UNITY OF VANCOUVER
 3814 FRANKLIN ST. VANCOUVER, WASHINGTON 98660 360-696-0996
Our God of Good Outcomes
 Reverend Bernadette Voorhees
  August  14, 2022

 All Rights Reserved
 





PRAYER / MEDITATION

Psalms 27:1 says, “The Lord is the strength of my life: of whom shall I be afraid?” If you are afraid of something or feeling run-down by the pressures of life ask God for increased strength and you will instantly have more power inside of your mind and body. God silently comes to and through you as a very real answer to your prayers. When you pray God becomes a tangible experience in you.
 
Psalms 55:22 it says, “Cast your burden on the Lord and he will sustain you; he will never permit the righteous to be moved.” You have an inner strength available to you. Tap into it and you will never again be moved or shaken by anything happening outside of you. God’s strength in you can overpower anything in the outer—not with brute force but with determination of heart and mind.

God’s Will for you is good and only good. As you turn t o God in prayer, God is moving, thinking and acting through you. God’s Will is the motivating power of your being. God is bringing you toward the fulfillment of your prayers. Silently affirm: “God’s Will is for me is good and only good.” Quietly meditate on the goodness of God.

In times of prayer you find a silent strength as the power of God, the life of God, the love of God and the wisdom of God. Doubts dissolve and you see the way to proceed as new ways of thought and action are revealed to you. With your conscious mind in agreement with the everywhere present Divine Mind of God you are increasingly aware that God’s Will for you is absolute good as abundance, health and wholeness in body, mind and spirit, joy and peace.

You are a great Soul sent forth from God. You have God’s own Spirit flowing in and through you. As you pray your human mind becomes wise with the wisdom of God. Your body becomes whole and perfect with the life of God. You are an unfolding spiritual being growing in spiritual understanding. Give thanks for a faith that knows that God is with you, that God is at work in you and that God’s Will is being manifested in and through you. As you pray in faith, God leads you to the highest good for you and for all concerned.

Let us close by speaking together our Prayer for Protection. The light of God surrounds us; the love of God enfolds us; the power of God protects us; the presence of God watches over us. Wherever we are God is and all is well. Amen.


OUR GOD OF GOOD OUTCOMES

Have you ever asked yourself the question, “If God is all good and if everything is good, how can I turn what appears to my human mind as a disaster, into absolute good?  How can I believe when I’m struggling through something that God is a God of good outcomes?  To answer these questions, you must first understand that you have two levels of mind within you to react from, the Human Mind and Christ Mind.  The mind of a person in good spiritual health will constantly swing back and forth between these two minds. 

When the human mind sees a problem, it automatically swings toward the Christ Mind for light as Divine Guidance and Wisdom. When it’s filled with the light of Divine Wisdom it swings back to the human mind and deposits that light energy for the Human Mind to process and spend in solving the problem and filling the need. There are only two ways to process energy, with Faith or fear. A spiritually healthy mind processes energy with faith as an “expectancy of things hoped for the assurance of things not yet seen.” Faith is actively trusting the outcome will be good for all concerned.    

Now let me describe an unhealthy human-mind confronted with a problem such as losing a job, getting a divorce or a severe illness.  An unhealthy Human Mind doesn’t believe in a God of good outcomes. It doesn’t have an awareness of the oneness relationship with God so the twelve inner Disciple Powers are latent.  This mind feels alone, abandoned by God and over whelmed by circumstances. It processes energy with fear and becomes immobilized by fear, which allows depression to settle in. You become what your mind focuses on, so fear can lead to an experience of a total lack of energy, sickness and even panic.  Instead of blessing and releasing that event this mind freezes on it.  It hasn’t come to pass.  It has come to stay. It will remain with you until you get sick and tired of being sick and tired and decide to move on.  Which leads to the next question: How do I move on?

There are 5 steps to take in solving any problem.

1. No matter what the problem the first step is always the same. You take an inward step and rise in consciousness from a human mind focused on a problem to a Christ mind connected with the Source of all solutions. You cannot solve a problem from the same level of mind that created it. Ask yourself faith filled questions like “How can God make this right?”  “How can God turn this around?” What is God trying to have happen right here through me? Asking yourself questions loosens the minds grip on fear. It gets the energy flowing again from the inside out. It takes your eyes off the problem and refocuses them on God, the solution.

2. But simply shifting levels of mind doesn’t get the job done. You must be willinging to actively work with God and do whatever needs to be done as God directs. As you go about your day, use an affirmation like:“I am willing to do whatever is necessary as God directs, to heal my mind, body and affairs.” Affirmations are short statements of Truth. In Unity we use them to identify with our Christ level of Mind rather than just our Human Mind. We use them to keep ourselves in a healing consciousness so that we don’t slip back into victim consciousness and hold thoughts like “Why is this happening to me?, Why are you doing this to me? Things will never change.” As Unity students we use affirmations to keep ourselves anchored in God and to guide us in making choices that are faith-filled, positive, constructive and that move us toward our goals and a greater expression of Divine Life.

3. The human mind must be disciplined to see God everywhere and to expect the best and not the worst.  When we worry we are using our divine power of imagination and the  imaging power of our mind negatively.  If you catch yourself worrying ask yourself: In this moment, “Am I seeing God as the only Presence and Power? Do I believe that God is bigger than any human problem? Am I processing energy in this moment with faith or fear?  Do I believe in a God of good outcomes?”

