Gratitude

 For those who were at service on Sunday, January 13, 2013 a few bullet points to jog your memory:

·        An attitude of gratitude brings altitude

·        When we are “at altitude” we can see a larger picture

·        Spiritually speaking gratitude allows our hearts to open and see “a larger picture” of our attitudes and our circumstances.

·        Spiritually speaking gratitude allows our hearts to open and see “a larger picture” of other people in our world; a world beyond the words our ears hear and the “pictures” our eyes see.

·        The more we extend gratitude, the greater our hearts are open. The greater our hearts are open the more Love naturally flows from us.  The more Love that naturally flows from us the more we experience love.  What we give is returned to us a thousand fold or even a hundred thousand fold.

·        The more love we give in our lives, the more love we know in our lives and love is the emotion we feel when we are joined with God.

·        Just like a fireplace needs fuel to burn (wood, coal, peat, gas, etc) in order to generate heat. Gratitude is one of the kinds of fuel that our heart burns in order to generate love.

·        Romans (1:21) “for though they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened.”

·        Now let’s restate that from the positive, “for they knew God, they did honor Him as God and give thanks to Him, thus they became useful in their thinking, and their wise hearts were luminous.”

·        Gratitude is the fuel of an illumed heart.

 

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To read the complete text of "Gratitude" from Sunday, January 13, 2013,  click here.

Living a Full Life, part 1

For those who were at service on Sunday, January 6, 2013, a few bullet points to jog your memory:

Christmas is over and what are you doing with our gifts?  Are you using them or have you put them away so nothing can happen to them?

In the parable of the three talents, the two servants who used what they were given to be in charge of experienced increase.  The one, who, for fear of loss, buried what he was in charge of, experienced no increase.

And so it is with our God given gifts, one of which is the awareness of the Presence of God. Use that awareness and our life “increases.” Hold it back and our life experience is stagnant.

Another gift of God is compassion.  Our world, both inner and outer, is crying out for compassion.

People, who exercise their gifts (the awareness of the Presence of God, compassion, etc.) day after day, little by little expand their experience of those gifts (we experience what we express).  People who do not exercise their gifts find that they wither away and life becomes more and more distressing.

Matthew 7:16, “By their fruit ye shall know them.”

Matthew 7:26, “And everyone who hears these sayings of mine and who does not do them shall be likened unto a foolish man who built his house upon the sand.”

James 1:22, “But be doers of the word and not merely hearers who deceive themselves.”

Clearly the scripture above and the Parable of the Three Talents indicate the necessity of action in applying spiritual “ideas,” or “principles.”

Aristotle, “In order to learn the things we need to know, we learn by doing.”

Exercise your gifts and live a full life