Renewal Notice from GOD

I looked at my American Express bill recently.  My health insurance, auto insurance, telephone, internet, and  cable were all paid automatically on this credit card so I wasn’t paying attention to how much they were costing me.  I subscribed to each of these services at low introductory “teaser” rates, but those rates had increased drastically over time and I was stunned at the amount of my bill.  I’m sure they sent me renewal notices, but I probably ignored them thinking they were junk mail.  

Just like we have a subscription to services with a Consumer Agreement (contract), we have a Sacred Agreement with God.  In ancient times it took the form of God’s Covenant with Abraham.  Genesis 12: 1-3 Now the Lord said to Abram, "Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a  blessing.  It was unconditional.  God didn’t require anything in return.  

Individually, we have a sacred agreement with God that is a reflection of God’s unconditional covenant with Abraham.  It may sound something like this:  Be Yourself just as I have made you, love yourself and others as I have loved you.  I am with you always, I am your source and I’ve got your back.  It is equally unconditional.  We may have an agreement, but sometimes we forget and our actions drift away from how we would act if we remembered our sacred agreement with God.  For example, you leave here on Sunday on a high thinking “God has my back”…until you see evidence to the contrary…  Just like all those things we have on AutoPay (car insurance, phone & internet service, etc.) have drifted upwards, we only notice when we begin feeling a vague sense of discomfort.  Sometimes it is useful to see what has caused our agreement to “drift” (just like phone rates that drift upward). We may have to review and renew our Subscription with God.

When we experience discomfort, unpleasantness, or “growing pains” that is a renewal notice from God.  On some level we are not living in alignment with our Covenant with God.  Perhaps we are not loving ourselves enough so we are allowing others to treat us unlovingly.  Perhaps we’re living in a consciousness of lack and not believing that the universe will support us and this lack is showing up in some area of our lives.  That is a renewal notice from God.  You are being asked, “what is your core agreement with God?”  Has your actual consciousness drifted away from this core agreement, and have you changed the covenant, or the terms of the agreement and therefore shifted your life out of balance and out of the consciousness of the kingdom of heaven, where you ALWAYS have a right to exist.

WHAT GOD DO YOU SUBSCRIBE TO, AND IS IT TIME TO RENEW YOUR SUBSCRIPTION?  If your life isn’t working the way you’d like it to work, perhaps it is time to renew your subscription. 

How do you see the God that you subscribe to?

In Living Buddha, Living Christ, by Thic Nhat Hanh, the author ruminates on the connection between Christianity and Buddhism, which is seeing and experiencing God as the Holy Spirit, the living embodiment of divine energy that flows through all of us and permeates all things.  He uses the image of St. Francis calling out to an Almond tree and saying “Speak To Me God”, and the almond tree immediately bearing fruit because God was a living energy that infused the tree, causing it to bear fruit in the middle of the winter because it was so filled with the life force.  He also uses the image of God breathing breath into the nostrils of man as part of the creation story.  The breath symbolizes the spirit being infused in man, indicating that the holy spirit in man is the life force.  In other words, Thic Nhat Hanh saw God as a vibrant, present, living energy.  

So I ask you, how do YOU see God. Do you see God as a set of rules and affirmations, or as an experience?  Seeing God as a set of rules, affirmations, dogma or doctrine is like seeing a map to get you from here to New York.  Seeing God as an experience through your own personal connection with the Holy Spirit of God is like being in Times Square with all the lights, the noise, the pretzel vendors, the crowds, the outfits, the smell of nuts roasting on the street, the naked singing cowboy, and the yellow cabs.  

You carry your beliefs about God in your head.  However, your head will not heal you, because your head does not create your world.  Your head is simply the filter that allows or rejects God’s grace into your energy based on your beliefs.  When you don’t believe God has your back, you don’t allow that energy of grace to come in, move through you and create a different circumstance.  This impacts the energy that you hold.  Your world is created by your life force, which is a combination of your emotional body and your heart energy (the loving creative energy from the heart of God that emanates from your heart).  When you allow more of God’s grace in to heal your emotional body and activate and emanate more of your loving essence, then you create a more loving experience for yourself.   If your head is filled with guilt, you will not allow grace and you will create pain and suffering.  If your head is filled with the truth of God’s grace, you will allow that grace to heal your emotional body, activate the loving energy of God that was infused in you and emanate the loving essence that will be reflected to you in your outer world.  

So I ask you again, do you see God as a set of rules and affirmations, or as an experience.  If you see god as simply a set of rules and affirmations, perhaps it is time to renew your subscription to God.  Perhaps, somewhere in the depths of your mind, you’ve been subscribing to the God of rules and standards of perfection and punishment if you don’t fit the standards of perfection.  Perhaps it is time to renew your subscription to God.  .  

You can only subscribe to the God of your EXPERIENCE when you’ve experienced this God so I urge you to partake of some of the wonderful ways that we have to feel God’s energy at the Takoma Park Chapel such as the Monday Night Masters Class, our healing circle, the meditation circle, our classes and workshops.

How are you allowing God’s grace to serve you?  

God is continually saying “I love you”, and we are saying “How can you love me when I judge myself to be unworthy of your love?  I don’t agree with you, God”.  God is saying “My beloved child, I will give to you that which you need”, and we are saying, “How can I allow  you to give me what I need when my inner doubts and criticisms cause me to feel unworthy of your gifts? I don’t agree with you, God, so I will reject your good. God is saying, I will support you and heal you.  In response, we say “but God I don’t agree with you.  How can you support me when I can’t even support myself by making loving choices – look at all the poor choices I have made. I don’t agree with you God.  If you subscribe to a God that you are unworthy of, perhaps it is time to renew your subscription.  

Where else in your life do you need God’s help?

There is no spot where God is not.  Have you quarantined your love life from God because of ideas about God’s judgments?   Have you quarantined your financial life from God’s Grace because you subscribe to the old idea that it is noble to suffer, martyr oneself, withhold joy, punish yourself because that is pleasing to God.  Perhaps it is time to renew your subscription to God.   God is sending you a renewal notice for God’s will for you is to be happy and fulfilled  so that you can magnify his light.  Perhaps it is time to renew your subscription.  God is sending you a renewal notice.   

You can have a new relationship with God. 

God is not written in stone,  but is a living vibrant energy, and your relationship doesn’t have to be written in stone either.  If you are having an experience you don’t enjoy, you can renew your subscription with Godl