abundant living

April 27, 2016 By Prosperity

How to Stretch Your Money

– by Lowell Fillmore* – Guest Author

*Son of Charles and Myrtle Fillmore,
the founders of Unity School of Christianity.

Live Abundantly Now MONEY was invented for the convenience of men in expediting the exchange among themselves of services and goods. Money should always be a servant of man and never his master.

Man’s attitude toward his money determines whether it will be a curse or a blessing to him. If a man curses his money or curses others because he fears they are trying to get his money, then a curse will return to him. If he blesses his money and makes it a blessing to others, blessings will come home to him.

Money has no value except that which is given it by man, and its value is dependent upon a man’s faith in his fellow men. No one would be willing to accept money if he did not have faith in those who co-operate in using the money. God created the universe and all things in it. Therefore, God is greater and more important to us than these things.

When we remember that we remember that we “live, move, and have our being” in God we shall not feel that we are adrift on an uncertain sea of materiality, but we shall know that we are safe in the care and keeping of our loving Father, who has created all things for our good. When we abide in this realization we shall not be unhappy if there seems to be a temporary lack of money, for we shall know that no material thing can stand between us and God’s blessings. When we go direct to God in faith and acknowledge Him in all our affairs we shall be sustained by Him.

Money is merely a symbol of values. When we place our faith in the symbol rather than in the true value we are disappointed. We must train ourselves to look to God direct for our prosperity and not trust too much in money, as good and desirable as it is.

If our income seems to be inadequate because of high prices we must not be dismayed, but we must steadfastly realize that our good comes from God, not from money. Placing the power of God’s blessings upon our money will actually make it possible for us to buy more with a given sum than we could purchase by ordinary methods.

If we realize that money represents only a symbol of true substance, our faith will call out the true substance by blessing the symbol. When we realize that there is no limit to God-substance, our faith will call God-substance into service for us and all our needs will be supplied.

Jesus understood the truth of His faith, and He lacked for no good thing. The fish provided Him with tax money; the multitude was fed from God’s invisible substance, and Jesus was always welcome to partake of food in every village He entered. He was neither beggar nor a financier, but He had close communion with His Father, God, the Source of all good things.

It is not necessary for God to perform miracles in order to take care of our daily needs. His wonders are performed before our very eyes through material channels when we have made contact with His substance through our faith. God will stretch anybody’s income so as to cover all needs, even as He multiplied the loaves and fishes to feed the five thousand.

By blessing what we have we increase and multiply it. We need to become attuned to the great universal spiritual ideal behind money, which can be manifested as money or as anything else that is good. There is security in God, and we are very near to it when we go within and consult Him sincerely in spirit and in truth.

God is Spirit, and we must therefore worship Him in spirit and in truth. If we attempt to pray to God for money and then while praying, because of our fears and worries, fix our attention on our need for money rather than on giving thanks to God for His abundance, we shall not be making a very successful prayer. When we give thanks for His substance and withdraw our attention from the thought of lack and place it upon God in faith and thanksgiving we shall be heard and supplied by the Father.

Paul tells us in the 11^th chapter of Hebrews that “what is seen hath not been made out of things which appear.”

We know that certain invisible gaseous elements when combined will form a visible substance. For example: Hydrogen and oxygen gases combined in right proportion become visible water. But while Spirit is invisible, just as gases are, it is much finer substance. Jesus explained Spirit to Nicodemus by likening it to the wind that blows where it pleases; man cannot see where it comes from nor where it goes.

So it is with Spirit. We cannot see it, but it is never-the-less the invisible substance out of which are formed all things that appear. An oak tree grows from a little acorn and expands into a mighty tree on a seemingly lean diet of water, sunshine, and microscopic amounts of chemicals in the soil. So does the mighty substance of God come forth out of Spirit and take its place in our affairs through natural channels to supply our needs.

If your present income seems to be inadequate for your needs, do not worry; do not complain; do not be critical; do not be afraid. Instead, give thanks to God for His rich supply and bless the symbol of substance that you presently have. Your action will cause it to grow and increase in buying power. Like the mustard seed, which grew from a tiny seed into a tree, its increase will amaze you.

God-substance is present everywhere and in truth is more real than the things you can touch and see. Bless the good symbol (money) you have and see substance miraculously increase in your hands!

The above is excerpted from: The Prayer Way To Health, Wealth, & Happiness

Watch for more Live Abundantly Now articles.

If this article is helpful to you, kindly let me know. RevJohn@GoldenKeyMinistry.com

March 30, 2016 By Prosperity

Prosperous Attitudes Toward Money

by Catherine Ponder – Guest Author.

