Unity Christ Center of Farmington, MO

“Mastery of Love” by Rev. Jan Mahannah

Unity’s Theme for February 2019 is:  Living Love

Our Affirmation is:  “I am a living, loving expression of God, right here and now.”

Scripture: 1 John 4:18  “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love.  We love because he first loved us.” – without fear!

Scripture:  John 15:12 “This is my commandment that you love one another as I have loved you.”  I Peter 3:8-9 “Finally, all of you, live in harmony with one another; be sympathetic, love as brothers, be compassionate and humble.  Do not repay evil with evil or insult with insult, but with blessing.”

Opening:  As you know Love has been defined by those who perceive its true character as the greatest thing in the world.  Love has been described as the greatest healing force in the world.  It’s been said that the Divine Principle of Love may be used to eliminate every sorrow, every infirmity, every harsh condition, and every lack that harasses humanity. 

As a poet said:  With wings outstretched, love searches out the arid spots of the human heart, the waste places of life, and with a seeming magic touch redeems humanity and transforms the world.”

As Unity writers have written:  “Love is God, eternal, limitless, changeless, going beyond all vision into infinity.  Love is the creative energy of the Creator, the Creative energy of the Universe.  Love fulfills the law of its own, consummates its perfect work and reveals the Christ within the soul of man.”

“If it is not disturbed by humankind’s perversity and discordant, selfish thinking, God’s eternal, changeless current of love flows ever onward, dissolving before it, every appearance of inharmony or ugliness which disturbs the peace of man.”

“Love is the perfect fruit of the Spirit; it goes forth, binding up the wounds of humanity, drawing nations into closer harmony, and bringing peace and prosperity to the world – IF we allow it to.”

Beloved New Thought Author Emmett Fox has written in “The Golden Gate”:  “Love Is by far the most important thing of all.  It is the golden gate of paradise.  Pray for the understanding of love and meditate upon it daily.  It casts out fear; it IS the fulfilling of the Law; it covers a multitude of sins.

“Love is absolutely invincible!  There is no difficulty that enough love will not conquer, no disease that enough love will not heal, no door that enough love will not open, no gulf that enough love will not bridge, no wall that enough love will not throw down, no sin that enough love will not redeem.  It makes no difference how deeply seeded may be the trouble, how hopeless the outlook how muddled the tangle, how great the mistake.  A sufficient realization of love will dissolve it all.  Love is absolutely invincible.

“IF you could love enough, you would be the happiest and most powerful being in the world.”

AS we often affirm from the Gospel of John: God is love.  Because we are made in the image and after the likeness of God, we can conclude that we are made in the image and after the likeness of Love.  Love is the essence of our being; it is what our spirit is made up of and what our soul’s quest is all about.  Being our essence, Love must first come from within us before it can go before us.

You have all the love you need for healing, prospering, and experiencing happy relationships right within yourself.  You do not have to search outside yourself for love, though your love is amplified by sharing it.  You can begin releasing it from within, moving it outward through your thoughts, words, actions and affirmative prayers.

We have been told that love is the great healer, the great provider, and the great sustainer of our lives and the lives of all persons everywhere.  Whatever need we believe we have in life, in some way it is always met through love.

If we have a particular challenge, problem or concern about ourselves or someone else, know that in love, the challenge has already been met.  In God/Love, the solution abides.  All we have to do is work with the presence and power of God’s love to draw it forth from within us, and to express it in everything we do, and in particular, in relation to that situation.

Does life press heavily upon you this morning?  Do you need courage and strength to meet the problems that confront you?  Is there something that needs resolving?  Are you sick or afraid? Do you fear for another loved one?

What is your question?  Love is the answer!

The presence and power of God/Love individualized in us is the source of love and all good in our lies.  We have access to this indwelling love every moment of our experience when we remember.

In ministerial school, beyond all the Bible classes, metaphysical understanding, intellectual learning, inspirational personal growth, inspirational talk and meditation preparation techniques, and church management, we were taught that to be most inspiring for others,( in addition to being prepared  and “prayed up”), the greatest need was for us to go out and love those persons we would find in our congregations.  To love them!..

What is required for the mastery of love?  To master anything requires that we practice and experiment.  So it is with love.  Even though love is the essence of our being, if we are to master love we must practice centering in love and radiating it though us outward to all the different circumstances, experiences and people in our lives.  I had a great opportunity this week during a misunderstanding, but did not remember in time…only afterwards.

