Be Who You Are – Take the Path of Soul Out of Bondage and Into the Kingdom
Application Ideas for Lesson on Soul – August 11-17
Prepared by Kathy Fitzer, CS (St. Louis, MO)
The covenant with God is an everlasting covenant. He has promised that as we are faithful to the only true God – the God of Spirit – we will be led out of the Egypt of matter-based living, sustained in the wilderness, and brought into the Promised Land of unlimited Spirit. What are we waiting for?
Golden Text: “…I am God, even thy God” Our God – the knowledge of whom saves us and leads us out of bondage.
Responsive Reading: God proclaims Himself to be holy (whole and entire) and promises to reveal our holiness. God has already delivered us and His covenant assures us that we will be fruitful.
Section I: God promised Abraham that his seed (those who follow his example of fidelity) would be established in the kingdom – the promised land. Abram’s name was changed to Abraham as his faith in God was demonstrated, as he recognized God’s unlimited, universal nature. Abraham listened to God and trusted God (yielded to divine Mind) enabling spiritual understanding to be revealed. Thus the covenant was established – man’s faithfulness to good revealing (through the senses of Soul) God’s perpetual care.
Section II: Jacob’s name is changed to Israel after he gives up his belief of a corporeal God and recognizes his worth as the child of God. Jacob struggled with his sense of limitation until the Christ broke through in his human consciousness and he received his blessing. As long as he thought that his blessing – his inheritance – was something limited in scope to be bestowed by a human father – something he had to steal from his brother in order to receive – he was plagued with a limited sense of himself. He was in bondage to material sense. Once he broke those bonds and recognized the incorporeal, unlimited nature of God and His blessings, Jacob’s name (his nature) was changed to Israel and the “children of Israel” became “those, who through earnest striving followed his demonstration of the power of Spirit over the material senses.” (S&H 309) We must give up our limited sense of things if we are to experience the heritage of the children of Israel. As our thought changes, our experience changes – and we journey out of the confinements of self-imposed limitation into the heritage of freedom given to us by God.
Section III: The journey continues. God remembers his covenant with his people, even while they are in the throws of slavery. God maintained his part of the deal – he sent Moses to lead the Children of Israel out of Egypt. As they journeyed, the temptation came to look back at the pleasures of Egypt (the good food) and question God’s commitment to them. In spite of the sliding of the people’s faith, however, God stands by the faithful and brings them through the period of trial, fully sustained, and leads the next generation into the Promised Land. It wasn’t an easy journey, but as a result, the people learned to depend fully on God. Sometimes we’re content to endure the limitations of matter because of the comforts of matter. It is important to remember that the goal is yield up all faith in fickle matter, in order to find our nature as undivided from Christ – Truth. Then we find God’s promise fulfilled of eternal harmony in Spirit.
Section IV: Sometimes we take a wrong path – one that seems easier at the time, but leads to a dead-end. Then what? God just takes us by the hand and leads us back. To sin is simply to miss the mark. As we understand that only mortal sense can cause us to make a wrong turn – like a lost sheep – we turn to good, to Christ the shepherd – to the truth of our inseparability from Soul (our perfect guide and compass) – and we find that we can never be lost. We just lose the mistaken idea we have of things. We know who we are again and get back on the path which leads to God’s kingdom.
Section V: In order to be the holy servant of God, free to experience God’s kingdom, we must seek the kingdom. We have to leave behind those things which are less than purely spiritual – give up the anxieties of our own concept of what needs to be done – and listen to the instruction of the Christ (the voice of Truth speaking to the human consciousness.) Martha was more concerned with the outward appearances and with the justice of everyone working on her schedule and she needed to be reminded by Christ to put first things first. “To discern the rhythm of Spirit and to be holy, thought must be purely spiritual.” (S&H 510) Give up all sense of limitation (time, pre-conceived sense of equity, lack of ability or inclination) and seek the reign of harmony in the consistency of Science (see S&H 590). Truth and Love will then reveal the right path.
Section VI: Peter and John understood that the name (the nature) of Christ and faith in that name (that nature) heals the sick whenever it is called upon. Thus, they called the man who thought he was lame to change his concept of himself and recognize that he was free to stand upright. The Christ leads us all out of bondage permanently. We must accept no forms of limitation. The Truth (the Christ), telling of man’s inseparable relationship to Spirit, God, frees us all to be who we are – to accept our name as the child of God. We see that the Promised Land is truly the land of Christian Science (not a denomination, but the law of God) – which identifies Life as God. In this land “fetters fall and the rights of man are fully known and acknowledged.” (S&H 227) We are always in slavery only to our own beliefs – to the limitations we have accepted due to false education – just like the slaves of Egypt believed they were better off in Egypt, because they hadn’t known anything except slavery. “Soul is the substance, Life, and intelligence of man, which is individualized, but not in matter.” (S&H 477) We must stop believing that we must put up with the limitations of matter, just because it seems to be the world in which we live. Accept the Science of Being, which “reveals man as perfect” because he is “governed by Soul instead of sense, by the law of Spirit, not by the so-called laws of matter.” (S&H 301)
