QUICKENED BY THE SPIRIT
YOU remember the spiritual inspiration that Paul had, an inspiration that is also ours as we claim the light and power and love that are God’s expression through us:
“If the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwelleth in you, he that raised up Christ Jesus from the dead shall give life also to your mortal bodies through his Spirit that dwelleth in you.” (Rom. 7:11)
It isn’t individuals at Unity who quicken and heal. It isn’t the human desire of the individual’s own heart that makes the life to flow through his organism more freely. It isn’t the thing that we usually think of as Christianity that brings one into the quickening, healing currents of Christ life. It is the stirring in us of the same Spirit of Christ that was and is in Jesus Christ—the Spirit of God, standing forth in individual consciousness and expression—the stirring up in our mind of divine ideas from the mind of Being. It is the soul’s willingness and effort actually to live in its daily thinking and acts in the Spirit of Christ—that same Spirit which made Jesus to forget Himself in doing the good and perfect will of His Father. It is not churchgoing and praying and the observance of moral laws, but vital, loving, powerful words and acts of helpfulness to others. Jesus’ consecration was a living, constant thing. He adored the Father and sought constantly to glorify Him in making the things of His Spirit manifest in the lives of His children. Jesus was eagerly discovering the real purpose of life and fulfilling it not for Himself done but for all of us. And Jesus says: “Follow me.” “If ye love me, ye will keep my commandments.” (John. 14:15) “He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also.” “Feed my sheep.” “As ye go, . . . Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons.” (Matt. 10:8)
To be truly healed and quickened by the life more abundant, one must forget the past, and the limitations of the past, and offer every thought, every ounce of energy to Spirit, to be used in bringing God’s kingdom of light and love and order and beauty and health into the earth, into the lives of all people. This giving is not to be done in human consciousness and might; but in the realization that it is God working through one’s soul and body to increase constantly one’s life and strength and substance, to fulfill His perfect plan. One’s body is to be thought of as the temple of the living God. One’s arms and hands are to be thought of, and used, as God’s arms and hands, the expression of God-Mind’s ideas of power and loving service and splendid work. The executive power of the mind, in its relation to things that we think of as belonging in the three-dimensional world, is expressed through the arms and hands. One should think of whatever one is led to do as being God’s work. One should know and rejoice in one’s innate ability to accomplish that work. One should realize that one is free to decide wisely, and to do whatever will benefit oneself and others. One should see others in this beautiful spiritual world of activity and bless them.
God is in us as the very life and substance that we use, and our use of His gifts increases our ability to use and to direct them. God is life, we make that life into living. God is love; we make divine love into loving. God is substance; we take the substantial reality and bring it through into the manifest world. God is wisdom; we claim oneness with divine wisdom and it expresses through us as wise thoughts and decisions and actions: the light of life that glows from heart and face, yes, every cell of the body.