Transcendentalist Emerson has written:  “The more experiments you make the better.  What if they are a little coarse, and you get your coat soiled or torn?  What if you do fail, and get fairly rolled in the dirt once or twice?  (or more?)  Up again you shall never be so afraid of a tumble.”  So it is with experimenting with love.

Practicing love to become a master of love requires;

1.  A belief that God/Love is available in all situations.
2. A willingness to come from an inner awareness of love.
3. Loving actions.  No matter what the challenge, no matter what the problem, love is the answer.

So here are some experiments.  I invite you to close your eyes and reflect: 

Identify any issue or problem you may be currently facing this morning. We will direct love to any issue, any problem facing you now.

Affirmations for refocusing your mind in order to direct love to any issue or problem you are facing:  *I praise Divine love that there is a strong, wise way out of this dilemma now.  *Divine Love is now doing its perfect work in this situation.  *The good that is for me in this matter now seeks me and I accept it.

Identify any individual you may currently be at odds with. We will direct love outwards to any individual.  Affirmations for refocusing your mind in order to direct love to another individual:  God loves you…and I am trying!  I behold this situation between us with love.  Divine Love is doing its perfect work in you and through you and through me now. Thank you God!

Consider any concern about financial lack. Become a radiating center of love to attract to you prosperity in every area of your life.  e Affirmations for refocusing your thoughts in order to direct love for prosperity: I walk in the charmed circle of God’s love.  I am divinely irresistible to my highest good now.  I welcome love’s prospering opportunities. I love my life!

Identify any part of you body that may be in discomfort or pain. We will direct love to any part of your body that is in discomfort now.    Affirmations to direct love to your body:  I remember that deep slow breathing is love’s gift of life to my body.  I take a deep breath and direct it with love to my physical body, giving thanks for perfect health. I love my body back into wellness and balance now.

Poetic Thoughts:  The spirit in my heart is smaller than a grain of mustard seed.  Yet, the spirit that is in my heart is greater than the earth, greater than the sky, greater than heaven itself, and greater than all these worlds.  This is the spirit in my heart.

The light in my heart is smaller than a firefly in the night.  Yet, the light in my heart is greater than a cosmic sun, a galaxy, or the universe.  This is the light in my heart.

The love in my heart is smaller than a fly in the wind.  Yet, the love in my heart is large enough to embrace my fellow man, to serve all of nature, and reach for the stars to touch the face of God.  This is the love in my heart.

My spirit, my light, and my love all have unlimited dimensions.  I can join everyone through compassion and community.  I say this again… My spirit, my light, and my love all have unlimited dimensions.  I can join everyone through compassion and community… 

My Spirit, Mind and Body are now charged with the current of Divine Love.  The imperishable love of God enfolds and informs me now.  Love is the law of my immortal being and I am becoming a Master of Love.  I open my eyes to behold that this is true.

From “The Prophet” by Kahlil Gibran

“Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself.  Love possesses not, nor would it be possessed; for love is sufficient unto love.  Love has no other desire but to fulfill itself.

“But if you love and must need have desires, let these be your desires:  To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night.  To know the pain of too much tenderness.  To be wounded by your own understanding of love;

“To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving; to rest at the noon hour and meditate love’s ecstasy; to return home at eventide with gratitude; and then to sleep with a prayer for the beloved in your heart and a song of praise upon your lips.”

Solo: Give Yourself to Love

Meditation:  Deep slow breathing is Love’s Gift to your Body…  Direct love’s breath from your lungs to your whole body.  Feel your breath as love moving through, sustaining, and renewing you, body, mind, and spirit. May you have the intention to become a Master of Love, rightly expressed with the love of God. Amen

Closing Prayer:

Through all my journeys, keep me in the buoyance of hope.  Transform dark alleys into sunlit paths of Inner peace.  Teach me to face everything with Love, to dissolve my worry in Your eternal grace.  Teach me to live in each present moment as if only Love mattered.  Thank you God.

by Rev. Jan Mahannah

Charles Fillmore, co-founder of Unity :  “Grace is the pure unconditional love of God perpetually operative and expressing towards all humankind.” “ The grace of God is God’s love in action.”

