Gratitude

Hi.  No Monday Message today.  Yesterday the congregation shared the service expressing what they were thankful for.

I hope your Thanksgiving was enriching and that we all remember to be grateful everyday.

Bless everything,
Rev. Brad

"But-Head"

For those who were at service on Sunday, November 18, 2012, a few bullet points to jog your memory:

• Please don’t take this the wrong way.  I have to ask, “How big is your “but?””

• The “but” I’m talking about is your, “Yeah, I know, but…” followed by a reason why some good idea (aka application of spiritual principle) won’t work for them.  “But… thinking” is what keeps us stuck in our experience.

• I hear, “yeah, but…” a lot as the reason why people aren’t willing to choose a different path of thinking that will lead them away from the experiences that come with their entrenched habits.

• “But thinking” is a choice that keeps us stuck.  Is being a “but-head” working for you? :o)

• We are here to find freedom.    
• Freedom is having a sense of complete well-being regardless of our circumstances or conditions 

• We find freedom by choosing to live by proven spiritual principles, (aka a God-centered life, Christ consciousness) in any given moment. 

• Spiritual freedom is a choice.

• We want to push away our feelings – I hear this all the time – “I don’t want this, I’m tired of this, I want to get rid of this feeling.”  Then I might suggest a spiritual approach and that’s when it comes out, “Yeah, I know, but…” Have you ever heard yourself say this?

• I once heard a man say, “The healing is in the feeling.”

• I believe we have to feel our feelings in order to heal them.

• What we resist persists… looms larger.

• Feel your feelings and act from spirit no matter how loudly your feelings invite you not to.

• Freedom is a choice.  Make a commitment to choose Spirit over fear.

• A woman tells a story about the day her son came into her office to tell her he was going to make a parachute jump the next day, what he was going to do and how he was going to do it the next day when he made that jump.  She said she could also hear the fear in his voice.  “Yet,” she said, “it was about feeling the fear and doing it anyway.”

• The next time the pressure is on and you want a change, don’t fall back into old patterns of pushing away the pressure…don’t be a “but-head…” feel the pressure and choose to express Spirit. :o)

 
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To read the complete text of "But-Head " from Sunday, November 18, 2012,  click here.

Spiritual People

For those who were at service on Sunday, November 11, 2012, a few bullet points to jog your memory:

• Who are you?
• What is your profession?
• I suggest the answer to both these questions is, "Spiritual person."
• Spiritual person is our profession.  Anything else we do in the world is our avocation.
• A spiritual person demonstrates the following three characteristics (among others):
• "Risk Taker"
• Step out and follow God, even when it's not in the normal flow of the people around you
• "Visionary"
• Lives for what is forthcoming.  Sees the good, the perfect pattern of God, and they are willing to do whatever needs to be done now to let that pattern emerge.
• "Outrageous"
• We have found our spirituality because we were looking for something that didn't fit the normal flow, something that we could use every day of our lives to live in an unusual, fulfilling, incredible space where we are aware of God's presence every moment in our lives. When we become willing to be outrageous enough to see God's design for our lives, we become willing to do what it will take to fulfill that design.
•  Jesus demonstrated these characteristics
• "Risk Taker"
• He dared to challenge the scribes and the Pharisees 
• "Visionary"
• He looked around at a time when people had very little, when they were struggling to find their daily bread, and said to them, "The kingdom of heaven is within you, and it is God's good pleasure to give you the fullness of that kingdom."
• "Outrageous"
• He ate with publicans and sinners; forgave an adulteress; touched lepers; stood before the tomb of his friend Lazarus and said, "Come forth," knowing absolutely that his friend would arise; was crucified, died, buried, and rose up.  Then He goes an outrageous step further and says to us, "These things that I have done, you can do also, and even greater things."  Definitely, He was not your average person
• What must it be like to live within and from the power and Presence of God?
• Take the risk of the visionary and in outrageous contentment live that life.

God Bless you.
 
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To read the complete text of "Spiritual People" from Sunday, November 11, 2012,  click here.