“He that dwelleth in the secret place of the most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty. I will say of the Lord, He is my refuge and my fortress: my God; in him will I trust. Surely he shall deliver thee from the snare of the fowler, and from the noisome pestilence. He shall cover thee with his feathers, and under his wings shall thou trust: his truth shall be thy shield and buckler. Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night; nor for the arrow that flieth by day, Nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness, nor for the destruction that wasteth at noonday. A thousand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy right hand; but it shall not come nigh thee. Only with thine eyes shalt thou behold and see the reward of the wicked. Because thou hast made the Lord, which is my refuge, even the most High, thy habitation; There shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling. For he shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways. They shall bear thee up in their hands, lest thou dash thy foot against a stone. Thou shalt tread upon the lion and adder: the young lion and the dragon shalt thou trample under feet. Because he hath set his love upon me, therefore will I deliver him: I will set him on high, because he hath known my name. He shall call upon me, and I will answer him: I will be with him in trouble; I will deliver him and honour him. With long life will I satisfy him, and shew him my salvation.” (Psalm 91). "Fear not, little flock; for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” (Luke 12: 32). Whenever we feel we're in a really bad place in our lives, spiritual reasoning is usually quite absent from the forefront of our thoughts. Instead, our assessment of circumstances is drawn from the material appearance of things and our physical feelings. God's presence and power have little to do with our reasoning, mainly because we can't detect that which is spiritual with our physical senses. That's why it's called the 'secret' place--the physical senses can't detect it. God's kingdom is quite invisible to us, so we're not sure God, or His kingdom, is present to do us any good. Thus, it doesn't matter if our 'bad place' is sickness, financial trouble, conflicts with people, or something else that depresses our spirit. Bad can get quite bad in our material assessment of things, and we need to be delivered from it. So we usually battle it humanly. But heaven, and our own place in it, is not a physical location to be discovered; so our true deliverance can't really come from the physical universe. God's deliverance comes from within, not without, because heaven is a divine state of mind. It's the state of mind that is able to perceive our true reality in all its glory, in the way Christ Jesus demonstrated. The heavenly harmony of God's spiritual kingdom comes into our physical experience as we seek this state of mind that recognizes its presence, even though we can't perceive such an existence with our physical senses. In any difficulty, or even extreme desperation, we must bring spiritual reasoning to the forefront of our thoughts first, and then the effects of such awareness of God's presence and power begin to alter the material experience. Deliverance from any and all evil comes, just as soon as we recognize and realize the presence and power of God, our only Source, our only Lawmaker, and our only Creator, who created no evil to harass Its own creation. It is spiritual reality taking over the illusion of a false, material sense of reality. I've written before about my early childhood experience of being led to this 'secret place of the most High', when a Sunday School teacher told our class that if ever we found ourselves in a bad situation of any kind, to say, “But God is here, too!” This teacher went on to explain that if God is with us, this changes everything--for where God is, all God's power, authority and sovereignty is also, allowing nothing else to have power over us. Even to this day, I'm so thankful for that teacher. At an early age, I'd been fortunate enough to have had someone show me the secret place, not in a physical or other-worldly location, but right where I was every moment of my life. The secret place is the forever knowledge that God is always with us, despite all appearances to the contrary. It's an awareness of our link, in consciousness, to God; for that's where the oneness with the divine Intelligence we call God is--within our own conscious awareness of being. Throughout the years since, it's proven to be true, again and again. We've never been alone, ever. God, our divine Source of Life, has always been with us, even though usually unperceived, unappreciated, and untrusted. Sometimes, though, it takes us awhile to pull ourselves out of the mesmeric beliefs of the world concerning physical laws of things like fleshly heredity, environment and its bad effects, hostilities, lack of supply--whatever the threat. So, like everyone else, I've gone through some pretty bad times. But eventually, the realization comes that, mentally, I must work my way back to the truth of God's presence and power over all, to find the peace that is there in the spiritual truth of things. Once I've felt the peace that comes with the realization of God's forever presence and loving control over all, a healing has always taken place. On those times when I didn't find the peace and realization of God's presence and, thus, protection from all evil, when I couldn't pull myself away from the world beliefs about laws and powers over me, the same bad circumstances would continue to come up in my life, until I did realize the spiritual truth of being. Sometimes, there's a struggle involved, but the struggle is within consciousness. (Even as I write this, there are a couple of troublesome things in my life that are still works in progress.) But I know to find the spiritual realization which brings me that peace, and not quit until I do. All we ever need is the spiritual truth of things that is constantly flowing to us from the divine consciousness within. Spiritual truth, and knowledge of this truth, is greatly important to us. When Pontius Pilate asked Jesus if he was a king, Christ Jesus had this to say about his own mission to humanity (those of us still in this physical sense of existence): “To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world: that I should bear witness unto the truth. Every one that is of the truth heareth my voice.”