Sunday, August 18th, 2024 Roundtable
Living a Soul-filled Life
This week’s Lesson Sermon Subject: Soul
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Morning Prayers
My beloved students: Enter into the closet of divine Love and there in humility ask this ever-present power to shield and to defend you from the enemies of your souls and bodies, to defend you and guard you and guide you in the paths of righteousness, pleasantness and Truth.
Be not deceived; ‘God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.’ God knows your motive and will reward it or punish it according to His wisdom and justice, not yours. Not the so-called human, but the divine wisdom shall reign despite your mistaken human hopes, motives or acts. Examine your motives; ask if selfish desire governs them; or if in obedience to the divine command you are taking up your cross and following Him.
Self-seeking will never result in Soul-finding – in finding divine wisdom and Love apart from self, and self swallowed up in a victory of Soul. There is but one way of salvation from sin, disease and death, and this way is to take up the cross in order to follow Christ; then God, who knows your motive, will reward your act according to that motive and not according to your words.
— from Divinity Course and General Collectanea, (the “Blue Book”), by Mary Baker Eddy, page 160
Discussion points
10 — WATCH lest, in your effort to educate your thought along spiritual lines, you forget that you are not trying to learn something new to you, since, as a child of God, you already have access to the precious gems of truth hidden in divine consciousness, and are only working to dig up the spiritual thought through which you may reflect all true knowledge.
A man suffering from amnesia, or loss of memory, is not trying to learn something. He does not need an education. He needs to have his memory restored. A veil of belief has been drawn across his consciousness, which temporarily shuts off his recollection of his real self. This describes man’s dilemma from the spiritual standpoint. Man has not really lost his spiritual selfhood and its relation to God; he has merely lost sight of it. Thus the work of Christian Science is to restore man’s soul, which in turn brings to light his unity with God.
— from 500 Watching Points by Gilbert Carpenter
GOLDEN TEXT: ISAIAH 26 : 8
“O Lord, have we waited for thee; the desire of our soul is to thy name, and to the remembrance of thee.”
Article from Discerning the Rights of Man by Richard Oakes
It is good to talk with our past hours, and learn what report they bear, and how they might have reported more spiritual growth.
From Miscellaneous Writings,
by Mary Baker Eddy, page 330
EXTRACT FROM LETTER TO A STUDENT UPON THE LOSS OF HER HUSBAND
OUR life lies out before you like a field wherein you have proceeded but a little way.
What matters if you stumble, stand upright! Pass by the grave where you have wept enough. Pass it, and leave your tender thought upon it, your faithful memories, your gracious flowers, but not your hope and not your loving self. Go on to better joys.
by Edward Kimball
Article from Three Rules for Treatment by Bicknell Young
Article from The Throne of Grace by Mary Beth Singleterry
Final Readings
Religious Items
Concerning the “Law of want,” a writer in the (Baptist) Watchman says: “He who would ‘gain the whole world’ must be willing to ‘lose his own soul.’ He who wants God must give up self. He who wants righteousness must surrender his sin. There must also be the element of patience, the want must endure. Long forces work slowly. You may not have what you want in one minute, or in one day. The law holds good in the long run. The want that wins is the want that waits. Let the want be single and supreme; let it be woven into the fibres of the being, and built into the foundation of the life. Then, sooner or later, with a fulness that will fill the soul, that which you want will come to you.”
“Religious Items” from, The Christian Science Sentinel, August 30, 1900 by Baptist Watchman