You’ve heard the old expression “There but for the Grace of God go I”… that saying is in essence a recognition that Grace IS the regenerative power of love that literally saves us from the full measure of our own mistakes.  How many of us in our ignorance or impatience or daring-do have done things for which – thankfully – we never received the full measure of that mistake?

Consider the possibility that our physical bodies as well our choices in doing things, never receive the full measure of our mistakes made in caring for our bodies through the years.

“The Isaiah Effect” by Gregg Braden,  “To many researchers, recent extremes documented in our solar system, weather patterns, geophysical shifts, and social patterns have no frame of reference in Western models of understanding.  However – Ancient and indigenous traditions such as those of the native North and South Americans, the Tibetans, and the Qumran communities of the Dead Sea offer a framework that allows us to make sense of the apparent chaos in our world.  These teachings provide a unified view of creation, reminding us that our bodies are made of the same materials as our earth – nothing more and nothing less.

“Fourth-century documents preserved in the private Vatican libraries offer details of this relationship reminding us that “the spirit of the Son Of Man was created from the spirit of the Heavenly Father, and his body from the body of the Earthly Mother; Man is the Son of the Earthly Mother, and from her did the Son of Man  receive his whole body.  You are one with the earthly mother; she is in you and you in her…”  (“Son of man” literally meant humankind.)

The ancient Essenes of the documented in now translated remnants from the “Dead Sea Scrolls” remind us of a relationship that modern sciences have now confirmed.  The air in our lungs is the same air that glides over the greatest oceans and rushes through the highest mountain passes.  The water that makes up 98 percent of the blood in our veins is the same water that was once the great oceans and the mountain streams.  

Through the writings of another time, the Essenes invite us to view ourselves as one with the earth, rather than separate from it.  From such an ancient worldview, we are offered two key precepts to guide us through the greatest challenges of our modern time.

1. We are reminded that imbalances imposed upon the earth are mirrored as conditions within our bodies.  Such traditions view the breakdown of our immune systems and cancerous growths in our bodies, for example, as the inner expression of a collective breakdown that prevents our outer world from giving us life.

• This line of thinking invites us to consider earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and weather patterns as mirrors of great change occurring within human consciousness.  The events of our world are living barometers showing us our progress on a journey that began long ago.  As we look to our relationships within the patterns of societies and nature, we are actually witnessing changes within ourselves

World changes offer a rare opportunity to gauge the consequences of our choices, beliefs, and values in a dramatic fashion, as a feedback mechanism of sorts. Once the mechanism is recognized, we awaken to new possibilities of even greater choices in our lives.

Such possibilities of healing have been silently held in tribal traditions and pre-Christian prophecy for hundreds of generations.  The time of the great change is now.  The key to addressing such events is in the timing; the sooner we recognize our relationship with the world around us, the sooner we will recognize our inner choices of peace; mirrored as gently weather patterns, the healing of our societies,  peace between nations and peace within all the operating aspects of breath, heart- beat, organs, blood, bones, digestion of our physical bodies.

The ancient Essenes separated themselves from the urban areas of their time, forming their own communities in the desert:  “Always have the children of light lived where rejoice the angels of the earthly mother:  near rivers, near trees, near flowers, near the music of the birds, where sun and rain may embrace the body which is the temple of the spirit.” Nature and natural laws were keys to the Essene way of life.

The Qumran texts remind us that we are the product of a very special union, a sacred marriage between the soul of the heavens and the tissue of our world.  The principle states, without exception, that we are part of, and intimately enmeshed within all that we see as our world.  Through unseen threads and immeasurable cords, we are a part of each expression of life. 

All rock, each tree and mountain, every river and ocean is a part of each of us.  Perhaps most important, you and I are reminded that we are part of one another.

Essene traditions refer to this union as that of “our Mother Earth and our Father in Heaven; for the spirit of the Son of Man was created from the spirit of the Heavenly Father, and his body from the body of the Earthly Mother.  Your Mother is in you and you in her.  She bore you; she gives you life.  It was she who gave to you your body…even as the body of the newborn babe is born of the womb of his mother.”  We are the union of these forces, the masculine of “our Father in Heaven” merged with the feminine of “our Mother Earth.”

This unified view invites us to consider that through the common thread that binds our bodies to the earth, the experiences of one are mirrored in the other.  As long as the marriage is honored, the union between the earth and the spirit continues and the soft temples of our physical bodies live.  When the agreement is dishonored, the union ends, our body temple dies, and the forces of earth and spirit return to their respective places of origin.

