#34 – Wisdoms of the Infinite Way

        Men, judging by human standards, complain that prayer is not answered. To benefit by prayer, it is necessary to give up all personal concepts of good. From – Consciousness Transformed

By Joel Goldsmith

Page 548

 

The Bread You Cast On The Waters

 

        Self-surrender does not mean one-half the things most people think it means. It only means surrendering the things you think you want. Whatever you are looking for in life, surrender it, because it is a barrier to the major attainment.

        The secret is this: The gifts of God are not material. That is the secret. There is no way for a human being to know the nature of God’s gifts, because the human being has only to look around to see what others have and judge by that – and that is not the nature of the kingdom of God. “My kingdom is not of this world.” One of the greatest helps in healing others is having a conscious remembrance of that when you go into prayer. Think what would happen if you could eradicate from your thought the kingdom of man and go into your meditations in the same way explorers originally went to the North and South Poles, not knowing what they would find. If you could go into your meditations knowing, “I do not know what to pray for, because I do not know what the kingdom of God is like and I do not know what God has to give,” you would have great success.

        Very often it really shocks me when I am called on for help in serious cases and I remember that God does not care two hoots. I think of all the people dying from accidents or cancer or polio, and God doing nothing about it. Yes, it shocks me, but out of that shock comes the ability to say: “I do not know what I am going to You for, but here I am.” Think how useless it would be to go to God to save someone’s life when others are dying untimely deaths. Think how horrible it would be to go to God for supply for someone, when hundreds of people are starving. If you can eliminate from your thought the idea of saving people’s lives, bringing them supply, or getting them out of prison, and can realize: “Thy grace is my sufficiency, and I do not know what thy grace is,” the miracles take place in your experience.

    It helps me to know that God is spirit, because then it frees me from all attempts to draw forth anything of a material nature from God. God is spirit, and then I have to rest on that. Whatever God’s grace is, whatever God’s gift is, it must be spiritual. It appears to us, when it comes, in some material form, but you know it is not material. It appears materially because we still have enough material concepts of the spiritual kingdom, but it is not. It is not that a sick body has been made well; it is that the body of God has been revealed. In our ignorance we say, “My body has been made well.” No! We have received God’s body. And if you could only see supply the way it is, you would know it is not money. You are still “painting spiritual gifts” with a material form. As a matter of fact the kingdom of God is incorporeal; therefore, God’s gift is incorporeal. When you say, “This is more or better matter,” you have not recognized: “This is still spiritual, in spite of appearances.” There was a man in whose heart a small valve disappeared, and the doctors said no man could live twenty-four hours without it. He lived over thirty years! Why? He was not living through a material heart, but through the grace of God, which did not need a material heart. And one of our patients who was blind has complete eyesight today – but she has no eyes. She “sees without eyes.” Why? She received God’s grace of sight – not in the form of physical eyes.

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