“It can be but my gratitude I earn.”
Here is the second step we take to free your mind from the belief in
outside force pitted against your own. You make attempts at kindness
and forgiveness. Yet you turn them to attack again, unless you find
external gratitude and lavish thanks. Your gifts must be received with
honor, lest they be withdrawn. And so you think God’s gifts are loans
at best; at worst, deceptions which would cheat you of defenses to
ensure that when He strikes He will not fail to kill.
How easily are God and guilt confused by those who know not
what their thoughts can do. Deny your strength, and weakness must
become salvation to you. See yourself as bound, and bars become
your home. Nor will you leave the prison house or claim your
strength until guilt and salvation are not seen as one; and freedom
and salvation are perceived as joined, with strength beside them, to
be sought and claimed and found and fully recognized.
The world must thank you when you offer it release from your
illusions. Yet your thanks belong to you as well, for its release can only
mirror yours. Your gratitude is all your gifts require, that they be a
lasting offering of a thankful heart released from hell forever. Is it this
you would undo by taking back your gifts because they were not
honored? It is you who honor them and give them fitting thanks, for
it is you who have received the gifts.
It does not matter if another thinks your gifts unworthy. In his
mind there is a part that joins with yours in thanking you. It does not
matter if your gifts seem lost and ineffectual. They are received where
they are given. In your gratitude are they accepted universally, and
thankfully acknowledged by the Heart of God Himself. And would
you take them back, when He has gratefully accepted them?
God blesses every gift you give to Him and every gift is given
Him because it can be given only to yourself, and what belongs to
God must be His Own. Yet you will never realize His gifts are sure,
eternal, changeless, limitless, forever giving out, extending love and
adding to your never-ending joy, while you forgive but to attack again.
Withdraw the gifts you give, and you will think that what is
given you has been withdrawn. But learn to let forgiveness take away
the sins you think you see outside yourself, and you can never think
the gifts of God are lent but for a little while, before He snatches them
away again in death. For death will have no meaning for you then.
And with the end of this belief is fear forever over. Thank your
Self for this, for He is grateful only unto God, and He gives thanks
for you unto Himself. To everyone who lives will Christ yet come,
for everyone must live and breathe in Him. His Being in His Father
is secure because Their Will is one. Their gratitude to all They have
created has no end, for gratitude remains a part of love.
Thanks be to you, the holy Son of God, for as you were created
you contain all things within your Self. And you are still as God
created you. Nor can you dim the light of your perfection. In your
heart the Heart of God is laid. He holds you dear because you are
Himself. All gratitude belongs to you because of what you are.
Give thanks as you receive it. Be you free of all ingratitude to
anyone who makes your Self complete. And from this Self is no-one
left outside. Give thanks for all the countless channels which extend
this Self. All that you do is given unto Him. All that you think can
only be His Thoughts, sharing with Him the holy Thoughts of God.
Earn now the gratitude you have denied yourself when you forgot
the function God has given you. But never think that He has ever
ceased to offer thanks to you.
Britney Shawley added:
God blesses every gift you give to Him, and every gift is given Him, because it can be given only to yourself. And what belongs to God must be His Own. Yet you will never realize His gifts are sure, eternal, changeless, limitless, forever giving out, extending love and adding to your never-ending joy while you forgive but to attack again.
Withdraw the gifts you give, and you will think that what is given you has been withdrawn. But learn to let forgiveness take away the sins you think you see outside yourself, and you can never think the gifts of God are lent but for a little while, before He snatches them away again in death. For death will have no meaning for you then.