God blesses in abundance

While studying the story of the loaves and fishes in the Bible Lesson this week, I was struck by the fact that when God is acknowledged as the source of supply, one’s outward experience of supply multiplies, even when vast consumption occurs in the meantime.

There were thousands of hungry people to feed. Jesus had five barley loaves and two small fishes to distribute. But Jesus didn’t simply distribute a limited material quantity of food. He gave thanks to God first before passing the items around. He acknowledged and understood that God would feed the masses through the infinite resources of divine Love.

When everyone was done eating, the leftovers were gathered together, filling twelve baskets. And this is amazing to consider, that the five loaves and two fishes had grown into enough leftovers to fill 12 baskets! There was more food after dinner than before.

How could that be?

It was an act of Love.

And I thought, yes, that’s how God works. God’s supply is not a limited quantity of material items that get consumed. God’s supply is understanding, ideas, inspiration, gratitude, love, wisdom, and their kin, all of which multiply to the human sense of things when welcomed into thought.

The human mind calls spiritual ideas material things, but they are not. Spiritual ideas are, well, spiritual ideas. And when one gets the right idea of God and how God works through Mind, the effect is one of multiplying goodness in the everyday human experience.

And when it comes to feeding hungry mouths, if a meal is started by giving God the gratitude, there very well could be more left over after dinner than one had before. And that is very cool....

Supply like oxygen

When thinking about the spiritual nature of supply as ever-present inspiration of divine Mind, it struck me ebullient that supply is as present as air.

Do you every worry about having enough air to breathe in the morning when you rise? Do you get anxious about having enough oxygen to take in while grocery shopping, paying the bills, planning a budget? Probably not, because as a general rule, air is everywhere and oxygen is plentiful, unless you’re headed up Mt. Everest or a similar peak that is not a person’s typical place to be.

Supply is as prevalent as oxygen! I love the metaphor. Supply is not money coming to us, but inspiration, insight, ingenuity, wisdom, intelligence, helpfulness and love in action that generate value, and in turn translates into cash in hand.

People often think they need money to pay bills. Yes, greenbacks make the creditor happy. But money comes in limited amounts. Once spent, there is no more. It’s not money that pays the bills over the long run, but work and effort that generate a constant stream of income. A constant stream of income is the outcome of profitable ideas in action. Ideas come from Mind, and Mind is God. God is the primary source of all reliable supply, and there are no limits on God’s inspirational producing capacity.

God is everywhere. Divine Mind is everywhere. We live, move and have our being in divine Mind, the producer, creator and sustainer of all supply. Spiritually understood, we “breathe” in Mind like people breathe in air.

Everywhere we go, translated, “every time we think,” in Mind, we find supply. Like breathing in oxygen as you walk about daily and never fearing lack of air, one can think with Mind daily too, and never fear shortage.

Mind is an endless source of inspired ideas that meet needs.

Breathe in the atmosphere of Mind today, and you’ll find all the supply, or ideas, you need to plan intelligently and maintain a balanced budget.

Supply all around

One reader commented to me that discovering God’s supply is like standing in a huge dark vault filled with massive reserves of gold, coin and cash and not seeing any of it until the light is turned on.

The belief that supply is material—in the form of money, stocks and bonds, real estate, and more—is mental darkness that causes people to fear when the value of their portfolio sinks. Real supply is not matter-based, but Spirit-based.

Wisdom, love, intelligence, creativity, patience, joy and their kin are Spirit-based supply, and they meet human needs. They exist in abundance. They are infinite, without end. Understanding this truth is the light that illuminates consciousness with enlightened perspective that sees God’s supply at hand.

Jesus did this with the multiplication of the loaves and fishes. Through gratitude, understanding and faith, he opened the hungering crowd’s thought to supply at hand, and they saw it. It was there all along, but required a higher view to reveal it.

You are standing in God’s vault of superabundance right now. Enjoy use of the vast riches in your grasp!

Supply is freely given

Two days ago, while I was opening my mail, I came across a beautiful thank you card with an extraordinarily large check enclosed. The sender of the gift owed me no money, but was sharing “out of his abundance,” he wrote, for healing time we had spent together in years past working through a severe challenge he had faced at that time.

I have witnessed this type of unexpected and munificent beneficence many times over the course of my Christian Science practice. Each time it happens, I am increasingly humbled, for it wallops over the head any residual belief in my thinking that supply is something we have to go out and get. It is not. Supply is not a material commodity that is obtained through toil, strife and competition. It is a gift from above that comes to us through the grace of God as we sincerely serve the divine will and perform His work faithfully.

