We need to yield up our guilt that we haven't lived up to God's expectation and that is what's holding up healing. According to Genesis 1, you and I were made as God's like-ness, His image.

Jesus told us that the kingdom of heaven we are searching for is "within us." It's here, it's Immanuel, or God with us.

When a disease has gone on for a long time, we feel tempted to feel discouraged or frustrated. That's understandable, but it also points out that maybe we are regarding disease as a reality, even though God, the Creator, didn't make it. Let's look at it as a "presentation" of evil; it's insubstantial. For example, if you go to a cineplex and you accidentally walk into the wrong theater, do you try and heal that wrong picture? No, you walk out (you repent) and go to the proper theater. With the correct mental image before thought there is healing.

What is healing. It's God with us, it's wholeness. But, the root of the word heal is to adore. So, in obedience to Christ Jesus' command to "Heal the sick.", we can adore the sick! And, God's love for us is so great, it's grace. God loves you as you are. "Come as you are!" This healing grace is evidenced in our lives by the expression of gratitude, wholeness, progress, and by love.

Simply put, let go of the burden of guilt that you need to change to be healed. Yield to the truth that you are God's child, made perfect in His image. You are LOVED!