PERMANENT PROSPERITY
THE only way to become permanently prosperous and successful is through the quickening, awakening, and bringing into righteous use of all the indwelling resources of Spirit. When we develop our soul and express its talents and capabilities in loving service to God and mankind, all of our temporal needs will be supplied in bountiful measure. We have access to the realm of rich ideas; we enrich our consciousness by incorporating these rich ideas into it. A rich consciousness always demonstrates manifest prosperity.
“The kingdom of God is within you.” (Luke. 17:21) Jesus said, “Seek ye first his kingdom, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.” This means that we are to find the wealth of capabilities and spiritual resources within us, and bring them into expression. When we develop the power to accomplish things and the qualities that we need in order to accomplish them, our success will be irresistible.
We must depend wholly upon the inner kingdom of supply and the indwelling Christ, for this inner way is the only way to receive permanently. We are to cease depending upon outer, material avenues for prosperity, because when we look to the outer we look away from the one resource that is within us.
Prosperity is the result of complying with definite laws that are revealed by the Spirit of truth within. Those who are prosperous and successful are the people who have a rich consciousness. They open their minds to rich ideas, and then cash in on these ideas in an outer way. The men who are famous and successful are the ones who have developed their innate abilities and used the success-producing ideas that have come to them.
Sometimes we begin at the wrong end of the prosperity line, and our methods need changing. Perhaps we try to accumulate money to meet our temporal needs without first laying hold of the equivalent of money on the inner planes of consciousness. This inner equivalent consists of our rich ideas, our innate capabilities and resources of Spirit.
One great help in realizing permanent prosperity is to come into the realization that we do not work to earn money to meet our expenses! This is a delusion of mortal mind. In reality, in earning money we are expressing the God-given faculties and powers to bless others, and to keep our part of the divine law of giving and receiving. The supply is a gift of God and is ours because it is a part of His plan. We are to accept it in faith as such. Expect it to come, and it will.
Prosperity is not an accumulation of money or other so-called wealth, as we have sometimes thought. Wouldn’t it really be a terrible thing if we were obliged to be eternally surrounded with the material baubles that we in our childish fancies believe to be prosperity? Wouldn’t you dread to think of spending eternity, with chains of houses and lands, and storehouses of food, and wardrobes of clothing, and garages of cars, and chests of silver? Wouldn’t you dread to think that men and women were always to be deluded with the belief that these formed things are the realities, the truly valuable things of life? Why, we’d always have to be employing guards and giving our thought to caring for our wealth! And we’d never get to the place where we could really get still and learn from the Father the deeper things, the soul-satisfying things—the lessons there are for us ere we arise into the majesty of sonship—the realization of oneness! Let us rejoice then that our resources are the God qualities, the spiritual sources and substances from which our consciousness, our body, our home, come forth in response to our need and our word of faith and wisdom and authority. Let us rejoice that our good is in the realm of Mind, where it is instantly available and responsive to our thought and word and need. Rejoice that it is all under law, that it holds us to the law, even though a negative attitude does fail to produce desirable results! The lessons of experience are helpful to us until we learn the unchangeableness of the law and determine in our own mind that prosperity is progress, accomplishment of that which one has an urge to do, gain in spiritual, mental, physical or financial matters, attainment of that which is good and needful. Supply in abundance for the so-called temporal needs is a part of prosperity. And surely, since God has given us this physical being, and the physical earth, and all its bounty, it is not wrong for us to get the understanding of the full free use of it all!
If we are ever to understand and use the higher spiritual laws, we must learn to use the laws governing our present state! As we do this, we shall see that they are really different phases of the same law.
“The Lord is more willing to give than we are to receive.”
The bounty of God is within us, undeveloped, and all about us, unused and misunderstood. It is ours to grow, to understand, to master, to use all that the Father has.
Did I hear you say that healing comes from the Spirit within but that prosperity comes from without, or is something outside? Well, now, are you sure? Let’s see. Spirit within is the quickening, adjusting, harmonizing force, yes. We must agree to think health, and to bless the body, and to express that which causes all the functions of the organism to work perfectly. But there is the physical side of health, also! Spirit must have substance through which to manifest! You must provide the manifest substance and life elements in proper food, and drink, and sunshine, and air. Without these Spirit would have no vehicle—and these are drawn in from the outside! Do you see?
And so it is with prosperity. The Spirit of Christ in you reveals the plan of God in your life and quickens in you the urge and the desire for the activities and the appropriations that fulfill the divine law in your being. Your faculties must let Spirit work through them, and develop them to the point where they can express the Christ ideas. They must learn to draw upon the universal spiritual substance and life, and mold it, and make use of it either . for health or for prosperity. We have accepted the suggestions of those whose judgments in other things we might not be willing to abide by, and have thought that some things are “food which perisheth.” The consciousness determines whether it is food that perishes, or whether it is living substance that is building an eternal temple. The results we get from the full, free use of life and substance are determined by our beliefs and our habits.
When you develop your soul and express its talents and capabilities in loving service to God and mankind, all your temporal needs will be supplied in bountiful measure. You have access to the rich ideas of Divine Mind; enrich your consciousness by incorporating rich ideas into it. When you make righteous use of all your indwelling resources of Spirit, then you will become a magnet to attract success.
A splendid prosperity lesson is found in the 1st chapter of Joshua.
“Only be strong and very courageous, to observe to do according to all the law . . . turn not from it to the right hand or to the left, that thou mayest have good success whithersoever thou goest. This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth, but thou shalt meditate thereon day and night, that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein: for then thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good success. ... for Jehovah thy God is with thee.” (Josh. 1:7-9)
When you “observe to do according to all that is written,” the law will open all the ways and outer avenues of supply for you.
Those who take time regularly and who give themselves to the necessary prayer and meditation, to get new light and to round out their consciousness and ability to use all their faculties, find that they go from one prosperity to another. They frequently finish with one thing undertaken. This does not mean that they have failed or that they must be without position and resources. It means that they are being offered the next higher step, and that by entering upon the new undertaking or the greater light given in the present place, they are really growing and bringing forth more of the inner spiritual resources.
True prosperity is not making money, or putting out goods, or developing property. It is determining what our own individual soul requires in order to cause it to unfold more and more of God; and then how to harmonize its expression with the needs of our fellow men so that all are really benefited and inspired to unfold and express more of their, inner spiritual resources. The exchange of merchandise and money is merely incidental to this spiritual association and growth. Money success comes as a result; but there are other results that should be sought and rejoiced over even more than the financial returns.
Spiritual poise and the ability to see day by day, just where one is going is one of the greatly to-be-desired results of working with the divine law.
Radiant health and physical freedom and the greater awakening of all the faculties and their physical centers of activity is another more valuable gain than the increase in salary and the promotion to a greater chair in the management’s office.
The feeling that one is doing something to help in the establishment of the kingdom of heaven in the earth is great compensation for the hours of prayer and the effort to swing clear of the old commercial bondage and ways. We are to have whatever we require, yes. But we are making progress toward the time when we shall work at something really constructive, something that reveals God in man and in His world, something that gives us the privilege of deciding for ourselves, under guidance of Spirit, when we are to go and when we are to come. As soon as we are capable of it, the Lord will place us in such a position among our fellows. But before we are given this place, we are to prove that we are ever considering the highest good of our neighbors, and that we have the ability really to discern what it is they need and bring them face to face with it. Spiritual growth, you see, as well as temporal ability and success!