The more I pray about the economic turmoil the world faces today, the more it seems there is a crying need for a total revision in mankind’s belief-system as to what supply is and how to have it.

Conventional thought views supply as a material commodity, like money, that needs to be gotten, saved and doled out.

Jesus Christ taught a different concept of supply. He did not spend time counseling his disciples on how to earn money, manage debt and get rich. In fact, Jesus had little respect for money as an ideal to cherish and work for. “Seek treasures from above,” he instructed. Yet, all of Jesus’ human needs were met, monetary included.

Jesus saw supply as ideas coming from God, pure and simple. Supply was not money. Supply was not things. Supply could not be measured materially. Supply was infinite Love loving, divine Mind inspiring, and Life living. Pursue these ideals and your human needs will be met, he taught.

Now, what would happen in society if everyone understood this ideal for supply and lived it? It would totally revolutionize people’s priorities and goals in life, and change what they pursued with their time and energy. It would keep us out of economic messes like the present one we're dealing with.

Instead of getting caught up into the trap of thinking the purchase of more things leads to happiness, and building up credit card debt as a consequence, thought would be focused on getting more spiritual understanding. Unnecessary debt would be avoided.

When buying a home, instead of thinking, “I need a bigger house than I can afford,” and extending one’s finances a bit too far, thought would be finding reasons to be grateful for whatever size space was affordable. And payments that were a stretch would be avoided.

When building a business, instead of trying to be the biggest and most impressive, and possibly expanding operations with debt faster than the company can reasonably pay off, management would be practicing contentment, humility, and gratitude while working to increase the business through sound economic principles. These “supply-qualities,” from God would keep the balance sheet well adjusted and in the black.

Supply is not money. Supply is ideas and understanding coming from God, that in turn, when lived out and expressed faithfully, translate into human needs met.

Going into the Christian Science practice forced me to accept supply on spiritual terms years ago. I had to let go of my old profit-pursuing ways that had been learned in class at Stanford University and then honed in the family business where I worked afterward.

In the practice, one has to demonstrate supply coming to you. You do not go out and get it like business people and employees are taught to do through their own effort. And what I learned is that supply comes to me first as love, understanding and ideas from God. As I act on this supply and share it with my fellowman through my practice, they in turn show gratitude by meeting my human needs. And to reason a bit further, it really isn’t them, personally, that supply me. It’s the divine Love they feel within that inspires them to give. So, supply really is always coming from divine Love no matter what human channel it appears through or from.

Around 1993, I was accepted for Normal class, to be taught in Boston, which was education that enabled me to become a CS teacher. Between lodging and airfare, the trip was going to cost several thousand dollars, money which I did not have. It never occurred to me that I would not have it. Supply was right ideas coming from God, I understood, and this education was a right idea to strengthen and progress my practice, I was confident.

One week before I was to leave for Boston, a man came into my office and handed me a $5000 check, saying he did not need it and wanted me to have it. I about fell out of my seat, yet, I did not, because I instantly knew what had happened. God had inspired this man to give me that money so that my expenses would be paid on this trip that God had planned for me to go on all along. It was the full circle of divine Love bearing fruit, and everyone was blessed in the giving and the receiving.

Another time in my practice, I started to worry about paying for major expenses in the future, like buying a car, having children, and putting them through college. I did not see humanly how that was ever going to happen from my very modest earnings. One Saturday morning, a woman came to my front door, shoved fistfuls of cash into my hands and said, “God told me to do this. Take this money, and I don’t want to hear anything about it.” She turned, and promptly left.

I was stunned. We had no debt and our bills were paid. We didn’t need the money. But it still happened. After I closed the door and asked God what lesson I was supposed to learn from this blessing, the little voice said, “Evan, never ever worry about money again. I will always meet your needs. Stay focused on being a good practitioner.”

I realized that God sent that woman to impress upon me in a concrete way that my fears about future monetary needs were groundless. And God was right. We’ve never lacked. We live abundantly. Looking back over the last twenty years, we've always had a car to drive, and now we're preparing to send our daughter to college next year.

Supply is not material. Supply is not money. Supply is not limited. Supply is infinite. It is ideas coming from God. It is divine Love loving us, and we have only to open up and receive the divine gift freely coming our way.

I could write much more on this, but I think I’m getting a bit lengthy here…more to come later!

