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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 prosperity 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.
