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