By Rev. Glenn Neil Stocking
If everything in your world today is absolutely perfect, if there is no more room for happiness, prosperity or creativity in your life; pray it never changes, and that prayer will be your greatest failure and a portal to certain disappointment. Change is coming; call it good, call it bad, but nothing stays the same and counting on it to do so sets us up for a mountain of trouble.
Believing that we can bend the rules with prayer is the first step into that mountain of trouble. Traditional western religions have unanimously fostered the mistaken belief that we simple humans are subject to the whims of a distant but nosy God. A god that keeps track of everything we do, noting when we are bad or good little boys and girls with the purpose of settling the score on judgment day. No coincidence that it sounds more like a line in a popular Christmas song where the fate of our holiday gifts hangs in the balance.
Believing we can plead, barter, or bargain with God sets us in the sights of the cosmic landslide. The proper use of prayer has nothing to do with pleasing anyone. There is no trade off, give and take or submissiveness to it. Prayer is an affirmation of our power, the power we must recognize as our own; the very nature of our being.
An affirmative prayer is the shovel we use to move the mountain. Every time we affirm our spiritual power we move a little bit of our troubles aside. We remind ourselves that we are faster than the landslide, bigger than the mountain.
Often it may appear that the mountain is bigger than us and our shovel is having little effect. It can be helpful in these times to have a partner in the work. Having someone else to pray with or for us lightens our individual load and is common practice in most religions.
Each shovel full reduces the mountain and as it shrinks each shovel full takes a bigger and bigger relative bite from the mountain. This is the power of our faith in our own spiritual nature growing stronger.
Our experience teaches us that all mountains can be reduced over time. In those moments where our faith is strong our shovel is large and powerful reducing any mountain in short order. With regular practice we notice our mountains are more easily recognized and reduced before they grow large.
When we have abandoned our faith or forgotten who we truly are our mountains grow tall and challenging. We can in desperation surrender to faith and find it waiting for our call or we can be inspired to claim our power and find it was never lost. Or we can keep throwing dirt onto our mountains and grow them bigger still.
Our affirmative prayer, our shovel, is an instrument for change. It changes our mountains of trouble into vistas of joy and harmony. It empowers us to step out of our comfort zones to experience the fullness of life.
When we deny our power we live afraid a vengeful God is waiting to pounce and strip away our meager comforts. When we claim our power fear evaporates because we know there is more being revealed with every step and we race to see what unfolds next. It may be another mountain, it may be disappointment, but we can handle it, we have a tool for that.
Learn more about affirmative prayer, prayer partners and your spiritual power at a Center for Spiritual Living in your community, or on line starting at CSL.org or CSLFTL.org