4. When something happens that a person believes is ‘bad’ people will often brush it off by saying, “Oh, It is just God’s Will. ”  Have you ever asked yourself:  “What do I believe God’s Will is?”  God’s Will for you can only be more of what God is so ask yourself “What is God?”

God is everything. God is the wholeness. God is prosperity, peace of mind, abundant life and good beyond anything the Human Mind can imagine. When you believe in a God of good outcomes there is an absence of fear and lack thoughts in your Consciousness (thoughts and feelings) and a presence of love. It is a tangible inner experience of okness; a knowing that all is well even when you are in the midst of the blackest storm. You can hear the worst possible news and when you believe that God is everywhere present and you believe in a God of good outcomes, even as you hear it, you know that everything is OK. You experience an inner calmness and confidence that radiates from every cell and fiber of your being as you pass through life. You know that no matter how good life is, God has even better days in store for you. Every day as you get out of bed or walk out the door, project the light of Truth before you by affirming:  “I go to meet my good!”

5. When you believe in a God of good outcomes you know the best is yet to be so you don’t worry about getting older or making changes in your life. There are no ‘false ceilings’ in your consciousness. At 20 or 100 the best is yet to be. Most people have an age in mind at which they ‘become old.’ Do you? Old isn’t a condition of body, it’s a state of mind.” It’s what happens when we stop expecting the best and begin a count down to death. I’ve heard people say things like, “At best, I only have ten good years left.” A man who came to church here with his wife said to me one Sunday morning during the opening greeting time, ‘I’m 94. The best I can hope for is 6 more years.”  Six years after making that statement to me he died of cancer. 

When I came here in 1981, one of the first things I did was visit a dying man in the hospital.  I was afraid that I wouldn’t know what to say to him when I got there.  I didn’t know him, the area or many of the people in the church yet,  so I felt that I didn’t have anything to say to begin to make a meaningful conversation and friendship with him. But when I walked into his room, he looked at me and said, “I am so excited you’ve come to bless me. Wave goodbye now because I’m leaving to go on a new adventure!” Then he just closed his eyes and took off, leaving me standing there and thinking, “I want to be like that.”   

If you are meeting someone for the first time, expect good outcomes. When you call someone on the phone, expect good outcomes. If you are applying for a new job, expect good outcomes. If you are praying, expect answers that will lead you to good outcomes.
According to Emily Cady author of Lessons In Truth and God a Present Help, the number one, false belief of the human mind is that “Someone or something can keep my good from me.” This is victim consciousness and the opposite of Christ consciousness.  We create a duality in mind and life where none exists when we see and believe that there is a person or situation that can keep us from our good. We are making that person into a God or that situation into a power that opposes God and God as good outcomes.  Jesus said, “God is in the midst of you.  Closer than your own breath.”  No one can keep God from you except you.
In the Old Testament are the words, “Lean on my everlasting arms and I will guide you to paths of peace.”  Do you believe these words? At the end of the day, do you lay your head down on your pillow smile and know that as you sleep, God remains awake and at work smoothing out every challenge; removing every obstacle from your path. Do you rise in the morning and say:  “I go to meet my good.”  
One of my favorite Unity sayings is: “God can only do for you what God can do through you.”  Don’t pray for something you are not willing to become.  In order to receive you must first become what you desire in consciousness.  To experience prosperity, you must first have a prosperity consciousness.

A manifested problem is spent energy, the visible effect of some old thought energy.  When you can see it, it is used up, dead energy, spent energy and it is moving away from you.   If you dwell on it and hash over it in your mind you are putting it on life support.  You are recreating it in mind to keep expressing in your life over and over again. Is that really what you want to do?  No, what you want to do it to pull the plug and let it die. You do that when you stop thinking about it as a problem and start affirming the opposite as the solution.

In Hebrews 13:5, God says, “I will not give up on you or desert you.” God is not going to give up on you so don’t you give up on God. In II Corinthians 1:10, it says, “He delivered us.”   If I send a delivery to you and you receive that delivery, do you know what that means?  It means I got something through to you. 

When the Bible says, “He delivered us from so deadly a peril, and he will deliver us; on him we have set our hope that he will deliver us again/"  [RSV] It means the same thing.  God must get through us to get good to us. 

In John 13:31 (just before the crucifixion), Jesus said:  “My time has come. The glory of God will soon surround me, and God shall receive great praise because of all that happens to me.”  Here, Jesus is once again affirming his belief in a God of good outcomes. 

Let us close with a prayer.

Dear God, Help me today to see all people through Your Truth, which is Love.  Help me to feel well this day, and lead me in mind to wave after wave of well-being.

Help me to understand that any past event has come into being through the law of mind action.  It is spent or processed energy. 

Help me to see that I have have a choice to either keep the dead past alive or to let it go.

I can choose to hold on to the past or to let it go and open my mind and heart to You as the Source of Newness and Never Ending Movement toward a greater good manifesting in and as my life. SInce you God are always with me, the best is yet to be. I face a brighter tomorrow and a brighter future.  I face more opportunity for happiness than ever before, and I am so grateful and thankful.

Giving thanks in advance I say.  Amen.


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