At my job at a Christian University, we have a Bible reading and meditation before the weekly staff meeting. Today is my turn. I was supposed to do it before the New Year, but there weren't enough people. I was going to talk about Romans 7:18-19 "The good that I would do I don't do; and the evil that I don't want to do, I do" in terms of keeping New Years Resolutions. Now, after two classes of Conscious Language, I can see how Paul was showing the early Christians how not to speak, that is, with the human self saying don'ts. He also taught them how to speak, "I can do all things through Christ, who strengtheneth me." And in Ephesians 4:22-24, he wrote: "You were taught with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness." The "old self" with it's desires, to me is the self that says, "I want," I need," "I can't," etc. The "new self, created to be like God in true righteousness" to me is the self that says, "I AM accepting abundance in my life for the glory of God and the establishment of kingdom and it's righteousness on Earth."

Researching the Old Testament for supporting quotes, I found this one from Zepahniah 3:9: "For then will I turn to the people a pure language, that they may call upon the name of the Lord, to serve him with one consent."

Can someone come up with other quotes or comment on these?

Paul did make the delineation between the carnal mind and the spiritual mind. He said "For to be carnally minded (mind of the flesh) is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace." (Romans 8:7). Jesus also taught his disciples to link their speech with their higher nature. When they could not cast the demon out of the little boy they asked him why they weren't successful and Jesus answered that their unbelief was the cause of failure. He said "if you have faith as a mustard seed, you will SAY to this mountain, Move from here to there, and it will move; and nothing will be impossible to you. He taught them that power of their faith-filled speech was invincible!

I was going to ask Bob to expound on Zephaniah 3:8, the verse before the one he read. It says "For all the Earth shall be devoured with the fire of my jealousy." My intuition told me that another word should be there in place of jealousy. So, I did some research and found this on someone's blog: "In Hebrew, the word is canna (or qana, or kanai depending on the Hebrew translation) and it refers to a zealous feeling…the intense feeling of love towards someone. Doesn’t that make more sense? Our God has an intense love for us!" This does make more sense because the next verse reads, "For then I will turn to you a pure language that you may call upon the name of the Lord in unison." Isaiah said "The zeal of the Lord of host will accomplish this [establishing his kingdom on Earth]!" Moses said "The Lord thy God is a consuming fire, even a zealous God." So God's zeal is his sacred fire of love that consumes all that is less than God perfection within us, purifying our thoughts, feelings and words. The thought just occurred to me to translate the Bible using conscious language. Imagine the ten commandments as a list of 10 do's instead of 10 don'ts. I will do this in my next post.

Wayne