WITNESS of JESUS

Posted on April 15, 2017 by thoughtsmjdisler

“It is God, as we see Him in Christ, who satisfies the longings of the human heart, God the loving Father, whose passionate tender care for the least and most insignificant makes the burden of life supportable–brings faith and hope to man.”

“If the witness of Jesus means anything, it means that God is not unrelated and impersonal, but that He is in spiritual contact with men, intelligible like the universe to human consciousness, that His love is not intangible but real, and corresponds to human love; that His character is like our character but pure and perfect, that He knows and understands us and that we can know and understand Him.”

 – John Wilhelm Rowntree, “May We Believe in God?,” Essays and Addresses,
edited by Joshua Rowntree, 1906.

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INTELLIGENCE of the UNIVERSE

Posted on April 11, 2017 by thoughtsmjdisler

“We are continually amazed and delighted that God will talk to us, that He loves us, that the guiding Intelligence of the Universe really cares for our small concerns. His lavishness overwhelms us and His humility humbles us. For as nothing is too great for Him, so nothing is too small.”

“Every day of my life proves this to be an actual fact. For on the days when I am in harmony with God, Who is love, all things both great and small seem to work together for my good. My work is done easily and with power and my decisions are quick and unerring. Everything ‘clicks,’ in other words. But when I fall into annoyance and irritation, nothing ‘clicks.’ I work slowly, make careless decisions and waste time generally.”

 – Agnes Sanford, The Healing Light, 1947.

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TO PERFECT in SPACE-TIME

Posted on April 6, 2017 by thoughtsmjdisler

The word “perfect” can be descriptive (adjective) or active (verb). In spiritual life, the verb is more accurate, less final, less subject to the opinion of another person rather than the life process of commitment, prayer, and guidance by the Almighty. “Perfection as process” rather than finality is an essential concept for those who have chosen God as revealed by Christ Jesus as their one and only life resource. The Door is then always open, the vista one of hope, encouragement, joy, expectation.                                       – mjd

“Here where we live, in a space-time world, the perfect can be revealed only in process. The eternal lives and is expressed only in unending mutability. The infinite is both in and beyond the finite. The unseen is immanent in the seen. The ‘more yet’ hovers on the edge of every attainment. … What ought to be is always running ahead of what is. The heavenly vision of a beyond will not let us rest in the good of here and now. To be a moral person at all is to be self-transcendent, which means ‘finite-infinite.’ No one can appreciate music who does not rise above the seriatim notes and enjoy them together in a time-transcending now, which is a gentle breaking in of eternity into our time-world.”

– Rufus Jones, Pathways to the Reality of God, 1931.

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DIVINE PRESENCE

Posted on April 3, 2017 by thoughtsmjdisler

“There are moments when one stops arguing and proving and finds himself enveloped by a Life that floods into him and restores him with health and joy. … Mysticism may, and, I think, should stand for that type of experience in which a person feels an overmastering conviction that actual contact is attained with a divine, life-giving, joy-bringing Presence.”

“The most characteristic aspect of the experience is the consciousness of what I have called divine Presence, or, at least, the consciousness of finding a new order of environment, in which the inner spirit feels at home. … It is a moment of fusion like that which comes in the enjoyment of great music or of surpassing beauty or sublimity, or of perfect love.…The usual divergent and conflicting forces in us are overcome.…The radiations and centrifugal tendencies of the inner life vanish in an extraordinary state of integration, in which intellect and emotion and will-purpose are present in undifferentiated union.”

Rufus Jones, Pathways to the Reality of God, 1931.

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HEALING POWER

Posted on March 20, 2017 by thoughtsmjdisler

“Love is essentially social. It is the expression of a spiritual force, radiating from a personal centre, and having its motive in persons. If then we believe that God is love, we believe not in a passive God, indifferent to human suffering and need, but in a personal God who cares for every individual soul, who is ever in the intensity of His sympathy seeking to make Himself known, to make His redeeming and healing power felt.”

 – John Wilhelm Rowntree, “God in Christ–II. The Prodigal Son,”
Essays and Addresses, 1906

1: Then calling together His twelve disciples, He [Jesus] gave them power over unclean spirits, so that they might cast them out, as well as cure every kind of mental disease
and all sickness.
5a: Jesus sent out these twelve, giving them these instructions:…
7-8: As you travel, proclaim the fact that the Kingdom of Heaven is approaching.
Restore the feeble, cure the lepers, cast out demons; you have received freely, give freely.

 – Matthew 10:1; 5a; 7-8
Ferrar Fenton, The New Testament in Modern English, 1906.

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DIVINE PLAN

Posted on March 13, 2017 by thoughtsmjdisler

“We should all build up in consciousness a picture of peace, harmony and beauty and some day it will push itself into visibility. The Divine Idea of your life often flashes across your consciousness as something too good to be true. … We are fully equipped for the Divine Plan of our lives.”

“We can only be a success in a line which interests us greatly… The first start toward success is to be glad you are yourself.”

“To enjoy trusting God, means to be happy in following your intuitive leads.”

– Florence Scovel Shinn, The Power of the Spoken Word, 1945

Blessed are those who find wisdom, those who gain understanding.
Her ways are highways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace.
– Proverbs 3:13 & 17

Delight thyself also in the Lord and He shall give thee the desires of thine heart.
– Psalm 34:4

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ETERNAL SPIRIT

Posted on March 6, 2017 by thoughtsmjdisler

“The God of the New Testament is the eternal Spirit, God of no special nation and of no chosen race, accessible everywhere to every soul without requirement of special ritual or legalistic act, who, being spirit, can be worshiped only in spirit, who being love, dwells wherever love dwells, and who supremely has shined in the face of Jesus Christ.”

– Harry Emerson Fosdick, A Guide to Understanding the Bible, 1938

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GOD’S PLAN

Posted on March 2, 2017 by thoughtsmjdisler

“When a man can say ‘I desire only that which God desires for me,’ his false desires fade from the consciousness, and a new set of blueprints is given him by the Master Architect, the God within. God’s plan for each man transcends the limitation of the reasoning mind…”

“Rest in the Lord and wait patiently [Psalm 37:7]. Trust also in him, and he will bring it to pass [Psalm 37:5]”

 – Florence Scovel Shinn, The Game of Life and How to Play It, 1925
from The Complete Works of Florence Scovel Shinn, Dover Publications, 2010.

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SPIRITUAL MILK

Posted on February 26, 2017 by thoughtsmjdisler

“In I Peter 2:2 we read, ‘As newborn babes, long for the spiritual milk which is without guile, that ye may grow thereby unto salvation.’ Those who are seeking and receiving spiritual understanding are born anew every day, and every day the milk of the spiritual word continues to feed and nourish the soul.”

“God works in the stillness. As man comes into the presence of God with his prayer in the form of an affirmation of Truth, holding the prayer steadily in mind and consciously unifying his mind with the mind of God, he is aware only of the soundlessness of God’s word as it weaves itself in and out through the whole soul and body consciousness, illumining, redeeming, and restoring him according to his faith and trust, according to his strength and power to receive.”

 – Charles and Cora Fillmore, Teach Us to Pray, 1941.

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GOD WITHIN

Posted on February 22, 2017 by thoughtsmjdisler

“The master key to the secret of life is prayer. Through prayer we may respond to God’s search for us. Prayer is not primarily asking for something; rather, it is listening to the voice of God. It is still; it is being quiet; it is becoming aware of God–the God who guides the stars in their courses. In its deepest meaning, it is becoming aware of the God within, becoming so receptive that the real self, the child of God, can be set free.”

– Roy A. Burkhart, The Secret of Life, 1950.

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