Enjoy your supply coming from God today…

Question what you hear and see

Yesterday, a traveling saleswoman stopped into my office to sell me a cleaning product I had never heard of before. It was a green liquid, made of natural ingredients, can clean anything according to its promoter, and was environmentally safe. She licked the tube in the can to prove her point. I politely declined buying her ware, not sure it was legitimate or not, and didn’t need it anyway.

Later, a neighbor store owner stopped by to talk about removing graffiti in our vicinity. I changed the subject and asked her if the saleswoman had stopped by her store. She nodded yes and proceeded to tell me the product was a con, that she hoped I hadn’t bought any, and that it would have been a waste of money. I assured her I made the right decision, at least according to her point of view! When she left, I was glad I hadn’t got conned, hadn’t bought the product and was confident I would never even consider buying it in the future. My mind was made up based upon what my neighbor told me.

Later, though, I thought about how rapidly I had closed my mind to ever using the product. I had no proof one way or the other that the stuff worked. Actually, the saleswoman had cleaned some graffiti off the trashcan outside my office, proving it could clean somewhat. So, it bothered me that I had written the product off as no good so quickly.

What if my neighbor was wrong? What if the saleswoman was right? I didn’t honestly know.

Now, I’m not worried about whether I need the cleaning solution or not. What got my attention was how rapidly my mind closed to an option just because my neighbor said so.

I thought about the millions of people who have been told that Christian Science is a cult, and they believed it, not because it was true, but because they were told so. And they never went on to question whether the verdict was correct or not. (And, by the way, it is not. Christian Science couldn’t be further from being a cult. It worships one God, not any person.) And millions of people have been deprived of the huge healing benefit CS could have brought into their lives, if they only knew the truth about it.

But then I thought of all the times when mortal mind (internal fear, doubt, lack, etc) talks to us as an authority, and we believe it when we shouldn’t.

For example, I remember a time when Kathy and I wanted to buy a house, but didn’t see any way we could afford it. I checked our bank balances and other assets and there was no way we could afford the place. Case closed. Beyond a doubt, it was not a doable deal.

At least, that’s what the material sense report told us. And I believed it beyond a shadow of a doubt. At least for a while....

After a bit, I prayerfully challenged the evidence of the senses. Instead of looking to our bank account for money which was not there, I went to Mind, the source of all supply. I knew there were no shortages in Mind, only abundance. Lack is a finite human concept. Abundance is divine reality. Was I going to live in the realm of the finite or the infinite? I asked myself. I decided to settle for the infinite.

I did not pray for money. I prayed for an expanded view of spiritual abundance, and I found peace in knowing our family did not lack in any way, shape or form. We had all we needed whether we bought the house or not, I concluded. We were complete.

Within two weeks, in what seemed like miraculous ways, $80,000 appeared that enabled us to buy the house. It was astounding, totally unforeseen, but it happened.

To see this demonstration, though, I had to open my mind up to new possibilities. I had to stop listening to the material voice of fear, quit beholding lack, and think out from Mind-Truth. Then the picture changed.

So, the lesson I gain from all this is the importance of not abruptly drawing conclusions that aren’t based on the facts—and when it comes to spiritual healing—upon the spiritual facts! All other evidence is suspect until verified with truth.

You already have it

Have you ever worried about not having enough,--enough money, enough company, enough understanding, or enough patience? Fear not. God knows what you need before you ask him, Jesus reminded his followers. And He supplies the need in abundance. But not always in the way we’ve pre-determined.

Debrah from Austin shared the following comments on her own efforts to understand her spiritual completeness better.

Something that I’ve found pretty inspiring is what I read in a Christian Science Sentinel article by Barbara Cook Spencer where she touched on “Love’s law of revelation, the Holy Ghost, or Divine Science – the law that causes to appear or makes visible that which already exists.” Reading that gave me a clearer sense that all of creation is complete (hello – I already knew that but wasn’t thinking or living in those terms).

I realized that I can’t start anything that doesn’t already exist – nor am I without anything that already exists. It’s not my work but the law of Love that reveals its own idea – the preexistent idea. When I intellectually neglect preexistence – or God as the creator—I feel worried about income and outcome and then feel overcome – oh my! So that is what I need to do better—stay tuned into God’s creation revealing itself through the law of Love.

Jesus never worried about tomorrow. He lived out from abundance everyday. He didn’t worry about his level of savings, how many friends he had, how famous he would be, or whether he could cope. He lived at-one with God every moment of his existence and all his needs were met, proving the ultimate supplier is not an employer or stock portfolio, but God, the source and substance of all real supply to begin with.