(John 18: 37). So what is this truth? Anyone examining the ministry and activities of Jesus will see both teaching of the invisible kingdom of God as a present authority over the lacks and evils that assert themselves in human thought and lives, and also healing of both mental and physical diseases, injuries, and death. Christ Jesus first addressed the thoughts and beliefs of the people, turning them from a sense of material existence and separation from God, to a realization of spiritual existence and their ever-present oneness with God. No one was alone--ever. Then, through healings, he showed the tangible, physical results of such spiritualized thinking. What so many people in the world don't realize, however, is that Christ Jesus also showed the universal nature of such demonstrations of spiritual power over material so-called evils when he said,“He that believeth on me, the works that I do, shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father.”(John 14: 12). To me, this declaration means that, to those who believe in and follow Jesus' teachings about God's ever-present kingdom, of God's omnipotence (only-power), omnipresence (only creation) and omniscience (only truth) will be able to bring about the physical healings and changes that the power of such spiritual knowing brings into the false, material sense of being. This empowers everyone, with no one left out; for God's spiritual authority, law and power (over all other boasts of powers) is free to all. Mentally standing in this realization of God's sovereignty and harmonious control over all brings healing to the human condition, no matter who is involved. When deliverance comes, from whatever is wrong in our lives, it can sometimes seem mysterious or miraculous. This happens because we're not accustomed to 'thinking outside the box' of material existence. The manner in which healing sometimes occurs isn't mysterious at all to our spiritual sense and those in tune with it. God's divine action is real, and the seeming mysterious action it can sometimes bring is divinely natural. I say this because my most recent experience concerning the secret place had a mysterious element to it. My deliverance was unexplainable to the physical sense of law and environment, but known and normal to a higher awareness of God's presence and divine activity. Here's what happened: A few weeks ago, while cleaning my house, a tune kept going through my mind. I hummed it for a long time, before realizing that the song wouldn't leave me alone. It was from a comedy show on TV that I liked to watch, and nothing sinister was involved in the show or the theme song of the show, but the song kept replaying in my mind, over and over. Then the tune began to mentally replay only a couple of lines in the song. These lines referred to death. Now, as I said, the song wasn't sinister--but these words, taken out of their comedic context, suggested death as a great threat to all. The tune narrowed down to these words, which kept recycling, and I actually began to feel superstitious--as if something or someone 'out there' was trying to disturb me by forcing these words and tune into my consciousness. This was sheer nonsense, of course, but fear is imaginative. Now sometimes when I like to relax a bit, I sit down at a jigsaw puzzle. So that's just what I did. I knew that I needed to get my spiritual bearings, so I tried to relax while declaring that God is always with me. I tried to remember that no evil exists in God's divine, spiritual creation to harm me, nor invade my consciousness to pester me, and this is the only true creation. There was no “arrow that flieth by day” nor a “pestilence that walketh in darkness” to come nigh me. All that really exists is God's creation of good, including every identity in it. Let the aggressive words and tune keep coming at me--I refused to fear or become fearful of unseen so-called forces. I belonged to God, and the divine Intelligence alone was my authority. Nothing was allowed to harass me in God's ever-present kingdom. Remembering these spiritual truths, I began, soon, to feel the peace of knowing God's presence and love for me and all. I began to let go of my fears and concentrate on the jigsaw puzzle before me. As I worked the puzzle, the tune came back and I thought, “I'm grateful to remember God's presence with me, but I just wish I had a way to get the tune out of my head, even though I'm no longer worried about it.” About a minute later, I heard a soft, tinkling sound. Slowly, it tinkled out the tune, “We Three Kings of Orient Are.” I looked up at the top of my china cabinet across the room and remembered that I had a Christmas music box up there. It had begun to play, slowly, as if being wound. It played for two complete minutes. How could that be? A bit startled, I stood on a chair and looked at the music box, with the key slowly turning (I even called my aunt and held the receiver to the music box so she could hear the music--I wanted a witness to this odd occurrence). Then I remembered that, just minutes before, I had wanted something to help me stop that aggressive tune going through my head. And now, this Christmas tune was drowning out the other tune that had been pestering me. Once I made that connection, I was completely free of the whole experience. The divine Intelligence found a way, not only to protect me from fear, but to do what was necessary to drive the tune away from my thought. Now, I'm quite sure someone might suggest that the music box playing by itself was just a co-incidence; perhaps it had been tightly wound once and just released at that moment. But why that moment? And something else proved its purpose to me. A day or two later, I found myself humming the same troublesome tune (like it was trying to come back). I quickly remembered that God had given me the remedy: so I began to sing the music box Christmas song. Again, the Christmas song drove the unwanted mental intruder out. That was the last of that whole, strange situation. The “secret place of the most High”, about which the psalmist wrote, is the secret realization of spiritual existence in the kingdom of God, as opposed to physical existence in a material creation, devoid of God--of spiritual being as opposed to material being. It's the secret that God is not absent from Its creation after all. It's a secret, quite invisible to those who rely solely upon physical perception rather than mental perception, to define their circumstances. Only those who use their minds to find it will find the secret place of true existence and ever-lasting life. We can only approach the kingdom of God, heaven, through our consciousness. With the daily renewing of our mind (beliefs) we begin to spiritualize our concepts of reality, until the divine state of mind begins to transform us anew. Then, while still in the flesh (that is, still manifesting a physical sense of our body and self) we can now perceive our higher Self, safe in God's care forever, and better comprehend what is meant by: “For in him we live, and move, and have our being...For we are also his offspring.”(Acts 17: 28).
|
