1952 New Washington Series
Joel S. Goldsmith
tape 6B – 8th Chapter Romans

We don’t know what to pray for or how to pray, therefore, there is only one righteous prayer. There’s only one right form of prayer, and that is not to pray for any thing or any circumstance or any condition—merely to pray for an awakening, pray for light, pray for a consciousness of the presence and power of God, then are we led by the Spirit of God. Then can we say the Spirit of God dwells in us because we have sought the Spirit of God. We have searched, we’ve devoted time, energy, thought to the realization of the presence of God in us, and now having attained at least some measure of that mind which was also in Christ Jesus, now we find that the Spirit of God dwells in us.

And then what happens? That Spirit of God in us goes before us to make the crooked places straight. That Spirit of God that dwells in us now becomes the healing Christ. It quickens also; It heals also our mortal bodies, these very frames. What does? This realization, this consciousness of the presence of God: It becomes the healing Christ in our consciousness. It becomes the divine Presence that makes the crooked places straight. As a matter of fact It goes before us to prepare a place for us. It goes before us to prepare parking places for us, and It goes before us to prepare homes for us and companions for us and businesses for us and capital for us and all of the things necessary to our unfoldment. But if we go seeking them, if we go praying for them, we miss them. We must find the kingdom of God and let It go before us and not only secure these things for us but teach us how to pray.

Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities: for we know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us. The Spirit itself prays for us, within us, and then when the Spirit prays for our good, at least it knows what to pray for, what we have need of, what is necessary for our unfoldment, for our spiritual development, for our spiritual progress. One of the reasons for failure, where we have failure in our metaphysical work, is that we are turning to God, which is Spirit, and expecting it to produce material demonstration, and that is something that God Itself cannot do. And so, unless we give up this idea of seeking things, and of using God, or using Spirit for the purpose of increasing our present human life and its harmonies, we must make shipwreck of our spiritual journey. There’s only one way to be on the spiritual path and to attain, and that is to have one goal, and that goal the realization of God or the kingdom of heaven.

That is why the Master gave us those passages that we all know so well now. Take no thought what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink, or wherewithal ye shall be clothed…. As long as you are praying for those things, you are praying amiss. Your heavenly Father knoweth that you have need of these things, then what you have to do is make your contact with the presence of God, with the power of God, and then It does the work. It even knows what to pray for and how to pray. That is why, as you go on in our work, you learn ultimately that treatment or the forms of prayer as we formerly knew them, are merely indulged for the purpose of lifting our own consciousness to a higher altitude, that we do not expect those treatments to produce the good for us. We merely expect them to lift us into an altitude where we can listen for the still small voice, where we can become receptive to the Spirit making intercession within us.

I have brought this out to you before that it isn’t really we who pray, it’s God who prays in us, and we become aware of that word of truth that is uttered in our ear. We become aware of God’s word, and God’s word is quick and sharp and powerful. God’s word is really a healing agency, but remember, God’s thoughts are not your thoughts. God’s ways are not your ways, and so our thoughts are not going to be spiritual healing thoughts, even when they’re good thoughts, even when they’re right thoughts, they still have no spiritual healing power. The spiritual healing power comes only from God.

Even one so well advanced as the Master Christ Jesus could say, “I can of my own self do nothing. It’s the Father within me that doeth the works.” And so today we must repeat that there are no thoughts that you or I could think that will heal anybody, even right thoughts or good thoughts. There are no thoughts that we could think that would enrich anybody, but the ability to become receptive to the voice of God within us—ah, there is your spiritual power, and of course, that cannot come while you are entertaining in your thought some idea of getting some “thing” from or through God. The only thing we can get from God is God, and the only thing we can get through God is God. Having God, however we have all, but to attempt to get any thing separate and apart from God must result in failure.

Now, in our last class work here, while on this subject of prayer, one of the points brought out was this: that harmony or healing is the direct result of the activity of truth in your consciousness, in individual consciousness, in your practitioner’s consciousness. It doesn’t make any difference who it is, but the activity of truth does the work. God is no respecter of persons, and it wasn’t Jesus that healed, or the disciples, it was the activity of truth in the consciousness of Jesus that became the law unto his patients. So it is in our work today, the activity of truth in the consciousness of the practitioner becomes the law of health and harmony unto the patient. Now the activity of truth in consciousness does not necessarily mean statements of truth that you remember or statements of truth that you read or quote. That is not necessarily the activity of truth in your consciousness.

It is true that as you learn the truth, the real truth, the spiritual truth about God and God’s creation, and as you make those truths your own, and think of them, ponder them, meditate upon them within you, that leads to an elevated state of consciousness in which the activity of truth appears in your consciousness, that is the activity of God appears in your consciousness. Then the words that you speak, the words that you read, the words that you study are merely, you might say, stepladders helping you to reach an elevation of thought or consciousness in which the still small voice can reach you.

And so as we take a passage here from the 8th Chapter of Romans and we read that: But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Repeating that, memorizing it will do very little for us, in and of itself—do nothing in and of itself, but it could be a help to us if we decide, having learned it, to put it into actual practice. How? Well after we’ve learned that our desires for persons and things is being after the flesh, the way to put that into practice then is to make the decision no longer to seek person or thing, but only a realization of the kingdom of God.