I am learning, “the great power of prayer is not in asking, but in learning how to receive.” Receiving requires acceptance and willing obedience. It requires us to fasten our gaze on the Christ and let (allow) God to re-make us in His image and perfect pattern.
This process of cooperating with God requires us to know ourselves, to appreciate and respect ourselves and to be true to ourselves. We learn to be aware of God’s All-Presence (Lo, I am with you always) to give Him our attention, to see things as God sees them, looking through the outer, transient appearances and conditions, and fastening our gaze on the eternal spiritual reality and truth of His creation.
Thus, God takes the dimness from our eyes and we hold fast to our oneness in God. We look through the false evidence of separation and look through our false beliefs and attitude of “them and us.” We learn to perceive something of Christ’s potential in everyone. Then the unifying power of Spirit breaks down the barriers of self-centeredness, and Spirit heals the breaches and divisions between us.
God has given each of us His awareness, has empowered us to make conscious choices and has given us the will to act. He cannot change and transform us just through our “seeing” or consciously choosing, unless we also act in willing obedience.
God’s presence is constant, continuous activity of Spirit. As God’s co-creators, our cooperation is needed to be aware (see), to make conscious decisions and then act.
Then the Kingdom of God is not dimmed and far off, but the Kingdom of God is actively alive within us.
“Listen, stand still and consider God’s wondrous works.” (Job 37:14)
Lakeshore Ave. in Oakland in the 1910s
Interesting fact about Del
from his biography by George Furniss
Robert (Ricardo) Delmar Anderson was born July 17, 1906. Del spent his first three months in a refugee tent in San Francisco following that year’s disastrous April earthquake. His family moved to relatively undeveloped East Oakland (E. 73rd Avenue) where he spent his childhood through his graduation from Oakland’s Fremont High School.