Catherine Ponder is the world’s foremost author and lecture on Prosperity.
Her many books have helped and inspired millions of people worldwide.

Live Abundantly Now! This is one of a series of special articles to empower you to live abundantly now. These will occasionally appear in your inbox. Read, save, share, archive to later inspiration. They are for the purpose of inspiring you to live the more abundant life you are here to live — and to do it now. The principles shared are the same for everything, prosperity, health, happiness, harmony, peace.

RECENTLY a friend sent me a comic postcard which read, “Rich or poor, it’s good to have money!” I’m sure most of us would agree.

All sorts of wonderful things are being written about money, and of our potential for having and enjoying more of it. It has been pointed out that more fortunes have been made since World War II than in any comparable period. Fortunes are still being made, according to the figures of the Internal Revenue Service. One writer recently declared, “you can still make a million!” Another boldly stated, “Your chances of making a million are better than you think.”

[Note: Since Catherine Ponder first wrote the above, more people have legitimately become millions and billionaires, and they keep increasing.]

As you study the lives and experiences of prosperous-minded people, you will find that they have a friendly attitude toward money. Whereas, you will discover that the more general attitude is that there’s something wrong with having money and being prosperous.

When I was the guest speaker at a club luncheon at a hospital, an executive was given a check to aid in furnishing a new wing of the hospital. In response to receiving a check to aid in the furnishing of the new wing of his hospital, this executive declared, “It isn’t the money that is so important. It is the club members’ love and interest in this new hospital wing that really counts.”

Somehow I wondered if he realized what he was really saying, because my first reaction (which I suspect was the silent reaction of a number of others) was, “If the money isn’t important, why is this man here? He is a very fine and busy executive, and I wonder if he would have come to the lunch with these ladies had they merely sent him word that they were impressed with his hospital expansion program.” Surely this man was taught as a child what many of us were erroneously taught — to dislike money.

If you listen closely to the conversations of people about you, you will discover that this is a general attitude. People often discount the importance of money, while they are working very hard to get it. They do not realize the cross-current they are setting up in their thinking, which in turn voids most of their efforts. Through such cross-up thinking about money, they are working at cross-purposes, and often they will experience a crossed-up result.

$ Money is Divine! $

I will never forget the first time that, as a minister, I lectured on the importance of money for successful living. When I declared that money is wonderful because it is divine substance; that money is good when rightly used, a lady sitting on the front row gasped and almost fell out of her chair! When I stated, “money is divine, because money is God’s good in expression,” she almost passed out! She had come to this lecture because she was interested in having greater prosperity in her life. Yet when I mentioned money as a legitimate form of prosperity, it shocked her completely.

After the lecture, one of the members of the church board cornered me and said. “Don’t you think you put it a little too strongly about money being good because it is divine substance?” I found myself replying, “I hope I put it strongly; I surely meant to.” The board member then said, “Yes, but you shocked that lady on the front row so much that she may never come back.” My reply was, “If I shocked her, it was because she needed to have some old, erroneous ideas about money shocked out of her thinking, as we all do.”

I then pointed out that my whole purpose in teaching the spiritual and mental principles of prosperity was to help people to learn God’s good truth about prosperity being their divine heritage, so that they might be freed from failure, poverty and all the other sins of lack. I realized that sometimes the process was a shock.

At the next lecture that lady was back, sitting in a front seat. The only difference I could detect in her attitude was that she had pulled her chair up a little closer toward the lecture platform, happily awaiting further shocking truths about prosperity!

After she attended a number of lectures, she calmed down considerably in her strong attitudes regarding the pros and cons of prosperity. In due time she came to see me and confessed that, when she first began attending the prosperity lectures, her life and affairs had been in dire shape, financially and otherwise. Her husband had left her, her children seemed to have turned against her, her physician predicted that she was nearing a nervous collapse; she had a good job, but her money never seemed to go very far, and she could not get along with her fellow workers; she was even involved in a lawsuit concerning her previous job.

But week after week as she began to entertain new ideas about prosperity and successful living, her whole attitude changed, as did her way of life. Before long her husband returned; she gradually was able to establish a more harmonious relationship with her children; she did not have a nervous collapse; the lawsuit regarding her former job was quietly and amicably settled out of court; and she began to find joy and satisfaction in her work. Indeed, before long she seemed a transformed individual, and it all began the night she dared to change her thinking about money.

Most people are sensitive about their capacity to earn money. In most instances, a person’s capacity to earn money would increase if his attitudes toward money were positive and friendly. It was the late Mike Todd who has been quoted as saying, “I’ve never been poor, only broke. Being poor is a frame of mind. Being broke is a temporary situation.”