Grace is the name given to the aspect of divine law which does NOT deal in even exchange but deals in the increase of unearned good through greater giving. *Grace is the regenerative power of love that literally saves us from the full measure of our mistakes.

***When realized and accepted the healing Essence of God’s Grace is a living, energy flow of God’s good moving through our body temples, as well as through our interactions and responses with our world.  “To walk in Grace” is to experience the unconditional love of Creator.

In regarding our physical/mental/emotional health, when we accept God’s Grace as a living, energy flow of Good – of God’s unconditonal love for us – restoring inner peace, balance and well-being – the regenerative power of love can indeed “restore the years the locusts have eaten”.  This means restoring the good in our lives, whether with more vibrant health physically, greater clarity and understanding mentally and emotionally , increased experiences of prosperity or restoration of spiritual understanding … restoration from the debilitating throes of discordant thoughts, pain, beliefs, so-called bad choices and life experiences.

When I regard Grace in relationship to my physical body, (God’s Grace as a living, energy flow of Good restoring inner peace, balance and well-being)

I consider all the none-life-enhancing food, drink, lack of physical exercise or over strenuous push of the physical body choices I have made… and yet generally speaking I have not suffered the full effect of those choices.  The Grace of God’s good has superseded my own self-destructive or ignorant choices for maintaining and strengthening my body vessel – the Temple of the Holy Spirit embodied as me. 

Yet there are times, when the body – not through choices consciously made – has experienced such horrific injuries from accidents or disease that the Grace of God enables one’s spirit to exit with some measure of peace, enveloped in the incomparable Love of the Divine for us.  I believe the Grace of God is even at work in a “good death” (as Native Americans would describe it).  I have been honored to have witnessed some of those.

We also believe – or are learning of – the uplifting or damming effect of our thoughts and feelings to our physical bodies when coping with life and life’s experiences of stress, fear, grief, unforgiveness or negative self-regard repeated over periods of time.  The refrain “There but for the Grace of God go I” comes to mind once again.  We see some of us being devastated for years by a personal crisis, injury, disappointment, betrayal, or failure while others of us seem to come to terms with a similar crisis at some level and enable ourselves to move forward and live more richly rewarding and purposeful lives.

What if we affirmed “Here BY the Grace of God am I! thereby confirming that “I accept God’s Grace as an unearned living, energy flow of Good restoring inner peace, balance and well-being to every aspect of my life– the regenerative power of love indeed “restoring the years the locusts have eaten”.  What I’m suggesting is that we accept the Grace of God embodied in us! As us!… Grace moving through our living experiences in mystical, magical, creative, bold, empowering ways, the love of the Creator has for us.  Here by God’s grace – God’s unearned love for me – am I now! 

Do you remember that the third law of physics states “to every action there is an equal and corresponding re-action”.  In the material world that is so.  And it is reflected in the Law of Moses as equal exchange ie: an eye for an eye, etc. Moving from the material world to the spiritual laws underlying all physicality we may state is as “Thoughts Held In Mind/feeling produce after their kind.  This is a fact of life in creating, however I believe the law of Grace can supersede this and this law is written in our DNA as living Love or God’s Grace.  For me, the Old Testament God who deals only in even exchange is overcome by the concept of God in the New Testament  – a God of Love.… A God of love and Grace – brought into the collective consciousness of humankind through Master Teacher Jesus Christ.

Definition:  “Grace is the pure unconditional love of God perpetually operative and expressing towards all humankind.” “The grace of God is God’s love – unearned – in action in my life.”

Affirmation:  “Grace is an upward pull of the universe, lifting me to the heights of my divine nature.”

Meditation:  May the Grace of God – the unearned love of God that lives in me as Grace-move through my physical body… mind, memories, emotions, … relationships,… and spiritual understanding now…, moving within me and moving before me for blessed living in all my life experiences.  May I live, move and create from a state of Grace – God’s incredible love realized and expressed … yet still a mystery as I learn to accept it as fact.  Amen.

January 6 – Rev Jan Mahannah

January 13 – Rev Jan Mahannah- Cancelled

January 20 – Rev Sharon Allmond – Cancelled

January 27 – Rev Jan Mahannah