What about your attitude toward money? It might be worthwhile for you to check up on this. Sometimes, negative attitudes toward money can be rather subtle. Most everyone can upgrade their attitude toward money realizing that it is divine substance, a wonderful medium of exchange. The more you can make money your friend, the more easily you will attract money, and all the other good things of life. Money truly is divine! When you have an abundant flow of money in your life, you are divinely happier, healthier, and more peaceful, too.

The above is excerpted from: The Dynamic Laws of Prosperity.

$ $ $

If this article is helpful to you, kindly let me know. RevJohn@GoldenKeyMinistry.com

Watch for more Live Abundantly Now articles.

June 21, 2015 By Rev. John Adams

The Prosperity Law of Receiving

By Catherine Ponder – Guest Author

The first step in receiving is giving. It is through the law of giving and receiving that you demonstrate prosperity. If you are not receiving the good you feel you should have in life, ask yourself, “What should I give?” Prosperity is omnipresent, and you cannot impoverish yourself by giving, which opens the way for you to receive.

EXPECT TO RECEIVE

We have all heard about the law of compensation; we cannot get something for nothing; we must give in order to received. Often we have tried to bypass this basic law of prosperity; and in attempting to make short cuts we have only bypassed our good.

The formula is simple: If you are not receiving the good you want in life, ask yourself , “What can I give, to make way to receive my good?” Then freely and quickly give it! There are those pious souls who wills say, “Oh, but when I give, I am not supposed to expect to receive.” And so, of course, they do not receive. Their very attitude blocks their good.

Quite the opposite is true: When you give you can and should expect to receive. It is the law of the universe. Jesus pointed out the great law of receiving when He promised: “give, and it will be given to you; good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will they put into your lap. For the measure you give will be the measure you get back.” (Luke 6:38)

THE GREAT LAW OF “GIVE AND TAKE”

Someone called it “the great law of give and take.” Give, and then you can take or claim your own abundance from the rich universe, because through you act of giving you have opened the channel through which universal supply can pour forth to you in appropriate form.

A Realtor in Palm Beach, Florida, had an apartment which had not rented for “the season,” though it was ideally located halfway between the beach fronting the Atlantic Ocean and Lake Worth. He had made every effort (from a business standpoint) to rent it. When he heard a prosperity lecture on “the great law of give and take,” he realized that he needed to give something away, in order to make way to claim his properity from the rental of the apartment.

As he was asking, “What can I give?” he received word from out-of-town friends what they were coming to Palm Beach for a month’s vacation. They asked him to recommend a place where they could stay. This was the answer to his desire to give: he made them a gift of the unrented apartment for their month’s stay. During the month, he succeeded in renting the apartment for the entire approaching “season.” But nothing happened, until he gave first.

GIVING MULTIPLIES YOUR RETURNS

In his book Working with God, Gardner Hunting has described the law of giving and receiving as the law of “come back”: what you give comes back to you multiplied. He advises:

Right where you are, now, begin to give something good to the person nearest you, and keep on doing it, no matter what you seem to get back at first. DO! Don’t talk! And you’ll lift yourself out of your troubles, no matter what they seem to be or how deeply you seem to be sunk in them. Try it. You’ll be surprised . . . Try it patiently and as seriously as you would try to get a drink of water if you were very thirsty. You’ll get a return, a reward, that you don’t even dream of yet.

Any man, woman, or child can transform his life by transforming the thing he gives out.

A businessman began studying these ideas in Working with God before World War II. As he began to give out in every way that was revealed to him, he had a dream one night in which the idea for a special kind of landing gear for airplanes was revealed to him. He followed through on his dream, and invented the landing gear. It was used during the war on planes all over the world. Since that time this man has made other mechanical inventions that have helped mankind. Needless to say, he quickly became a millionaire; and he continues to give, give, give, because he realizes this to be the secret of his affluence. Among the things he has given away are hundreds of copies of inspirational books, and he has given large amounts of money, land, and other gifts to his church.

Gardner Hunting has also written, “Many things you want are now within your reach.” By the act of giving, you open the way for the things within your reach to appear quickly. These things have been wanting to come to you all the time, but were blocked by your lack of giving, because there was no free channel through which they could appear. Your giving opens and frees the channel.

Always when there seems to be delay, confusion, or a block between you and your greater good, that block lies within you, and not in some outside circumstance or personality. When you give under divine guidance, you dissolve the block and open a channel for your good. Then nothing can stop its manifestation in your life! (Nothing has stopped its manifestation previously but your own lack of giving.

To develop a permanent prosperity consciousness, declare often: I always have something to give and I give it. As I give consistently, I open the way to receive consistently. I give freely my tenth to God’s work and workers, and I reap a hundredfold. I am receiving, I am receiving now. I am receiving all the good God has for me now. I am permanently prosperous.

This article is provided as a service of Golden Key Ministry-Unity. It is part of our ongoing effort to give you the best in ideas and inspiration to help you prosper in all areas of life.

Golden Key Ministry-Unity is an independent Unity minister. It depends entirely on voluntary tithes and other financial contributions to sustain it.

March 28, 2014 By Rev. John Adams

The Secret of Prosperous Living

This special article is created to help you to actually experience increased prosperity. It is part of the dedication of Golden Key Ministry-Unity to help as many people as possible to live the truly abundant life we are all entitled to. I trust that you find it helpful and truly prospering. Your comments are invited. – Lovingly, Rev. John

The following are ideas to energize your mind and your prosperity.

It has been estimated that over thirty million people have studied self-help methods in the past decade or so, and that eighty percent of today’s adult American population are engaged in a search for self-help fulfillment. The key as to whether they find that fulfillment may lie in whether they learn and apply the secret of prosperous increase.

Various schemes have been suggested for getting rich quickly. Many of them fail, because they are based on “getting” – not on “giving.” Here is how the secret of prosperous increase works: systematic giving is the beginning of systematic increase. However, that giving must be done in a certain way, through consistent sharing of your tithes. The word “tithe” means “tenth,” and the ancient people felt that “ten” was “the magic number of increase.”

Your tithe should be given first and impersonally – separate from that which you spend on yourself, your family, your business, or your friends. Such impersonal gifts are usually given to spiritual causes where you are receiving help and inspiration to help you prosper in all areas of life.

Systematic sharing with the universe of a portion of all that the universe shares with you is the beginning of financial increase.

How a businessman doubled his income in just one year

A businessman worked long and hard in his field, yet he never achieved the prosperity and success he felt he should have. He had taken various success courses over the years, all of which temporarily encouraged him. Yet permanent success evaded him. When he heard about the prospering power of systematic giving at a prosperity seminar, he decided to try it.

He began to tithe a tenth of his gross income on a weekly basis to the church where he had learned this prosperity principle. Every Sunday morning when he had finished up his workweek, he totaled up his income and wrote his tithe check first, before meeting other financial obligations. Within one year, his financial income doubled!

He said the only thing he had done differently in his work in that year was to consistently give one-tenth of his income to that church. He has since paid off the mortgage on his home, purchased a new building to house his business, and taken his first vacation in years. He said simply: “Tithing spells success on all levels of life.”

How the secret of prosperous increase works

Systematic giving is most often done by enlightened individuals through the practice of tithing to God’s work at the point or points where they are receiving spiritual help and inspiration.

The Hebrews of the Old Testament became one of the richest groups of people the world has ever known, because they gave not the last and the least, but the first and the best, and their giving made them rich! They never complained about their lavish giving and they never repealed their generous tithing practices. Over and over, the payment of their tithes brought peace and plenty. Ten is still the magic number of increase to those who consistently practice sharing a tenth of their income and assets in this special way today.

An accountant’s financial discovery

Accountants are regarded a very prudent people. Their job is to help clients conserve their income rather than dissipate it. But a Los Angeles public accountant once said to me, “I have noticed that my clients, who tithe, prosper. Their incomes continue to go up, up, up year after year. When I have a client who is having financial difficulties and not prospering, he is not a tither.”

The word “prosper” in its root means “wholeness.” That is what the prophet, Malachi, promised in the last book of the Old Testament to those who tithe. He pointed out that tithing can be the best investment in successful living you can make over the years, and also the most soul-satisfying.

The above is adapted from Open Your Mind to Receive by Catherine Ponder.

Declare the Prospering Truth:

God is my source and my consciousness of God is my supply.
Every day in every way, I am growing richer and richer!
I no longer strain and strive, I tithe and thrive.
I freely give my tenth to God and I reap a hundredfold.
All financial doors are open, all financial channels are free, and rich abundance
now comes to me in God’s own wonderful way!
Guided by Divine Love and Wisdom, I am prospering in wonderful ways now!
Faithfully tithing, I think rich, feel rich, act rich. I am rich!

I trust you have found this spiritual food of value to you. I know from personal experience that tithing works. If you have not been a tither, give it your best consideration and get started with this dynamic way to increase your prosperity and joy of living.
– Lovingly, Rev. John RevJohn@GoldenKeyMinistry.com

Golden Key Ministry-Unity is sustained by the voluntary tithes and other financial contributions of friends who appreciate what we are doing and want to help this ministry expand and prosper. We are grateful for all financial support.

Live Life Lovingly!